Singaporean Talks Money

Saturday, 24 September 2022

4 tips I have learned on how to manage my finances & when I started investing

Everyone starts from somewhere in terms of your financial journey. Of course, if you can start early and start doing things “right”, it gives you an edge and the good habits compound. Through my financial journey since 2017, I have read numerous articles and I think the below 4 tips can help many people in managing their money.

Budget and track your expenses or at least, be aware of your spending habits

It’s important to know your expenses and how exactly your money is being used when your salary comes in. Tracking your expenses might not be easy and to be honest, I don’t track my expenses but I make sure at the end of my credit card billing cycle, I am aware how much I have spent, whether I have overspend on that month and if so, which was my highest spending category.

Having a budget helps as well and working to stay within the budget will allow your savings and amount to invest be standardised monthly. Of course, the first few months when you get your pay, you need to try out different budget amount to see which fits you and once it is finalised, make sure to stick to it.

Keep yourself updated on financial information and news

You don’t have to really keep yourself so updated on financial news but know what is happening in the big picture to prep yourself if there is going to be fluctuations in your portfolio. Just like how you want to know what’s happening in the world, it is also important to know the companies in your portfolio or at least what the macro-environment is like if you are buying into index ETFs.

More importantly, know the products your money is in. If you have a REITs portfolio, know the instrument that you are using to invest (eg. brokerage) whether it is custodian and how safe your assets are also, know what REITs are in the portfolio or what individual REITs you want.

Of course, if you want to do automated and passive ETF investing, at least understand the ETFs or investment products so that if there is any big news, you would be aware. It is also important to check or rebalance your portfolio. Although there are also times when not checking your portfolio or not being updated can be a blessing in disguise, it is good to be updated and also to know the financial agents who help handle your investments to make sure they are doing well.

Knowing your risk appetite

This is important to ensure you are not making yourself anxious based on the investments that you are making. Also, knowing your risk appetite can adjust your portfolio accordingly or contributions and funds being put aside.

For example, if you are a low risk person, you can allocate a portion to the stock market and add bonds into your portfolio to ensure that it does not fluctuate too much. Being low risk might mean no or a very minimal position in cryptocurrencies in your portfolio judging by how volatile it is. As long as it makes you sleep soundly in the night then I think it should be done that way even if in the long run, your returns are not as huge.

Or you can adjust your risk based on your age and allocate your funds accordingly making sure that you have sufficient emergency funds so that you will have something to fall back on in times of difficulties. After the UST/LUNA crash, I re-looked at my risk appetite and realised that I have been allocating way too much to cryptocurrencies. I am glad I did not cash out my stock holdings to move to crypto completely and instead will lower the allocation to crypto and increase my DCA-ing to ETFs.

These are things that you might learn along the way and it is normal to make mistakes as I find that I know more about myself and also reinforces why I wanted to start investing. It is really in times of difficulty and volatility that you learn how you feel and react for example the current down time is really a testing period and it provides a great opportunity to see your character and how you respond to it.

Start investing, automate until you have a substantial portfolio/cash holdings

Lastly, you have to take the first step and get started. You can read up lots and research but you have to get started as they always say time in the market beats timing the market. I would say it is a lot easier creating a brokerage account and setting your automated buys compared to the past where paperwork could take up to weeks before you can get your account.

Of course, seemingly easy and convenient, there might still be inertia to get started and you need to overcome it. For me, one of the best tips is to automate my investments as I found that helped me the most in building it up, the first few months might seem slow depending on the amount you have set. But over time, it will build up. It kinda is a set and “forget” method, if you also like to have some active investments into individual companies, you can set aside money and buy in whenever you think is a good time.

Until I build a substantial portfolio, I will still be automating a portion to ensure that I am investing periodically whether it’s a downward or upward market. This of course, is done as long as I hold a job as we can see now that many people are predicting a recession and huge layoffs but I am still buying in monthly.

Extra point: Build up your wealth buckets starting from your emergency funds + payments bucket before moving onto investments then dreams bucket

InvestmentMoat released an article titled, “A Three-Bucket Financial Framework for Extremely High Earning People (and other Valuable Money Advice)” which explained how a financial advisor helped athletes (big names) to manage their money as we know they can earn enormous sums if they were to become popular and a important asset to the sport/team.

Do go over and give it a read, I think it is a really useful article no matter where you are at. It emphasised the need for a base before reaching out to exciting stuff that you want or have in mind. Or if you have the base ready and you have limited time, maybe you should also focus on the dreams bucket to make sure you have no regrets, of course, this differs among individuals.

Health is wealth but wealth can add experiences to your life

Finances is important as it provides a way for us to enjoy life as well as to live depending on what your budget is and what you have available. However, there are definitely other things in life than your finances like health and experiences.

Having a cushion/buffer of money can improve our mental state or even the way we think as more options might be available for us. That is what we are aiming for when we manage our finances and build it up, whether it is to help us in case of any emergencies or to help us achieve our dreams, having money to be able to do all that is very helpful.

Experiences like travelling and signing up for classes you are interested in can add joy to your life. Managing finances is a great first step in your life and getting started early helps, as the effects compound over the years.

You can also find me on

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Saturday, 17 September 2022

Inflation seems to stay and countries wants closer & more stable supply sources | Leaders are important and foresight is crucial

In the National Day Rally, cost of living and the economic conditions were talking topics as Mr Lee talked about how the various events happening have caused inflation at a rapid pace and there is nothing much we can do. Countries will prioritise having a more reliable source and this could cost more as they might not look for the cheapest but for something that is more resilience and self-sufficiency is important.

This part really struck me:

The basic reality is that international economic conditions have fundamentally changed. It is not just the pandemic or the war in Ukraine. The recent decades were an exceptional period. Globalisation was in full swing; international trade grew rapidly; China’s economy was growing exponentially, and exporting more and more goods at highly competitive prices all over the world – this brought down the cost of many products, and kept prices world-wide very stable. This era is now over. China’s growth and exports are slowing. Their costs are going up.

No more cheap products

Outsourcing manufacturing to affordable countries that can do mass production at a fast rate was the way to go in previous years as we saw China become the factory of the world, made in China became plastered on almost every product as they were able to provide the best prices for consumers as well as companies.

However in recent times, as the Chinese government sticks to it’s Covid Zero policy, it is affecting factories that have set up their plant in China as numerous lockdowns and strict policy have caused delays and no one can anticipate what and when the next lockdown is.

Countries are now moving their productions to places that provide more reliability for example, Apple will be moving some of the China’s factory production for iPad to Vietnam due to the supply chain disruptions.

High tensions

We can also see countries starting to pay more attention to their supply needs and stopping exports whenever needed for price controls or supply issues. We definitely felt this when chicken supply from Malaysia was stopped and of course other countries like India imposed some limits on exports of sugar for some time.

Country leaders are important and foresight is crucial

We have seen many country leaders fail to do their responsibilities or even to listen to the people. I think it’s been a very tough period for all and with problems building up, gas and fuel prices, supply of food and extreme weathers, people have been wanting their government to do something on a higher level to help.

We have seen what happened in Sri Lanka as fuel prices went up crazily and the currency depreciated. Most recently, Pakistan is facing damaging floods and rebuilding will take a lot of time and effort. Future planning and having the foresight to anticipate challenges is very important for country leaders. As Singapore has a new leader coming on with new blood in the main team, it is very important to make sure our leaders understand the world situation and how Singapore can continue to flourish especially so in tough times.

Past methods might no longer work and I guess even for citizens like us, the future we will face personally will be different so lots of exciting and scary things to see. We are almost done with Q3 2022 and 2023 will come in the blink of an eye, wishing that all is well and that the world can get through the tough times ahead.

References: https://www.pmo.gov.sg/Newsroom/National-Day-Rally-2022-English

https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/ndr-2022-global-inflation-productivity-1974131