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.