Dividends Collected 2020

 

2020 passive income including CPF: $98.5k

My passive income for 2020 has dropped back down to a little above my 2018 levels. My hope is that 2021 will see a recovery to 2020 levels, followed by further gains in 2022. Therefore, I am setting a target for Financial Independence by end 2022.

25 Jan Edit - missed out $1.5k of Santander Scrip dividends which were paid on 14 Dec. Added to my total but didn't change the graphs.

LionGlobal All Seasons Fund - Ideal for SRS

 

As the year ends, I helped my family member to deposit SRS funds and use them to buy LionGlobal All Seasons Fund (Growth).  This is a balanced fund comprising 70% equities / 30% fixed income with an expense ratio capped at 0.50% (currently 0.49%).

After looking through the options and eliminating individual stock-picking, I found this to really be an ideal fund. As you can see from my own portfolio, I continue to underweight US stocks so this funds weighting of 22.5% S&P 500 ETF (32.6% when considering only the equities portion) is 'just nice' compared to the 56.8% weight in world ETFs like VWRA.

My sole reservation about this fund is that its fund size is still quite small, despite it being a really attractive fund in terms of expense ration and composition. Perhaps with such a low TER, the trailer fees collected by the unit trust platforms are very low, so there is little incentive to push this fund.

December 2020 Portfolio update

This is my bi-annual review of my portfolio to determine which are my largest holdings. 

Thanks to the Covid-19 "Vaccine" rally and my averaging down strategy, there are 6 new entrants into the "Medium" holdings category. There are also downgrades due to the fall in value of my Comfort Delgro and CDL HT holdings.

Dividends Collected: Nov 2020

 

Not many dividends paid out near the end of the year.

3rd Investment Milestone Reached: Nov 2020

The news reported that Biden's transition will formally begin as markets continue their rally. Yellen as Treasury Secretary is reportedly welcome by Wall Street as being market friendly. As a result, my investment portfolio has hit a new high and I have hit my 3rd investment milestone.

2010 approx: 1st investment milestone reached

Aug 2018    : 2nd investment milestone reached

Nov 2020    : 3rd investment milestone reached

2022 ???     : 4th investment milestone / Financial Independence?

I took a long time to hit my 2nd investment milestone as I was servicing a housing loan.

I am still not ready to declare 'Financial Independence' yet because my dividends collected this year have dropped on a year-on-year basis. Assuming that 2021 is the recovery year where my dividends recover to 2019 levels, I will have to wait for 2022 to grow my dividends more in order to become financially independent.

While there may be different understandings of what Financial Independence means, I prefer the definition in Investment Moats, one of the few local finance bloggers worth reading. He has many good articles about Financial Independence:

However, as one of his articles points out, while passive income > expenses/standard of living, one should always be aware that passive income can drop anytime (just like this year). You can adapt by accepting a lesser standard of living, or you can continue building up your passive income in order to have a 'margin of safety' so that your standard of living is protected.

In case you're wondering, 3M is my shortform for my 3rd investment milestone, just decided to do something like the 3M logo for fun.

 

Property Valuation Part II

Having just posted about receiving a 'personalised' property ad from one agent, I promptly get another one. I guess the novelty is going to wear off soon once everyone starts doing it.

I guess with the advent of technology, APIs, and data mining, more property agents are 'personalising' their property adverts with the valuation of your property. 

Quite clever to be able to write an automated script that prints out the mailing address you are sending the ad to and the corresponding property valuation. Edgeprop gets its data from UrbanZoom while ERA got its data from SRX and their valuations were different. 

Frankly, having a "3" in front of my property valuation seems be bit unrealistic. If real, it means that SG property has yet again outperformed the STI. But fortunately, STI has been staging a mini-rally and I think theres a realistic chance of it going back to 3,000 by the end of 2021.

URA Space upgrade

 I was reading about the upgrade to URA Space  which now reports 5 years' worth of private property transactions.  Five year transaction history is really far more informative than the previous 3 years. 

It appears to be interacting with onemap.sg data so you get to see a map whereas a long time ago it was all text based reporting.

There are property agents that are diligently recording down all this information and perhaps you have even received a mailer from one of them. 

I really feel that property prices, especially Condo prices, are getting a bit ridiculous. Developers try to justify the prices by claiming they have added plenty of luxury extras, but seriously, just give me a grass lawn and shady tree over a marble fountain anytime.