An actual 'benefit' to Premier Banking

 I had previously mentioned OCBC Premier's lack of benefits but I just got this in the mail. Its only 2 visits a year but its free so I should be appreciative. My total spend on my OCBC Premier Banking Visa Infinite is $0 so its nice they still gave this to me. Lucky I have lifetime fee waiver for the card.

While I am still on Stanchart Priority Banking, I don't have Priority Pass. I cancelled my Stanchart Visa Infinite because there is no lifetime fee waiver. Previously I could easily waive the fees every year because I was using the card for petrol, but now I no longer need to buy petrol so my card spend will be $0 and SCB is unlikely to waive for $0 spend.

That leaves UOB Privilege Banking with no lounge access I think. However, milelion.com rates the UOB Visa Signature card very highly for "mpd" (miles per dollar) so no harm keeping my UOB card.

Strategy: Jan 2024

The market has sort of moved sideways in the first 2 weeks of January with a slight downward bias. Its a good time to continue regular DCA of ETFs and I have done so.

I decided to add more Vodafone to my holdings while at the same time knowing its a risky bet. My Vodafone holdings are in the red as the price have really crashed. I suspect that companies with high debt when interest rates are rising fell out of favour with investors. It works the other way as Comfort Delgro, with its nett cash balance, has performed admirably.

At the same time, steps have been taken to lower Vodafone's debt pile and dividends are still flowing (and covered by revenue). I think the upside is more than the downside, especially with rate hike pauses and even cuts on the way (I'm not betting on the latter but the former is pretty certain).

China is highly uncertain, but since I have an overweight exposure to China/HK and I'm doing small FSMOne RSP each month, I am not making any big moves to change my China/HK exposure.

However, I should still stick to my resolution to mainly DCA World ETFs. It is getting harder to do so with the US (being 50%+ of World Indices) outperforming UK, Europe, Australia, China (i.e. almost everyone else) in 2023. But history has told us not to write off the US, so I will definitely still be buying, but perhaps not as aggressively as I did in 2023 when prices were still pretty ok. 

Reflections on $15k passive income

 Passive income is quite literally money that appears in your account automatically. You don't have to do anything for the money to appear. While there are many different strategies and ways to Financial Independence, I consider myself financially independent when passive income > current standard of living.  

To me, this is an easy to understand idea which is one reason why I have adopted it. There are small details such as whether there needs to be a margin of safety (my view is that only lean FIRE might require such a margin, other forms of FIRE have discretionary expenditure such as holidays that can be cut in years when passive income is reduced). 

In 2023, I was fortunate to receive $15k passive income. Furthermore, the increase in my passive income was higher than inflation so that is one issue sorted out. While a lot of people talk about lifestyle inflation, I did not feel the urge to 'inflate' my lifestyle further. Instead I hope to continue to reinvest any extra free cash flow in order to generate more passive income.

My 2024 target will be to grow my passive income by 15%. The reason for a more modest target is that I have been putting a fair bit of money into fixed income including T-bills, where the S$ yield is in the modest 3-4% range. I will be getting the 'interest' on these investments in 2024, and obviously the return (and risk) will not be as high as equities.