Sold DBS Shares

Hi Everyone,

I have sold DBS shares today with a profit of more than $180, which is more than a year worth of dividends plus a tiny bit of profit. DBS really gives me hard attack during the month of February when I purchase this stock. The reason is because I bought it at 19.7 and suddenly it drop to 19.2 flat. Which makes me wondering whether my decision of purchasing this stock is really worth it. But I persevere and finally I can see my results :D Which is not a bad one because I gain one year worth of DBS' dividend and a tiny bit of profit like around $12 (Well better than nothing :D).

With that said, I have earned the passive income of around $180++ which I will included this month's calculation. For those who are still holding DBS stock, I hope everyone of you huat ar! I will certainly buy DBS shares again when it drops to 19.xx range. So for now, see ya DBS, I have a nice ride from you :D

Now, my focus will be on OCBC, hope OCBC can hit $11 mark and huat ah!

March Report - Portfolio and Passive Income Result

Hi Everyone,

Today is the last day of March, thus, I will do a consolidation of my activity for this month.As you can see on the dividend's column, you will know that I did not hit my target of $120 for this month. The reason is because I only have AIMSAMP CAP REITs for dividend collection and OCBC interest rate. $23.72 more to hit my target but oh well, have to see month effort on reaching the goal, which is highly possible due to the fact that I will be collecting dividends from ST Engineering, which gives a dividend of $110 in the month of April. Plus OCBC 360 interest rate, I should be able to hit that target.Now I am a bit worried that my company did not cash in my salary to OCBC 360 account on time, which leads me to lose 1% of my interest rate for this month. Hope they can get it done as soon as possible :D

This is my updated portfolio:

OCBC is the latest member on board, welcome OCBC :)

OCBC Bank

Hi Everyone,

After a long period, I decided to go with OCBC Bank which I have bought 300 shares of it. OCBC shares, I will keep it for long term because it has over 3.05% dividend yield (3.3%). The reason why I bought OCBC is because I am currently using OCBC 360 and Frank credit card. So, in the sense that I am it's customers and I hope that OCBC will do well in the future, 

Although I bought at a quite expensive price, but since this is a long term investment, I will average down when necessary so that it will drive up my dividend yield. 

Now currently I have two banks shares (DBS and OCBC) which I am quite proud of because DBS is doing very well and will sell it soon if the time is ripe. The reason why I wanted to sell DBS is because of it's low dividend yield, I would, might as well put it in OCBC 360 or buy other shares with higher dividend yield, like OCBC, to earn my passive income. 

Of course, many people mention that bank shares are for capital gain, but for me, I am looking at both sides of the world. If both dividend yield and capital share increase, it would definitely benefit me a lot. 

Welcome OCBC on board!

Breakeven

Hi Everyone,

Today I have come across an interesting topic in HWZ forum where there is a new investors talking about calculating break-even for a counter.

When he/she asked that question, in my mind, I already had my own way to calculate my break-even point. So I explain to him/her my point of view. 

This is the example that I provided:

[(Current Share Price * Number of Shares) + Dividends collected up till date] - [(avg share price purchased * Number of Shares) + commission (both selling and buying)] = x

If x < 0, it will mean that you are still losing money 

If x = 0, break-even

If x > 0, profited from your investment 

Of course, this is just a standard way to calculate break-even, or let's say explain about break-even.

For me, I take a step more when it comes to calculating break-even point. My personal formula adds a bit of thrill in it  

My formula:

[(Current Share Price * Number of Shares) + Dividends collected up till date] - [(avg share price purchased * Number of Shares) + commission (both selling and buying)+ (number of year invested*dividend per year)] = x

If x < 0, it will mean that you are still losing money 

If x = 0, break-even

If x > 0, profited from your investment 

*I will be doing a round up to the years, for example 1 year 1 month, I will round up to two years worth of dividend

So the final portion is the additional thing that I have take into consideration, which is the dividend * number of year invested.

So why do I do that? The reason is because I want to take into consideration of opportunity cost. For example, if I invested $5000 in Sheng Siong, I will have $5000 less in my OCBC 360 to collect interest or other methods of investment. So in order to make sure that my money stays in a good shape, I will always include one year worth of dividend into my calculation before selling. 

If I can hit the break-even point in just a few months (like 2 to 3 months) I will sell it to lock my profit. I believe this can be done for growing stock and other blue chips which had sudden spike in it. For REITS, I will be putting there for a few years before selling it. 

How about you? How do you calculate your own break-even point?

Temptation of Locking Profits

Hi Everyone,

I believe every investors have felt this way before, the temptation of locking profits. I am just a two months old investors and I already have this feeling of locking profits from DBS share. The reason is because it is going to hit my target price, which will be around one year worth of dividends (from DBS) plus a bit of extra coffee money. 

My criteria of locking profit is simple, if it hits one year worth of dividend, I will locked it. Although other people my disagree with my action because there is a possibility of the share growing even more. However, I am not an expert in reading fundamental analysis and technical analysis, I wouldn't bet on that especially for DBS because DBS really is a roller coaster. I prefer something like a stable stock like Starhub or M1, which is one of the shares that I will go into when I cash out from DBS. 

My eyes are on Starhub or M1 or maybe both depending on the cash flow I have. Then after that wait for a while to see if bank stock will fall back to it's normal state before going in again to earn some profits. (These are just my personal views - do not follow)

Well, lets see tomorrow whether DBS will hit my target price. If yes, there will be a change in my portfolio. If not, then will probably need to wait till next week, or get my dividends first.

How do you measure dividend yield?

Hi Everyone,

I have been wondering how do people calculate their dividend yield because there are two main ways that I have seen people in the hardwarezone forum, in the stock and indices section, calculate the dividend yield. 

There are two main ways that people calculate (of course there might be other ways which I do not have knowledge of). 

The first way is through current price of the share price. 

For example, I buy Stock A price at $1 and the annual dividend is around $0.05, at this point of time, my dividend yield would be 5%

However, few days later, my share that I bought, raise from $1 to $2, based on the current price, my dividend yield now would be 2.5%. 

This is the first way, for the second way, I would use my average cost price to calculate dividend yield. From the above example, if I do not purchase any shares further, I would still have my 5% dividend yield. 

So why are there people use the first method and some people using the second method? The reason is because for using first method, the investors can make a solid decision on whether or not the share provides a good dividend yield as compared to other shares. (Mainly for comparison, especially for investors who are aiming to generate passive income).

As for the second method, it is just mainly for personal tracking of our own dividend yield which ignores the current market price. 

Well, each people has their own way to calculate dividend yield and I do respect that but do remember to check properly when asking people for advice based on dividend yield, because you will need to know how they calculate their dividend yield in the first place :D

Which Telco to purchase?

Hi Everyone,

I have been trying to get into tele-communication stocks which includes Singtel, M1 and Starhub. (Either one) At first, I was thinking of getting Singtel because it is the first telco company in Singapore and with strong backing by various shareholders, I feel pretty safe with this telco but the problem is the share price is quite high as of now. 

The second option is Starhub, the reason is because of its stable dividend payout each year and last but not least, M1, the reason for me to go for this share is basically because of its cheap share price.

The reason why I am thinking of this is because as the price of DBS keeps going up, I would cash it out for profits when it hit my target price. So I would have some cash for investment. Certainly, I can keep it in OCBC 360 to earn interest but that will determine whether I can make decision on which telco to focus on. 

So back to the topic, out of these 3 telco, I am currently looking at Starhub and M1. As Singtel, as I am the current user of Singtel but I dont see any positive outcome when it comes to customer service. I can see a lot of people are jumping from Singtel to other telco. I will do that too when I have complete my contract in June 2015. I am thinking of M1 because of the benefits for its customers (one for one movie ticket on every Sunday).

Maybe I will go with both Starhub and M1 but more focus on M1 because I will be M1 users and people around me are using M1 also. But still in Dilemma.... well, there will be a fw days for me to decide. (Hope I can make a decision by the time I sell DBS)

Well, what are your views on telco? (I understand that I did not even touch on fundamental and technical analysis because I am suck at it. I only go with my own observations and understanding of the company itself.)  

Thank You Mr Lee Kuan Yew

It is sad to hear the news that Mr Lee Kuan Yew had passed away this morning at 3.18am

This is the speech given by our Singapore prime minister.

Post by Channel NewsAsia Singapore.

It is sad to hear that Mr Lee Kuan Yew had passed away because he had given his whole life for building Singapore from the third world country to the first world country that we lived in right now. No words can describe the loss of Mr Lee Kuan Yew because he is irreplaceable but still, rest in peace Mr Lee Kuan Yew and thank you for all the effort in making Singapore the country today. 

Life Hacks Part One!

Hi Everyone!

Today I am going to share two life hacks that you can do in order to save money in Singapore!

The first one is purchasing cold bottle drink in non-cold bottle drink price

As we know, cold drinks are more expensive than those normal drinks that are store in the shelf (by around 15 cents to 20 cents). How how about I tell you a way that you can purchase that cold drink for the price of the normal drinks? 

The method is self-checkout. If you have notice that there are more and more supermarkets like Cold Storage, NTUC and Giants have implemented self-checkout kiosk which enables the shoppers to do their own checkout in order to ease the queue. 

This is where the hack comes in, if you are purchasing, lets say cold 100 Plus which cost lets say $1.25 as compared to the non-cold 100 Plus cost around $1, you would need to pay $1.25 if you purchase it with the cashier. However, you will only need to pay $1, just $1 if you do it at self-checkout kiosk!

If you still suspicious about it, do check it out yourself. (Tested and Proven)

The second one is free entry to Sentosa

Maybe I am WOLS (slow) but if you notice, Sentosa is giving free entry during weekends. I believe this is to encourage people to go to Sentosa to enjoy their weekends. If you have no place to go and have limited budget, do consider Sentosa with its free entry. The free entry does not apply to their monorail, only free walk in.

 

Emergency Funds - How much should we need?

Hi Everyone,

This morning I just read one of the post from Silly Investors about Emergency Funds. I feel that his post is really good for us to understand the important of having enough emergency funds for unexpected situation.

In terms of emergency funds, how much do we really need? For now it is really hard for me to determine which is why most of my funds are in my bank account. Certainly there are people saying that I am still young and should invest more and should take more risk for higher returns. But for me, I personally feel that having at least 50% cash still feels better for me in order to handle unexpected situation. For me, I have bought insurance and my brother also have Aviva insurance and my mum has it as well. So personally, I do feel that I am still quite secure and stable when handling unexpected situations.

As I have just started working and aiming to have at least SGD$100K savings for my flat and wedding, I think I am in a steady progress in growing my savings. I am still thinking about how much should I invest in order to maintain my comfort zone.

What do you think?

Portfolio Slowly Increasing

Hi Everyone,

As I have just do a review on my current portfolio condition, which I have noted them in Google Spreadsheet, I realize that my unrealized loss has drop from -$400++(around there) to now -$43.1. You might be wondering why I have a huge loss in the beginning right? The reason is because I have take into consideration of the commission for both buying and selling (around $40 to $60 - because of Poems 100 lots promotion). So now when I take a look at my portfolio, I am glad that it had drop to 2 digits which is mainly contributed by DBS, with the recent rise from 19.xx range to now $20.xx range. Certainly, I am happy but as you know the market is unpredictable and I really do hope that everything will go well and will go up and up and up and hope DBS will reached my target price before I release this counter (I have plan to use the money for this counter to purchase other counter). 

But still nothing is for sure, as I expect to see DBS to continue raise until it reaches more than $21 (Hopefully it could) by end of this month. Let's see my prediction will come true hahaha.

CPF Information Website

Hi Everyone,

I have just come across a CPF website called Are You Ready! which is a CPF informational website introduce by CPF Board. Pretty interesting as the website stated all the necessary information that you will want to know from how the CPF contribution rates, managing house loan and etc. All information can be found in this website. 

Personally for me, I am interested to know more about CPF because I just started work and also working towards life goal of purchasing a HDB flat in near future. So reading up these information is certainly great for me. 

On top of that, it also have links for tools to calculate your CPF contribution by you and your employees and etc. However, those tools can be found on the main CPF website that you usually do check your CPF balance and etc.

It has links to related agencies websites like if you are checking for the HDB loans, they will have links and recommendation to bring to the specific page for more information.

I personally felt that the website is good in terms of rich information as well as easy navigation as compared to its main website. Usually government website are complex in their user interface due to the reason of huge amount of information that is presented on the website itself. Thus, having such website can allow users to know more about the necessary information that they required and with a simple and clean user interface, it will help the user to get their information easier.

Do check this website out @ https://www.areyouready.sg/ now if you want to learn more about CPF

Conservative or Aggressive

Hi Everyone,

I am been looking through my portfolio management tools by DrWealth (If anyone still does not know what is DrWealth, do check out my previous post http://jyklmoneyblog.blogspot.sg/2015/03/drwealth.html), the analysis that I have gotten is pretty unhealthy in the sense that I have more cash flows than the amount that I have invested in shares. 

As you can see the graph above, that is my overall portfolio that I have currently. more than 70% of my portfolio are cash and only less than 30% of my portfolio are in investment. Certainly, this has indicate that my portfolio health is rather unhealthy but the reason why I have so much cash is because of OCBC 360. Because with OCBC 360, it gives me 3.05% returns every year, which is pretty good as compare to other banks. The risk of this is much much much lower than investing in shares. 

Although 3.05% wont be able to beat the inflation rate but for me, I am quite a conservative person. So I prefer this strategy first until OCBC 360 remove this promotion. After that, then I will focus more in investing in stocks and open other bank account to gain more interest.

Personally, my investment fund wont exceed 45% of my total portfolio because I am a super conservative person and I am still new to shares and investment, it will be wise for me not to go all out if not I will get myself burned!

So how about you? Are you an aggressive or conservative type of investor?

10,000 Views

Hi Everyone,

It's been less than 3 months since I start blogging about my journey in savings and investment and today, it hit 10,000 views which I believe most of it are from my side because of changing the design of the blog and do a review on comment. However, I am still grateful for those who give me suggestion and encourage me to thrive on to reach my goal. 

There are certainly lots of topics that have been going through my mind, especially on purchasing HDB and Wedding budget. I know that I have been talking about this topic but this is really an important goal to me right now. Because after I settle the HDB down payment and wedding, everything will be a smooth ride as my girlfriend will be able to come in and help me in terms of finance as currently, she also have debts for her own property.

Thank you very much for all the readers here. Very much appreciated, I will continue to look out for saving hacks and will share my portfolio as much as possible which hopefully will inspire some newbies to start investing and saving.

10,000 Views!

DrWealth

Hi Everyone,

As yesterday I have posted something on my target that I wanted to achieve before I hit the age of 30 years old (Before 23rd December 2018). The $100K target is excluding CPF because I wanted CPF to be my backup cash when it comes to purchasing HDB. Most likely I will use up all my CPF to purchase my first flat. 

Today I have came across an interesting website/web application which does this kind of tracking which is called Drwealth  which is a portfolio management website which enables individual to keep track of their own portfolio. 

I have started using it today after I saw someone posted something with regards to this website. I like the idea of having such portfolio management website as it can help me to track and how can I manage my portfolio efficiently. 

Although there is one thing that I do not like about which is there is no automation of adding monthly salary and CPF contribution, which means you have to key in manually every month. But I cannot say it is bad because after all this is a free portfolio management tools and for that I give a thumbs up for the function that are available in this web application.

So, for those without any portfolio management tools and seeking for one, why not try out this web application. 

100K Target!

Hi Everyone,

Firstly, just to be clear, I don't have 100K in both my investment and saving account (excluding CPF). The 100K target is my personal target that I hope to achieve before I hit 30 years old. Personally I believe I can do it but I hope to achieve this target earlier due to my commitment for stuff like purchasing HDB, wedding and etc. Thus, it is important for me to make my target clear so that I can move forward and work hard to achieve it :D

Understand that I have started work quite late and earn quite little as compare to my peers (friends who are around the same age as I am) due to their working experience and the degree that they are holding. Nonetheless, I strive myself to spend little and save more so that I can achieve that target that I have set for myself. 

I have added a target bar (at the right side of my blog) to make give myself a better idea on how well I did and this can further motivate me to achieve more.

I will constantly update my progress chart every month or once every two month to see how far I progress. Given with my goal, I am suppose to save $1.4K every month, by doing a simple math, 1.4K * 12 * 3 =  50.4k, which is an achievable target. But I will have to be very strict on myself in order to achieve that goal. 

I will work hard for it and hope everything goes well :D

Credit Card - Spend Earlier or Later?

Hi Everyone!

I have been thinking about how to maximize my savings through credit cards. As many people might think that credit card is just an liability rather than a way to maximize your money. Do not that I am thinking from the point of view of earning interest from OCBC 360. Because if we look at how OCBC 360 calculate interest, they count by daily average, which means they will do this calculation 

(add all the balance for all 30 days / 30 days) to get the average. Simple Math!

So I was thinking how can I make use of this to maximize my interest rate. Thinking of spending earlier or spending later, that is the key to this idea that I have in mind. If you manage to follow my first few post on this blog, you should have know what technique that I have been using to spend the $400 that is required for OCBC 360 requirement - http://jyklmoneyblog.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ocbc-360-credit-card-saving-tips.html. 

So now the problem is spend earlier or later of the month? My answer is earlier of the month, the reason is because lets say if you use the method that I have mentioned, and you receive cash from your friends lets say $300, you can save that money to your OCBC 360 on maybe the 5th of April. This will increase your daily average by 200++ dollar for that particular month. Lets say it increase by $250 by using this method, you can earn extra 62.5 cents for that month. If lets say you can manage to increase the daily average by $500 you will have $1.45 more for that month. That does not not mean you are encourage to spend the credit card on your own but to get the money out of it by pay your friend's meal with your credit card and make them pay you cash. 

On top of that, you can still earn rebates if you spend more! Despite of maximizing out your OCBC 360 account, you can put that amount of money to your other savings account to earn more interest for that month. Certainly, you will have to pay for your credit card bill, but remember, the money that you earn are the interest that you have gained!

Do note that this post does not encourage people to any how spend their credit card on buying their own things but to use creative way to save and earn interest :D good luck!

And also pay your credit card bill on time to prevent any interest being charged as this will create a negative to your saving account

Review on Expenses Manager Application

Hi Everyone,

If you remember that previously I have blog about a android application called "Expenses Manager" which helps to keep track of our daily expenses and the balance that we have based on our monthly salary (Certainly, the users will have to key in these information by themselves). 

I started using this app on Sunday which is the day that I download the application which I have blog about it on the very same day. As I have mentioned previously on the reason why I used this app is because I want to save money for the future of purchasing HDB flat. 

In my previous calculation, I also mentioned that it is quite expensive if my girlfriend and I went ahead to purchase a resale flat as the down payment would be around 100K to 150K depending on the price of a four room flat.

So during this week, I have trained myself to spend less than $10 during the weekday including transport and lunch (since I seldom eat breakfast and I eat dinner at home). If breakfast and dinner is included, $10 will definitely will not be sufficient because traveling alone cost me $4 per day, which eats up 40% of my budget per day. 

However, I have achieve the goal of spending less than $6 for Monday and Wednesday (which is today) buy purchasing a $1.60 bread for my lunch. However, its not the case for Tuesday because of a welcoming dinner, and the total amount I spend for that day is $20.53, that's certainly quite a lot! 

But nonetheless, it is a good start for me, afterall I still need to socialize a bit when I am still young in order to build up my network which will be beneficial for my career in the future and also to meet more new people, especially when they help me out a lot.

So this app is really good at helping me keeping track on my spending and also a way to remind myself not to spend too much. This can also help me to lose weight as well since it stops me from eating too much food and it keeps me healthy!

I will do a spending and saving allocation in my blog soon - under Expenditure and Saving right after I finish writing this blog. 

For this app is a good start for me and there are lots of features that you can play around with. Well, for me I don't really use the other features because my only goal is not to hit $1000 for my spending.

If you have a desire to save money, why not download this app and keep track of your own spending and place a budget limit with this application to remind yourself not to overpsend and save more!

Do you have what it takes to save at least 50% of you net income (after deducting CPF).

Earn well, spend well and save well!

 

Singapore Budget Highlight

Hi Everyone,

This is the parliament highlights - budget special. Do take a look if you haven't watch it. All people, from student to working adults and elderly were taken into consideration for the budget 2015. 

Expense Manager

 Hi Everyone!

As you know I am currently saving for my marriage (Wedding and HDB), my girlfriend and I started to conduct a review on the things that we spend (including food, clothing and etc.). We decide to spend little on stuff like food, instead of going restaurant, we go for hawker center, and for movie, we will watch movie on Sunday because of her M1 (1 for 1 offer) and cheap and fun activity like cycling and etc.

For me, I want to ensure myself that I will only spend $10 on the weekdays (per day) and $20 for weekend. This is to ensure that I can control my budget well and when I do a calculation, with the standard of 20 working days and 4 weekends (8 days), which will gives me a total of $360 for expenses. Entertainment I will spend at most $50 per month and bills which i paid are around $150. Giving my mum $300, this will gives me a total of $860 and round up to $900 + $100 for emergency fund (act as buffer) so the total of $1000.

In order to keep track of my expenses, I have downloaded Expense Manager to ensure that I spend below $1000 for every month so that I can build up my savings to met my goal!.

 

I just downloaded the application today, so I cannot really give any review on this application. I will do a review on this application next week. So do check out for the review!

Aim for HDB - 150K CPF + CASH!

Hi Everyone!

In a recent event, after having discussion with my girlfriend with regards to purchasing an HDB flat, we have face problems with our limited amount of savings that we have. I understand that many people would have mention about going for BTO and with the government grant and HDB loans, it should be affordable for young couples to purchase. However, this is the part where we face the problem, due to certain circumstances, we are unable to go for that as we are not eligible for this options (Not even new flats) because of the investment in private property (Not going to go into that detail). 

We still have around 4 years to get to the target and we do a simple calculation of saving 1k per month (excluding bonus, AWS and salary adjustment), I would have 48K of cash saving. For CPF I would have 40K to 45K which gives me around 90k of available funds to pay for the down payment. As my target would be 150K for the housing down payment, it would be a far far target for me to achieve. On top of that, I did not include the cash that I have used for investment as that portion of the money is my very final line since I hope to generate passive income for the future. However, if necessary, I will take it out from my investment and build it after everything is stable.

For me, I see this as a challenge to aim for this target. So what about my girlfriend? why not include in for the contribution? Yes, certainly I can factor her saving into the payment as well, but I want to try it out myself so that I can use her as a backup after we pay for our HDB. So that we won't be cash tight after we pay for the down payment.

In any case where I am unable to achieve that goal, there are a few options that we are looking at. The first option is to delay one more year, this will enable me or us to earn more money to hit that target. Second option is to change location, find a cheaper HDB in other location - maybe 400K or if lucky we might find a 390K HDB flat. Last option is to lose the investment money by selling the condo off so that we can get the new sale flat from HDB and no need to pay for the 7% stamp duty (which cost $31.5k for a 450K HDB).

Personally the last option is really a bad option because it is the investment project, it will not be great to make a loss for investment. If you have any opinion or suggestion, do comment it. I really appreciate it :D 

OCBC Interest for the month of February

Hi Everyone!

I have just received my OCBC 360 interest for the month of February. It is lower as compared to the month of January because I have invest some of my cash into stocks. So the current passive income that I have for the month of February is $82.13. I would need around $37.87 more to go in order to hit my target. Although it would be hard because my only passive income for this month is from AIMS AMP CAP Industrial Trust which gives me the dividend on $13.85. Well, it's just the beginning of March, so there might be something good happening (I hope) which gives me an additional $24.02 in order to hit my target. 

Well, if I am still unable to achieve my target, then I would need to wait for the month of April to cover for this month and the month of January. The reason is because April will be the dividend payment from ST Engineering in which will gives me $110 of dividends!!! Also, I expect my OCBC interest to hit around $90 which will gives me a total of $200!

I also looking forward to May as well, because I will receive over $140 of dividends and also June as well, because of the inclusion of DBS, my dividend will hit over $110! Slowly inching up to my goal of having passive income of $1440!

Huat ar!