ActiveSG credits for Body Fat check

 

Singaporeans have been given $100 of ActiveSG credits which expire on 31 Dec 2026. If you make a transaction, the credits will be rolled over to 2027. Browsing the things you can spend ActiveSG credits on, I noticed that you could do a Body Composition test with the Inbody 770. As I recently purchased an Omron Body Composition scale, I thought it would be useful to get a reference reading from the Inbody. The procedure is quite simple, just go to the ActiveSG website to signup with Singpass and the $7 is auto-deducted from your ActiveSG credits. You get an A4 printout of your results to take home.

Based on the Inbody report, I have a body fat of 15.9% and correspondingly low visceral fat which is good. Searching the internet for a "good" body fat percentage, the American Council for Exercise chart says that this is within the "fitness" range. For reference, the Omron reports 17.7% so its off by 1.8%, which I guess is an error one can live with for a $125 consumer product.

The DEXA scan, which is a series of low powered X-rays, is the gold standard for body fat analysis but it costs a few hundred dollars, whereas the Inbody scan I don't have to pay any cash. I plan to do it again in 6 months. 

Dividends Collected in 2025 dropped 9.5%

 

My dividends collected dropped in 2025. You win some and you lose some. Fortunately, the amount is still above my 2023 level so 2024 was probably a one off occurrence (maybe some capital return/special dividends skewed the figure, or I'm just bad at math). That leaves me with $19.9k passive income for 2025.

2025 Year in Review

Part I: Investment Returns

2025 was a good year for investors, even better than 2024 which was already pretty good. Even though only SCB and IBKR give me YTD returns, based on some rough estimates, 2025 is the first year I have achieved $1m+ in capital gain from investments. This does not mean that I only picked winners as I have losers like NVO and NKE which are nursing 5-figure losses. Nevertheless, as a value investor I still believe in them so I continue to hold.

For 2025, my IBKR portfolio returned an amazing 29.04% while my Standard Chartered Portfolio gained 20.11%, lagging the STI (Simply Terrible Index). My SCB portfolio holds a lot of SREITs like FLCT and Capland Ascott which underperformed the STI so underperformance this year was expected. Finally, my FSMOne account holds my HK/China ETFs that I have been diligently doing RSP (I couldn't bear to look at the losses so I needed to automate the RSP). The 4 ETFs that I RSP have all exceeded 30% (google finance doesn't add in the dividends). The fact that they all converged is pretty suspicious (window dressing) but I'll take the win.

Part II: Health is Wealth

Every year you will see bloggers in their year-end review post talking about taking care of health. I fully believe in this and I constantly review this. 

So far, everything is good. Most important to me is that I didn't get injured because I took a cautious approach to training. I hope to carefully increase my training volume in 2026.

Even though I am no longer eligible for IPPT, I use the age 39 IPPT standard (which is the last year I did IPPT before MR at age 40) as a benchmark and I can achieve a gold standard on push ups, sit-ups and 2.4km. Additionally, I can still achieve the gold standard chin-up of minimum 12 (chin-ups were part of IPPT when I did my BMT).

In terms of areas of improvement, my Total Cholesterol is borderline in the 190-195 range, though APO-B is all clear. 

Part III: Other Financial Milestones

In 2025 I applied for my second credit card, the UOB Krisflyer Credit Card. (Ignoring credit cards with lifetime fee waiver that were given to me which I don't use but keep in case of emergencies - the OCBC Frank card and OCBC Visa Infinite).

As I am travelling more, I finally decided to be more deliberate in my spending so that I can get some miles to redeem for flights. 2025 was also the year of credit card nerfs, so careful attention to credit card caps is needed more than ever.

Despite the fact that I talk about SQ business class flights, in 2025, I only went on one business class flight as I had only one trip that was >7 hours. All the other trips I took, mainly to Japan, were shorter than that and I didn't see the point of business class, especially since Krisflyer Elite Gold gave me priority check-in and security clearance and lounge access at Japanese airports. I have let my KFEG expire but I should requalify in 2026 as I plan to take more than 1 business class flight next year.

Part IV: Looking Ahead

I have no idea what to expect in 2026. I thought 2025 would be a solid single digit gain and was surprised by what happened. I planned to stay invested and to continue to invest cautiously in 2026. Happy New Year!

December Strategy: Capitaland

In December, I decided to do one last flurry of REIT/Property counter buying this year and bought more Capland Ascott HMN, Frasers Logistics BUOU, Capitaland Integrated C38U, and Capitaland 9CI.  

HMN is a large holding and BUOU / C38U are medium sized holding so I continue to increase my position. Capitaland 9CI still has not reached medium size yet. Under my current strategy, I should either accumulate or look at getting rid of it. I decided to accumulate. 

With the latest Fed interest rate cut and the inevitably replacement of Powell with a Fed Chairman that will likely lower interest rates further, REITs should benefit. Even if we don't see huge capital gains, the lower borrowing costs should hopefully result in more dividends.

One property counter that I will be getting rid of in 2026 is Frasers Property. I don't have a large position and have lost some money on it. However, the position is small so it fortunately doesn't hurt that much to exit. 

Stanchart Priority Private

 

I received a 0.15% brokerage comms promotion from SCB earlier this year which was valid till the end of the year. Recently, I received an invite from SCB to sign up for Priority Private in order to extend this promotional rate for another year. As the stock market has been kind to my  portfolio, I had enough to qualify.

While some of the benefits depend on holding the requisite SCB credit card (unfortunately Milelion doesn't rate their cards highly and I agree they are not the best), the brokerage comms and the airport transfers do not require an SCB card. The transfers are limited to 2 per quarter, which is fine. Since I stay in the West, that's an approximate savings of $30 per trip. Had the opportunity to book a transfer, got a premium MPV instead of S-class but still more comfortable than a Prius.

In summary, I think SCB Priority comes with real benefits (online trading no min comms + lower comms), and if your online trading is successful, you get even more benefits without ever needing to buy overpriced investment products from your RM.

Allianz Income & Growth

 

As my portfolio grows larger, I am always on a lookout for products that can improve risk-adjusted returns or provide diversification. Previously, I have looked at the 2 popular FSMOne income funds PIMCO and Allianz and did not find them to be compelling choices. 

Kyith just did a detailed writeup on Allianz on Investmentmoats and I thought I would give my simple thoughts.

The table above compares Lion Global All Seasons Standard (70% fixed income, 30% equities) against PIMCO and Allianz Income funds. The thing that stands out about Allianz is that its absolute return looks pretty good. Lion Global wins with the YTD/1yr returns but Allianz is narrowly ahead on 3 and 5 years despite its expense ratio. PIMCO is hopeless.

So Allianz looks attractive since it generates its profits by investing in securities that are not equities and thus there is a possible diversification advantage. However,the price you pay is huge annualised volatility, which means that your returns could be very different depending on when you invest. 

Finally, Allianz Income & Growth had a complete change of fund managers in 2022 with their superstar Douglas Forsyth 'retiring' so there was no guarantee that they would continue to perform.

Based on the 3 year return of Allianz, the new managers appear to be ok. There was one time FSMOne came up with a new recommended Europe fund based on the stellar track record. However, FSMOne didn't consider the fact that the fund manager was leaving. The next year, the fund did so badly that FSMOne pulled it from their recommended list after just one year. So in some cases, fund managers do matter.

Overall, Allianz Income does look a lot more attractive than PIMCO but it is not at all clear that it is clearly better than a low cost vanilla balanced fund like Lion Global All Seasons Standard.

Health is Wealth: Bought myself an Omron Scale

 

I am someone who likes looking at data, I use the data generated by Garmin to help me in trying to improve my VO2Max and endurance. I also have an Omron Blood Pressure Monitor/ ECG HEM-7530T (the blood pressure monitor function is more important than the ECG but I thought, why not just get the one with the extra ECG feature as well).

At the recent 12-12 sale, Omron's full body composition weighing scale HBF-702T was on sale at $125 (I've not seen it lower than $150 before), so I decided to buy myself a present.

The HBF-702T supposedly gives you a lot of info such as Body Fat, Segmental Subcutaneous Fat and Visceral Fat. As it uses 4 electrodes instead of 2, it is slightly more accurate. It is certainly not accurate for single measurement use, but if one is disciplined enough to do a weigh-in every morning, weekly average trends are probably useful. The Omron App syncs with both devices so I have BP and weight/fat history stored together which is handy.