Dividends Collected: August 2026

 

With STI ETF, banks, Comfort Delgro, Capitaland Ascott, paying dividends in August, August is traditionally a peak month for dividends. At about $35k, it was only $2k higher than 2025, so this year is more about slow and steady growth.

UOB Credit Card Waiver Criteria

 

Thanks to milelion for alerting the internet to the UOB Credit card fee waiver criteria. 

If you hold multiple credit cards with UOB, to qualify, you must spend:

S$5,500 on credit card charged w/ Annual Fee, or

S$22,000 across all UOB credit cards, or

S$3,000 in overseas spend across all UOB credit cards

UOB publishes criteria for credit card annual fee waivers - The MileLion

Its good to know that your spending on one UOB card can help you get waiver for other UOB cards. My hotel bookings (either paying on the hotel website or making a reservation where payment is only made at check in) easily hit S$3k a year so that explains why my waiver for my Krisflyer card was successful.

This means that I can apply for another UOB card to use in the occasional months that I hit my $1.2k spending cap on my UOB Visa Signature. I'm currently looking at UOB Preferred Visa. If I read the milelion review correctly, it seems that NTUC Fairprice online or via app payment qualifies for 4mpd, which the UOB VS doesn't have. That's pretty useful as I don't have a 4mpd card for online groceries yet.  

Topped up some SG stocks this week

 Apart from adding to my experimental unit trust portfolio (Amundi MSCI World, Prime USA, and Emerging Markets), I bought Frasers Centrepoint Trust, Frasers Logistics Trust, and Comfort Delgro this week. I have sizeable positions in these 3 counters and plan to hold them for a long time. Once in a while when prices look decent, I buy a little bit more.

Anytime Comfort Delgro goes under $1.30, its worth buying. EV Robo-taxis and buses are inevitable and CDG will be in a strong position to take advantage of this.

DragonPass - Can redeem decent restaurant meal at Changi

 

OCBC Premier customers get 2 lounge visits per year but Dragonpass lounges are very basic and crowded. So for the whole of 2026, I still haven't used up any of my lounge entitlements.

Thanks to Milelion, I learnt that instead of a lounge visit and eating very basic food, I can redeem one of my visit entitlements for a pretty decent meal in Changi Airport. I'm sure most people know this already but I don't frequent travel forums so whatever I learn depends on what Milelion publishes 😅

Full list of Priority Pass & DragonPass restaurants at Changi Airport - The MileLion

I have 2-3 more trips on economy this year so I will definitely give the restaurant redemptions a go.

Even Ben Felix is talking about Health & Fitness

 

Investing in Your Health

Ben Felix, a pretty decent Canadian finfluencer, just released a video on health and fitness. The instant noodle thumbnail brings to mind the FIRE chap featured in the CNA video who had a shelf full of instant noodles. Basically, bad life choices in relation to health and fitness will come back to haunt you later. This is a big risk with the FIRE lifestyle - some may choose to sacrifice health and fitness in their prime years in the hope of retiring a few years earlier. 

Anyway, as you can see from the screenshot, Chronic Stress is the biggest $$$$ factor. There are of course many reasons why this is the case, including the fact that elevated stress= elevated cortisol = elevated visceral fat deposits. See: Chronic stress and impulsive risk-taking predict increases in visceral fat over 18 months - PMC

At 6:30 in the video, he even mentions VO2Max.

Checking my 1-year average Stress level on Garmin, I'm glad that I managed to remain in the low stress range, otherwise I might become stressed about it (haha). Life is variable and as the peaks in the chart shows, sometimes there are period of more stress. Fortunately, the standard deviation is not large (I don't have months where it spiked to 50+ for example). 

Caveat: Your smartwatch can't distinguish between Excitement and Stress. So watching the World Cup could lead to elevated stress readings. But on a 1-year average, these special events would be 'smoothed out'.

Bought back quarter of my sold UA

 

I reported selling some of my UA and taking profit at $7++ last month making a few thousand dollars capital gain.

https://buyaftercrash.blogspot.com/2026/07/took-profit-on-some-under-armour.html

UA price has crashed again and I rebought a quarter of my sold UA at a discount price of $5.53. If it goes lower I don't mind averaging down. I still feel its fundamentally a good stock in a beaten-down sector. Morningstar still gave it a 4-star rating in their latest 8 Aug report, for what its worth...

Is S&P 500 becoming a crowded trade? Buy SREIT instead?

 

I have been rewarded for continuing to buy World and S&P500 ETFs every month as part of my DCA strategy even though valuations are stretched. At the same time, I have contrarian streak and have kept my eye of the beaten down SREITs, occasionally buying a bit here and there this year. 

Long-suffering SREIT investors will know that SREIT prices haven't moved much this year (compared to the S&P). At least that is my experience with my 3 largest REIT holdings, Capland Ascott, FrasersCT and FLCT. While these 3 counters have more or less hit my portfolio concentration limits, I think there is an opportunity to upsize some of my other REIT holdings. I am looking at Capland Int Comm Trust which should be a relatively safe bet, and also Far East Hospitality Trust after some decent results.