2023 Review – How is Miss Niao after 8 years?

2023 marks the 8th year since the birth of this blog, and the first year of life of my baby girl. Life is different when two becomes three. Life seems to be more… colourful. And yet, exhausting – and yet, satisfying – all at the same time. Am I making any sense? Could be the lack of sleep typing out these words… Hahaha…

So how is Miss Niao doing after 8 years of being niao?

For starters, I managed to get the stock portfolio back up to a 6 digit figure. I ended 2023 with an overall XIRR of 7.39%. I’ve slowly gravitated back to the SGX with quite a number of high yielded dividend stocks on hand, though it is worth noting that I didn’t buy them because they were dividend stocks at first. With a long holding power, some of my stocks have returned me 4-6% of dividend yield. It was only during the yearly 2023 review that I’ve realized the total amount of dividends I’ve collected has crossed more than $20,000! What a nice surprise – even considering the fact that I pulled out most of my funds in 2021 to put the downpayment for my first property. So cheers to that!

Net worth wise, I am conflicted on how to display my numbers. On one hand, if I were to just look at assets alone, I have increased the most in terms of quantum. However, I do have an outstanding mortgage which will be spilled out as liabilities on my balance sheet. If I take Assets – Liabilities to get my Net Worth, I am still in the green – for now. In time to come, I hope to be able to continue staying green for the next 4-5 years.

Not only that, I would have cleared the Seller Stamp Duty (SSD) period in 2024, and I can always choose to exit from this property through a sale to get rid of the mortgage and get back the bulk of my capital. The best choice though, would be to continue holding it and collect rental as passive income for a few more years, as calculated from my Excel property calculator which would give me the best ROI.

There are a few benefits for doing so. One, I can use the monthly rental to pay off the monthly installment for the mortgage. I still need to assess the rental yield that I am getting and also the full net-net of the actual return (minus away all the MCST fees, sinking funds, property tax, etc). But until then, I’m assuming that it’s a net positive.

Secondly, I can unlock the liquidity of my OA funds while leaving SA and MA funds untouched. Once my MA has reached BHS and SA has reached FRS, my additional MA funds will start to flow into my OA, which will then allow me to use more of my CPF OA to pay for the monthly mortgage, eventually leaving me with more cash on hand.

This was the supposed plan, but I have stopped topping up my CPF with extra funds. I did use part of my MA for my delivery fees, and they did not come cheap as I had a long and hard labour and had to deliver by emergency C-section which was totally not anticipated for but fortunately LO was well and safe and healthy (thank God for that). Sidetracked – but because I am a working mother so I was almost about to hit the $80,000 yearly tax relief cap and my tax bracket was already brought low enough that topping up my CPF didn’t make good financial sense to “save” more, so I didn’t do it in 2023. Not only that, there’s the Parenthood Rebate which will allow me to not pay any taxes as all if I use it.

So well, no income taxes payable for me for 2023.

Anyway, back to the OA SA MA thingy. Assuming that I do achieve the BHS and FRS and depending on when I’ll achieve that – or should I say, how FAST I want to achieve that, I can use the additional cash on hand to either top up the CPF again for tax relief the next year, or use it for stock investing, or just keep more warchest and emergency funds on hand.

Speaking of emergency funds, I do keep slightly more funds here because I have 1 dependent with me now. Somehow having more money that I can immediately deploy just seems sound and makes me feel more at peace. I’ve been avidly contributing back to the home and things like bills and daily essentials are inevitable expenses, so I have closed 2 eyes and been more liberal with the spending. I want to give credit to my hubs here as well for being very financially supportive as well, and he has been also helping to provide for a substantial share for food expenses, so thank you hubs!

Lastly, both hubs and I have been contributing to our joint account ever since 2-3 years back. I am the one actively managing it and have been buying SSB and short-term super safe bonds with the money. I have more limitations with how I can use this money because it belongs to the family and not me, so I’ll stick to the super safe options until requested otherwise. Let’s see how much the account will grow by next year.

Here’s hoping you had a great financial year in 2023 as well!

Miss Niao xoxo.

How to get FREE shares using Webull

Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase or top-up after clicking a link, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Readers are advised to perform their own due diligence before providing their personal details or signing up for an account.

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If you have any further questions, feel free to DM me @missniao on Telegram. I would be happy to help.

Happy investing/trading!

Miss Niao xoxo

1 Year Onward

Looking back on my last blog post, I decided to finally blog again after a year long hiatus. No, I have not forgotten about this space at all. In fact, it has always been in the back of my mind to blog about my financial journey. It’s just that life got somewhat in the way and I had other more important stuff to do.

Important stuff like, baking a bun in the oven, metaphorically speaking. And also getting a generational life promotion by the end of March. Not sure if any of you caught that word play there. Haha. :p

And it was also because of the above that I had to do some financial decluttering. I mean, here is, after all, where I judge myself the hardest on how I save or spend my money.

Since I have a new little one and a big one to take care of starting from this year – and probably, till the end of my life, I could not save or spend the same way as I could when I started this financial journey.

But before I start on this new, amazing and probably more fulfilling journey, I shall end my current financial journey with this blog post.

Year 2023 marks the 10th year of being in the workforce since I graduated with my degree. Back then, as someone in their early to mid 20s who didn’t have any liabilities and minimal responsibilities, life was different and carefree. I had more energy, and 1000% more motivation to achieve financial freedom since I was already financially independent.

All I kept thinking about was how to get out of the workforce, despite having just started working. I understood the importance of saving, and always remained debt-free. All I kept thinking about was how to earn as much money in the shortest time possible, as save as much as possible to reach FIRE.

So I chose to avoid a few paths in life.

First, it was marriage and having children. But more importantly, finding the right life partner. Well, truth be told, I did have a couple of serious relationships and some were really serious ones. But in the end, things didn’t work out the way both parties wanted them to.

That was fine for me anyway, because it wasn’t just about financial consideration when marriage is of concern, it was a big life decision, and I would not have wanted things to turn out any other way than right now.

The second path was to choose my social circle wisely. Focused more on people whom I loved and cared about. I started to say no to social events, and needless to say, it has really allowed me to free up more time and money for things that I value more in my life. Simple things like having a nice home cooked meal and weekend Mahjong sessions with my parents/grandparents make me much happier than having to spend $50 to attend a dinner gathering with my University peers that end up in a debate on careers/salaries, and majority of the time with not-so-good food.

Also, I have not been using social media like Facebook and Instagram for plenty of years, and even if I do use them, it is to get free stuff or check out some news.

7 Years of Miss Niao

What did I manage to achieve from 2016 to 2022?

1. Grown my monthly full-time income by 2.2 times. If I started with a 2.8k monthly salary, my current salary would be around 6k.
2. Own my very first property.
3. Got into huge long-term debt due to said property, making my net worth negative.
4. Excluding my outstanding mortgage, my net worth has grown by 4.6 times. If I started with a 125k net worth at Age 26, it is now worth 575k at Age 32.
5. Built my portfolio to be able to generate annual passive income of close to 10k in dividends and CPF interest in 2022.
6. Topping up my CPF MA account in 2022 for the first (and only) time for tax relief benefits.
7. Help my brother graduate debt-free from university
8. Maintain approximately the same amount of expenditure every year. All in all, I spend an average of <30k annually for all my fixed and variable expenses.

Still quite far from FIRE, if you ask me.

Moving onwards from 2023

Now that my family has 2 new additions, things are going to change a lot.

One thing that would surely change would be the amount of emergency funds that I can deploy immediately, aka cash on hand. As Hubs and I would have a LO soon, we have started increasing our monthly contributions in our joint account. So far, we have accumulated quite an amount there within the past year, and will continue to contribute to our JA religiously for future expenses.

I never did realize or appreciate that being a couple could have a better impact in wealth creation until now. With 2 people combining finances together, financial goals can be achieved faster than before when I was single. On the other side of the fence, your liabilities are also essentially shared between 2 people. And to be honest, it is much more enjoyable to be saving money when you have more reason to, especially if your partner is aligned with you and you are working together towards a common goal. Teamwork makes dream work!

The other major change would be to increase my mother’s monthly allowance, as she has very kindly offered to help out and be a caregiver to my LO. Because of this, I would not have to hire external help or send my LO to infant care. This arrangement in my opinion is by far the best I could possibly get, because what better caregiver could I ask for other than the woman who has raised me by her own hands? Thank you, Mummy!

Lastly, I would still be actively investing in the stock market with any spare funds that I have. Every bi-annually, I will have an extra chunk of money coming in – 1 from performance bonus and 1 from AWS. When I get these funds, I usually deploy them almost immediately into the stock market. Either adding on to existing positions, or buy a stock that I have been eyeing for some time.

So far, I have still been stock picking and have no allocation to any ETF. Granted, my stock portfolio has been rather inactive for the past 2 years because I have reduced by exposure by more than half and pushed the funds into property equity. However, with rental income expected to start within the next 2 years or so, I would be able to free up more of my monthly cash flow and build up my portfolio to what it was before by 2024, and subsequently also increase my passive income from dividends again.

Thanks for reading!

Miss Niao xoxo.

My In-Depth Thoughts on Property Investing (Part 2) + FREE Calculator

Read Part 1 here.

In the previous post, I mentioned about the 2 main factors that one should consider with monthly cash flow with an investment property. The first was Loan Tenure, followed by Rental Rates/Yield.

The idea is to stretch your tenure to its maximum length that you can minimize your cash outflow. A big bulk of cash outflow is determined by the loan tenure and how huge your actual loan quantum is.

Here are some other factors that the typical property investor must consider before investing in real estate in terms of cash outflow. I may not be able to cover absolutely all costs, but will try to be as comprehensive as I can, especially the more obvious ones.

My In-Depth Thoughts on Property Investing (Part 1)

The basic idea of investing to me means having to use money to make more money. Although the focus of this blog has mainly touched upon stocks thus far, and would probably stay this way forever, I have recently been introduced to the concept of property investing. Yes. it was the Youtube ads that got me. The algorithm is something that I find hard to resist. Just a simple Google search will bring a dozen more that can bring me to far depths of research into a new topic for an internal debate in my mind. The daily property news that gets refreshed on my news feed that says “HDB prices hit record highs of $1.2xxM” or “Interest rates hit all-time low since 2009” recently have also been coming up more. Can you see that it is a vicious cycle? T_T.

I have to admit that I was a tad skeptical about property investing for a really, really long time. I never thought that I would even have this debate. I went digging and I even had an old blog post talking about this where I did a comparison of owning REITs versus the stock market and another one where one of my friends bought a resale HDB for 800k a few years ago. Having read through the blog post and the comments, I still stand quite strongly towards what I have said. Nothing much quite has changed, but I do feel that that blog post deserved a second look. It also made me wonder why are some people very adamant on investing in only 1 asset class.

It does seem more often than not that I would have two groups people with relatively independent thoughts here. A dark, black line is drawn between the question of whether to put your money into stocks or property.

Why not both, then?

Common Property Acronyms in Singapore That You Must Know

Having freshly graduated from the recent RES examinations, I still have all the material cramped up in my mind. Now, I am proud to call myself a fit-and-proper Real Estate Salesperson, or better known as a Real Estate Agent.

Trust me when I say that RES examinations are difficult AF. I don’t even remembering studying that hard for my degree. I even had to retake one of the papers due to lack of time and the amount of material that one has to cover can just be overwhelming. You can be searching, and searching, and searching for the answer of a question that you thought was supposed to be easy, but the end results can leave you appalled at times.

I am glad that I managed to pull through it after the retake, but my heartfelt good-lucks to anyone who is trying to pass them right now.

Anyway, I thought that I would make my blog more useful to people who are studying for the exams. Although many of the information can be found online with a little bit of searching here and there, but there isn’t really a dedicated one for the examination format. This information can also be useful not only to new and upcoming RES, but potential new buyers as well. In fact, I have received feedback from other agents that nowadays, buyers tend to be more well-informed than the agents themselves.

I highly concur, being a buyer myself, I have my own interests at heart and would know what is best for me. Besides, negotiation gets easier as well when I know what I want. It’s a sure way to avoid B.S. offers and would save yourself a hell lot of time.

FY2021 Expenses Review

Gotta quickly finish up this post before CNY officially starts.

Previous Expenses Reviews

Click here for past Expenses Reviews:

FY2020 Expenses Review

FY2019 Expenses Review

FY2018 Expenses Review

FY2017 Expenses Review

Getting down to numbers

My 2021 Review

Hello everyone!

It has been a loooooong while since I came back to this space. Hopefully everyone is doing great in all aspects of their life, if not better, as we enter 2022. As a yearly routine, I would like to pour out my feelings and of course, financial progress in this blog that I have kept for the past 4 years. I even had to make a quick edit to the sidebar because there was a section where my blog mentioned that I was still 28 (I wish, haha).

2021 was the year that I officially turned 31! And I am proud to be in my thirties, for now. I’ll do a TL;DR right now and spare the details for whoever isn’t interested, though it’s not to say that there was anything too interesting to begin with. :p

1. Got very busy with work, professionally.
2. Took the Real Estate Salespersons (RES) examinations, and passed!
3. Bought my very first private property!!!!
4. Had a sub-par time-weighted return of 10.79% in my portfolio, and an XIRR of 27.41%.

Ok, on with the details! If you’re still reading, hurrayyy!

Investing FAQs

In the past month, I had a couple of conversations with some of my friends who wanted to start investing.

Many of them know that I have been buying shares for 4-5 years but I rarely speak of it when we meet up, reason being that I don’t see the point to do so. It is only when they are interested in investing and seek to find answers on what they should do, and that is when I will try to advice them on what I think is the best based on the options available to their situation. Unfortunately, my advice usually falls to deaf ears or rather, I get responses from them that I find rather amusing. I thought I would share with you the typical questions that they will ask and how I will try and answer them with some amusement as well to get my point across.

Hopefully, you may also find my experiences entertaining as well, or could help you if you have similar questions.

Should I buy an ILP?

Quick 2020 Review

Well hello there! I have abandoned this blog for the entire 2020, and I didn’t type a single thing about my finances. It wasn’t that I was busy, but I just made blogging less of a priority in my current time management. I always try to keep myself busy, even with unimportant stuff sometimes. I still log in once in awhile, and scroll through my blog whenever I need some cringe-worthy reads.

I would say that 2020 was a rather fulfilling year, though it could have been better in many aspects of my life.

For one, I have officially crossed 30. There is a strong disparity of how I view things as compared to when I was in my mid-20s. Although it is just a mere 4-5 years apart, but much have changed. I try to be as liberal with my thoughts towards issues and people in general, although it may not be easy sometimes. Maybe it’s because the social circles and friends that I have also progressed into different stages of life. Back then, I could have more people around me wanting to hang out for after-work dinners, plan for short holiday trips, etc. Nowadays, seeing them once a year would be considered a luxury – and probably an escape to some from family duties.

I do still have quite a lot of single friends, which I now hang out more often with due to aforementioned reasons, and I think it is getting more and more common nowadays with people around my age group to stay single, and actually be contented about it. Generations have changed and women are getting more and more independent. In fact it’s not uncommon to know that many of my female friends are earning, or have the potential to earn more than their male spouses.