Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
Happy and Healthy Chinese New Year!
It is the end of the month, which means it is time for another monthly Net-Worth update.
Net-Worth increase from last month: ~73K SGD
The increase was mainly due to salaries, bonuses, leave encashment, company stock program, CPF contribution and interest.
Our investment value and gain did not change due to the recent drop.
I wish we could have this kind of increases every month.
Over 2019 or more preciously the past 12 months, our average monthly net-worth increase is about 16KSGD.
From next week, I will be on a new job, one with likely lower net income, less stability, more stress, heavier workload, less free time and much more traveling. Hopefully, it will also provide more learning opportunities and in time, opportunities to advance in career and income.
I totally expect our net-worth increases to slow down going forward. However, I target to increase that number to 40KSGD by the time I turn 40, i.e. our average monthly household net-worth increase needs to reach 40K during the calendar year which my 40th birthday falls in, after all reasonable expenses without sacrificing quality of life, OR I need to reach the equivalent income level (sorry, not to disclose that here now).
That is my goal and I call it "40/40".
Investment: 6.04% annualized return, incl. dividend
Compared
to the annualized return of 6.47% last month, we see a dip.
The start of 2020 is not a particularly good one, both on a Macro level and a Micro level.
On a Macro level, the virus and the pass of Kobe does not only hurt people's pocket, but also their feelings.
On a Micro level, well, I am not in a great situation either and a bit worsened by the Macro level as well.
However, it is not really too bad either.
The virus will be contained and life will resume. And I still have a job and there is still hope.
Again, the only easy day was yesterday. No more illusions! Lets Fight!
Till the next time.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Thursday, January 23, 2020
A quick update on life
Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
In this post, I would like to share a quick update on my life.
First of all, I secured, kind of, my next job.
I will work as free lance for a project in China first and hopefully that can lead to a full time job in the consulting company.
I will need to travel a lot and face much more stress, but that is what I was looking for, at lease the second part. So that is ok.
The money is good. However, with China tax and expense I have to incur, I will be quite a bit worse off financially. I guess I will have to live with it and hope that I will eventually be better off in the long-term perspective. That of course depends on how well I can extract value from this experience and improve myself to a point where I will be good enough to make my next leap in my career.
One thing is for sure - the experience is going to be tough and heavy, as I am not the only one paying for it. My family is paying for it as well because my wife has to take care of my two kids, which is already touch with me around, while I am absent and I wont be able to spend as much time with my kids. I just need to always remember that professionally, I need to keep growing; and family wise, I need to make up for lost time as much as I can.
However, that is no reason why this experience cannot be enjoyable as well. With good planning, I can achieve the professional development I seek and at the same time be as present with my family as possible.
I need to keep the right cadence, which is critical. Even though I need to achieve professional development, preferably in a fast manner, I wont be too eager or trying too hard. I have increasingly realized that cadence is important and it is necessary to prove my worth before asking for anything. Keeping learning and being alway vigilant, deeply involved and energetically committed is key. The rest I guess I have it leave to time.
Keeping the cadence will also prevent me from being burnt out, which will help with my presence with my family. I will save enough energy so that I can be fully present with my family when I am with them. Now that I can only spend limited time with my family, I will make sure that the quality makes up as much as possible.
So how do I view this new chapter of my life?
I cannot say that I am looking forward to it. It represents a worse-off reality for me and my family in the short term, both from the financial and quality of life perspective. However, it does bring the opportunity for self-improvement and potentially can prepare me for bigger and greater opportunities in the future. And frankly, I do not have any other options in sight right now.
I will go and make the most of the opportunity.
Secondly, I realized that I needed to care more about people.
I felt quite depressed yesterday, partly because I was not looking forward to the new chapter of my life and partly because of the 300KSGD offer I lost.
My wife was really supportive and encouraging which helped a lot.
In the evening, I was browsing through my old Facebook posts and found a few surprises there. The discovery that really strike me was that how much I cared about my friends in the past.
There was this case where I saw a picture of a friend where he looked sad and I sent him a message asking how he was and whether anything happened. Of course, he replied with a very warm message, not only explaining what happened but also expressed his sincere appreciation for my attention.
Looking back the last few years, I was either busy with feeling superior due to my "success" or busy with feeling the "anxiety" because I always believed that I should have progressed even faster and I was doing what I thought would help. I really did not manage to care much about my friends, even close ones or those who used to be close.
I should start caring about others more. After all, we all live in the network.
That would be the change I will embed in every thing I do in the new chapter of my life.
Thank you for your attention.
Till the next time!
Thank you for coming here.
In this post, I would like to share a quick update on my life.
First of all, I secured, kind of, my next job.
I will work as free lance for a project in China first and hopefully that can lead to a full time job in the consulting company.
I will need to travel a lot and face much more stress, but that is what I was looking for, at lease the second part. So that is ok.
The money is good. However, with China tax and expense I have to incur, I will be quite a bit worse off financially. I guess I will have to live with it and hope that I will eventually be better off in the long-term perspective. That of course depends on how well I can extract value from this experience and improve myself to a point where I will be good enough to make my next leap in my career.
One thing is for sure - the experience is going to be tough and heavy, as I am not the only one paying for it. My family is paying for it as well because my wife has to take care of my two kids, which is already touch with me around, while I am absent and I wont be able to spend as much time with my kids. I just need to always remember that professionally, I need to keep growing; and family wise, I need to make up for lost time as much as I can.
However, that is no reason why this experience cannot be enjoyable as well. With good planning, I can achieve the professional development I seek and at the same time be as present with my family as possible.
I need to keep the right cadence, which is critical. Even though I need to achieve professional development, preferably in a fast manner, I wont be too eager or trying too hard. I have increasingly realized that cadence is important and it is necessary to prove my worth before asking for anything. Keeping learning and being alway vigilant, deeply involved and energetically committed is key. The rest I guess I have it leave to time.
Keeping the cadence will also prevent me from being burnt out, which will help with my presence with my family. I will save enough energy so that I can be fully present with my family when I am with them. Now that I can only spend limited time with my family, I will make sure that the quality makes up as much as possible.
So how do I view this new chapter of my life?
I cannot say that I am looking forward to it. It represents a worse-off reality for me and my family in the short term, both from the financial and quality of life perspective. However, it does bring the opportunity for self-improvement and potentially can prepare me for bigger and greater opportunities in the future. And frankly, I do not have any other options in sight right now.
I will go and make the most of the opportunity.
Secondly, I realized that I needed to care more about people.
I felt quite depressed yesterday, partly because I was not looking forward to the new chapter of my life and partly because of the 300KSGD offer I lost.
My wife was really supportive and encouraging which helped a lot.
In the evening, I was browsing through my old Facebook posts and found a few surprises there. The discovery that really strike me was that how much I cared about my friends in the past.
There was this case where I saw a picture of a friend where he looked sad and I sent him a message asking how he was and whether anything happened. Of course, he replied with a very warm message, not only explaining what happened but also expressed his sincere appreciation for my attention.
Looking back the last few years, I was either busy with feeling superior due to my "success" or busy with feeling the "anxiety" because I always believed that I should have progressed even faster and I was doing what I thought would help. I really did not manage to care much about my friends, even close ones or those who used to be close.
I should start caring about others more. After all, we all live in the network.
That would be the change I will embed in every thing I do in the new chapter of my life.
Thank you for your attention.
Till the next time!
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Basics 02: The tracker tool I built and am using
Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
This is going to be the second post in the "Basics" series. And I am going to introduce the tracker tool I built and has been using to track both of our net-worth and investment portfolio.
Brief introduction to the tool
First, the tool is google sheet based. Why google sheet?
I guess it was mainly because I had not really used google sheet when I started to build this tool and wanted to give it a try, and liked the feature that I could access the tool anywhere on any platform.
If I could choose again, I would probably choose Excel. You can also access Excel anywhere on any platform by saving the file in Google Drive, provided you have the software installed. Furthermore, it has become a pain not being able to use table and some graph features, like having two vertical axis in a chart with common 0 on the horizontal axis, in Google sheet.
Can I convert my tool to excel? Absolutely! And I guess it wont take too much efforts. I am just too lazy to do that.
Second, the tool consists of mainly 5 tabs split into 3 levels, with lower levels being the input for higher-levels:
Why did I build my own tool, instead of using something in the market?
I spent at least 20 hours, probably many more, building and improving the tool. The tool has undergone 2 major evolution since created.
So why did I choose to spend so much effort to build something that may not even work because I could not even score well for Finance in School and never had any experience in that domain? Why didn't I just pick a software or app built by Pros?
Well, I guess it came down to below 4 reasons.
First, I really had a lot of time to kill.
My work at that time was really good. I can spend 2-3 hours each day to complete the work and I can use the rest of the working time to build the tool. I know it may sound too good to be true, even more so if I tell you that it actually pays really well with superb benefits.
I got a bit too free and needed something to fill my time. It eventually led me to quit in face of a missed promotion. And then I screwed up. And now my last day on this job is end of the month and I have not found my next job yet. This experience not only ruined my holiday season, but also may haunt me for a much longer duration. Now I could not help thinking how good it would be if I had just stayed in the job and relaxed. But anyway, life has to go on. I guess that job is not meant for me after all.
Second, I wanted to understand everything.
The options in the market present results in beautiful graphs and different aspects with little-to-no efforts, and I am sure that the results would be correct and according to finance best practices. However, I do not seem to understand some of the explanations. For example, XIRR gives you the return assuming all dividends are reinvested immediately with the same return. What does that mean? I know my dividend is not immediately reinvested. Does this formula still apply to me?
If I build my own tool, I can be sure (almost) that I understand everything about it. My solution to derive a time-weighted annual return is to calculate the weighted average of the time in the market of my portfolio on the transaction level and use the "root" calculation to derive the annualized return.
Well, is my solution more "correct" or "accurate" than XIRR? Is it more resource-efficient? I do not know. Even if it is, would that make a difference in the grand scheme of things? I do not think so. Is it worth the efforts? Well, as I said, I had too much free time to kill.
Third, it is about the actual exchange rate and the actual timing of transactions.
I wanted to use the actual exchange rate incurred on my money when I bought or sold. The options in the market do not seem to support that or at least do not explain explicitly that they do. And often, it is hard to verify what exchange rate they used to derive the results shown to me.
So I built my tool in such a way that the exchange rate is an output to be calculated based on actual money in and actual money out, instead of an input as most tools do.
Similarly, I wanted to record the actual timing (I mean date) of receiving the dividends. The options in the market are able to track the dividend pay-out date. However, due to the broker or bank, I may receive the dividend a bit later. So my tool enables me to track the actual date and actual amount in the currency I want based on the bank transaction record, so that I am able to track both the actual timing and the actual exchange rate.
Again, is this necessary or even useful in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. Again, I was too free.
Fourth, I kind of enjoy updating the tool.
In the process of updating, I pick up details to help explain the changes in the high-level results. And so far at least, I still have the time to do it. If my next job makes me so occupied that I am not able to update the tool monthly or start to feel updating it a drag, I may ditch it for something requiring less work.
Thank you for coming here.
This is going to be the second post in the "Basics" series. And I am going to introduce the tracker tool I built and has been using to track both of our net-worth and investment portfolio.
Brief introduction to the tool
First, the tool is google sheet based. Why google sheet?
I guess it was mainly because I had not really used google sheet when I started to build this tool and wanted to give it a try, and liked the feature that I could access the tool anywhere on any platform.
If I could choose again, I would probably choose Excel. You can also access Excel anywhere on any platform by saving the file in Google Drive, provided you have the software installed. Furthermore, it has become a pain not being able to use table and some graph features, like having two vertical axis in a chart with common 0 on the horizontal axis, in Google sheet.
Can I convert my tool to excel? Absolutely! And I guess it wont take too much efforts. I am just too lazy to do that.
Second, the tool consists of mainly 5 tabs split into 3 levels, with lower levels being the input for higher-levels:
- Top-level: a summary sheet with graphs and necessary numeric values to show the evolution of our net-worth and investment performance against time, on a monthly basis, because I update the next level, which is the input for this sheet, once a month, towards the end of each month.
- Middle-level: two sheets to track our latest net-worth (See Basics 01 for how we calculate our net-worth) and investment portfolio and performance respectively, updated once a month, towards the end of each month. These sheets also include graphs to show certain information, such as split of net-worth, emergency fund status, the performance for each counter etc
- Lowest-level: two transaction-level sheets tracking my buy/sell transactions in the market and dividend respectively, updated as and when each transaction happens. These sheets include high-level sanity check to ensure that model is working properly and also include graphs to track transactions, such as number and value of transactions each month, dividend per month/year etc. If you are wondering why I did not combine these two sheets into one, i.e having one sheet tracking both buy/sell and dividend transactions, you are absolutely right. I would prefer that as well. However, the tool was built that way and again I am too lazy to change it.
Why did I build my own tool, instead of using something in the market?
I spent at least 20 hours, probably many more, building and improving the tool. The tool has undergone 2 major evolution since created.
So why did I choose to spend so much effort to build something that may not even work because I could not even score well for Finance in School and never had any experience in that domain? Why didn't I just pick a software or app built by Pros?
Well, I guess it came down to below 4 reasons.
First, I really had a lot of time to kill.
My work at that time was really good. I can spend 2-3 hours each day to complete the work and I can use the rest of the working time to build the tool. I know it may sound too good to be true, even more so if I tell you that it actually pays really well with superb benefits.
I got a bit too free and needed something to fill my time. It eventually led me to quit in face of a missed promotion. And then I screwed up. And now my last day on this job is end of the month and I have not found my next job yet. This experience not only ruined my holiday season, but also may haunt me for a much longer duration. Now I could not help thinking how good it would be if I had just stayed in the job and relaxed. But anyway, life has to go on. I guess that job is not meant for me after all.
Second, I wanted to understand everything.
The options in the market present results in beautiful graphs and different aspects with little-to-no efforts, and I am sure that the results would be correct and according to finance best practices. However, I do not seem to understand some of the explanations. For example, XIRR gives you the return assuming all dividends are reinvested immediately with the same return. What does that mean? I know my dividend is not immediately reinvested. Does this formula still apply to me?
If I build my own tool, I can be sure (almost) that I understand everything about it. My solution to derive a time-weighted annual return is to calculate the weighted average of the time in the market of my portfolio on the transaction level and use the "root" calculation to derive the annualized return.
Well, is my solution more "correct" or "accurate" than XIRR? Is it more resource-efficient? I do not know. Even if it is, would that make a difference in the grand scheme of things? I do not think so. Is it worth the efforts? Well, as I said, I had too much free time to kill.
Third, it is about the actual exchange rate and the actual timing of transactions.
I wanted to use the actual exchange rate incurred on my money when I bought or sold. The options in the market do not seem to support that or at least do not explain explicitly that they do. And often, it is hard to verify what exchange rate they used to derive the results shown to me.
So I built my tool in such a way that the exchange rate is an output to be calculated based on actual money in and actual money out, instead of an input as most tools do.
Similarly, I wanted to record the actual timing (I mean date) of receiving the dividends. The options in the market are able to track the dividend pay-out date. However, due to the broker or bank, I may receive the dividend a bit later. So my tool enables me to track the actual date and actual amount in the currency I want based on the bank transaction record, so that I am able to track both the actual timing and the actual exchange rate.
Again, is this necessary or even useful in the grand scheme of things? Probably not. Again, I was too free.
Fourth, I kind of enjoy updating the tool.
In the process of updating, I pick up details to help explain the changes in the high-level results. And so far at least, I still have the time to do it. If my next job makes me so occupied that I am not able to update the tool monthly or start to feel updating it a drag, I may ditch it for something requiring less work.
Additions on Feb 01 2020
I am now inclined to advise you, my readers, to build your own template if you can.
I was reading a book about building a template to track your network and the author emphasizes that the key to effective relationship management is to keep using it.
And it just came to me that I had given up on many things that require long term commitment to show impact. However, I have never missed one update for this template. I believe a big reason is that I built this tool and I am committed to keeping using it.
In summary, I will continue to use the tool for now as it gives me a (maybe false) feeling of being in control and being more accurate.
This turns out to be a much longer post than I intended. If you have any questions or wish to understand more about the tool or wish to get a free copy of the tool, leave a comment below. I will be sure to respond as soon as I can.
Till next time!
In summary, I will continue to use the tool for now as it gives me a (maybe false) feeling of being in control and being more accurate.
This turns out to be a much longer post than I intended. If you have any questions or wish to understand more about the tool or wish to get a free copy of the tool, leave a comment below. I will be sure to respond as soon as I can.
Till next time!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)