I have been busy with work and travel. So been very tardy with maintaining this blog. It may not make sense to pay the subscription fee if this is just a very infrequently-updated diary with no potential for monetary gains. Anyway, still working on my portfolio. Trimming some positions when the price is right and…
Category: FIRE
Tbills and other investments
Been adding to my portfolio over the past few years. The good thing about Covid is I saved more $ which can be deployed to work harder for me. My equity portfolio is almost $600k. I also have about $200k in Tbills and $160k in SSBs. Another $650k in CPF. All in about $1.6m. Not…
Happy 2023!
Time flies. Another year has passed. Many things to be grateful for. A year of highs (interest rate, inflation, NZ/Aus trip etc) and lows (kanna Covid). 2023 will be a milestone for me personally. I would have worked for 20 years. Wow where did the time go? This will be the year we finally pay…
Am I FI already?
Been tracking my expenses studiously for the past few years. With a kid and inflation, they have been creeping up and amount to about $5k in total, or $60k per year. Of the $60k, mortgage takes up about $14k and income tax about 12k per annum. That’s almost 45% of my annual expenses. When I…
Big houses and nice cars
Met some friends recently. Seems like most of them are very successful. Live in nice, big houses. Drive new, big cars. In contrast, I am driving an almost 6 years old car with a lot of dinks and scratches. No doubt I bought it brand new in 2016 and paid off in full with cash….
Does it get easier?
I started work in September 2003. Achieved my 1st million in liquid net worth (excluding flat and car) in May 2019. That’s almost 16 years. In contrast, the route to $1.5 million took only another 3 years. Based on my projections, I am on target to accumulate $2 million in 2025 and $3 million by…
Interest rates are going up
I was paying $4.50 in interest (1.1%) a day for my mortgage since December 2021. Given the aggressive Fed moves over the past few months, I am not surprised that this good time will not last. I am pleasantly surprised how long it took the bank to increase the interest rate. The new rate of…
Jeff the man
Jeff has achieved FIRE, something many can only dream of. He has done so by building a business over the years and successfully selling it 100% to a third party for an undisclosed significant 7 digit amount. Wow. This is easily 5 – 9 million by my estimate. This is by far the best way…
My mortgage statement for 2021
A quick dive into the numbers, specifically the interest paid. In January 2021, I was paying about $11 a day in interest on a $201k mortgage balance (1.89%). I was paying as much as $14.40 a day back in 2018. The decrease was largely due to the paydown in principle amount. After the lapse in…
Refinancing my mortgage
Every two years or so, I get to refinance my existing mortgage. It is always an exciting time for me as I get to compare the different packages, fixed/floating, tenure, tricks the bank has come up with since the last exercise etc. The banker I deal with always find me a little too enthusiastic. She…