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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The only thing that might set you back from using Webull would be the exposure to the number of markets they have. Right now, they only allow trading on the US and Hong Kong markets, but it’s not a problem for me since my portfolio already only includes stocks from NYSE and HKSE. As for my SGX stocks, I will continue to trade using a local brokerage for easier custodian in my CDP 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

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.

A Dynamic World

Change is the only constant, and the only normal.

How things change within a span of a few months every time when the stock market is concerned. Suddenly, my portfolio has been pushed up a few notches and I am close to breaking even on my paper P/L. In fact, now XIRR and TWR have both crossed and went above the zero line.

The US election probably helped, but I’m not sure for how long more. I found the news regarding the working vaccine rather timely, and thus exuberated the excitement of investors worldwide. A new tax policy could probably be implemented due to the change in reign of the democratic party. I guess we’ll see how things play out in the coming years.

Now, back to the COVID-19 situation. When I go out on the weekends in the streets and malls of Singapore, I don’t see an ounce of fear from anyone. In fact, sometimes it gets so crowded that social distancing is just impossible. How do I stand a metre away from the kan chiong (anxious) auntie that is queuing behind me to get her value deals from the value store? Asking her to take a step back would just ensue a verbal tsunami that would otherwise expose me to more viruses. Any sane person would choose to stay quiet.

It feels as though things are back to normal, pre-COVID levels. In reality, at work, and in the stock market. Places are starting to open up and people have started socializing again. The only exception is that everyone has their faces half covered, and I kinda like having the literal option to hide your emotions sometimes behind the mask. :p

Will the economy return back to normal, as well? My opinion is that it should stay low for a while, for a few years at least for some industries. People will think twice of wanting to buy a new house, a new car, or taking a holiday trip to a nearby place if their incomes have been affected. The hit would real hard to those who still have families to feed. I hope if you are reading this, you are doing fine.

Actually, there were a couple of people who reached out to me during the past few months. During the crash and also after the crash. I have received some messages from people that they have been holding on to huge losses and emotions got into their way of things, and made them some stupid mistakes. Or in some cases, missed opportunities. Sometimes when I get these messages, I don’t know how to respond to them. Of course, I will never want anyone to do badly in the stock market. But to hear such news that happens to people who I may or may not know in real life is just upsetting. I wish I could have done something to help, but unfortunately it is beyond my control.

I haven’t been blogging, and I had to come back to this space to do some mental decluttering from what has been going on in my personal life. And yeah well, it’s the year end and performance appraisals are coming. Recently, I’ve been trying to deal with a difficult colleague at work, and it even lead me to read Sun Tze’s Art of War. Translated version, of course. It is indeed rather thought stimulating, though I would say that some famous parts of it have been reiterated from time to time by people, the application of it is a totally different story.

I have also been taking some time to catch up on shows, and I’ve completed watching Queen’s Gambit. The character of Elizabeth Harmon is impeccably identical to my own. A female wanting to stand out in a male dominated industry. Deep within me, I was always rooting for her and could even find how similar my personalities are to her, just less talented in chess. :p

This year I turn 30. It’s been 3.5 years since I started to take a change in my financial life. I’ll do the final portfolio review for 2020 next month as tradition. Hope that you had a great financial year as well.

Miss Niao.

The Value In You and Me

I don’t know if we’re on the verge of recession. We can’t ever predict such things to happen. Just when the stock market is doing rather well this year (at time of writing, STI ETF time-weighted returns are at 8.32%!), I have also received a few pieces of bad news from a bunch of friends and colleagues.

If you’re in a similar industry with me, then you’ll know about the ongoing retrenchments around a few MNCs in Singapore. So far, I’ve personally known 3 friends who are affected by this this year, and they are only in their early 30s and 40s.