List of Monthly Investments through Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA)

These are my monthly DCA commitments for now: 

Robos

S$500 Cash - Syfe Reit+ (100 REIT)
S$500 Cash - Stashaway Risk Index 22%
S$1,115 CPF OA - Endowus on 60/40 'Measured Portfolio'
S$1,000 SRS - Nikko AM STI ETF, OCBC Blue Chip Investment Plan (BCIP)

In Dec 2020, I set up my SRS and transferred $12k into it for tax savings and to seriously kickstart my retirement savings. Out of this 12k, a lump sum of $6.5k was channelled into another Stashaway portfolio with 22% risk index. To balance out the risks, the remaining amount in my SRS will be DCA-ed monthly in $1k portions to invest in the STI ETF. I will reassess the returns in a couple of months to see how well this works. 

Stocks

USD $2,000 (approx) - TSLA 
USD $1,500 (approx) - AAPL

I am in a portfolio building phase and have set aside a 'war chest' of around S$60k cash to be deployed over the next few months whenever good opportunities arise, but for now I will be committing to DCA monthly into the above 2 stocks in 2021, which I feel most confident about. 

Bitcoin

S$500 - Coinhako 

It has come to the stage where it is impossible to ignore Bitcoin! Anyway, am thinking of changing platforms to Binance later on since I've read some reviews it is more "secure" and the rates could be better. Until I have time to do a proper comparison, will stick to Coinhako for now.  

Others

$500 - Aviva MoneySmart - Ladies Investment-Linked Policy (ILP) 

Unfortunately back in 2008, I signed up for this ILP with a policy term of 15 years and have been religiously paying $500 a month from the past 12 years 😒It's a pretty horrible investment, and I am still working out whether it is worth to continue paying for the next 3 years or surrender it. 

I am actually committing a large portion of my monthly salary for the above investments... trying to reduce my spending as much as possible so I have more to invest 💪

It's almost midweek.... may the weekend come soon!! 

Foray into CPFIS and Endowus

It's been raining in Singapore for 3 consecutive days... brr.... 

As mentioned in the previous post, I'm looking to maximise my CPF interest returns and have decided to do so by: 

1. Topping up my CPF-SA with $7,000 yearly up to the Full Retirement Sum (FRS), although the FRS is going to be like a moving target! Bonus is that I'd get $7k in tax relief for FY2021 too and transferring in January each year will ensure the maximum interest to compound during the year.
2. Investing $10,000 lump sum + $1,000 monthly from CPF-OA via Endowus. The main reason why I wouldn't invest more than this is because a guaranteed 2.5% with zero risk is hard to beat and I am concerned about taking too much risk in the current bear market... 

On point 2 above, I've considered just transferring $10k+ from OA to SA to earn 4% interest (like how I did a lump sum last year) but this action is irreversible, and I want to have a cushy buffer in my OA just in case I need the funds for housing in the next 3-5 years.   

Signing up for the CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS) and Endowus was easy enough. 

Steps to take:

1. Complete CPF's Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) here. You'd need to log in via your SingPass. 
2. Go to your bank (DBS, OCBC or UOB) to apply for a CPF Investment Account (CPFIA). Note that if you don't complete Step 1 above, the bank may not approve your CPFIA application. I'm using OCBC and it took me just 5 minutes to apply for a CPFIA via ibanking. 
3. Sign up with Endowus and fill up your risk profile. Once signed up, they'll send you a couple of helpful emails with instructions on how to link your CPFIA with Endowus via the CPF website (once your CPFIA is ready). 
4. If like me you don't fulfil the criteria set out in Endowus' Client Knowledge Assessment, you'll be made to take an e-learning course and assessment here and upload the completion certificate - gah troublesome😶, but I'll take it as a learning opportunity. 

Last month, I've also created a Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) account in a bid to reduce my taxable income + for retirement planning - will blog about this another time. 

Enjoy this long weekend while it lasts!! 

Starting 2021 with $4,638.85 in CPF interest

The CPF website was laggy all day on New Year's Day lol. 

Guess everyone was curious about how much interest they've earned on their CPF balances from FY2020! 

This is actually the first time I logged in to check. I couldn't be bothered to check in previous years. I'm a changed person now haha. 

Transferred $30,000 from my OA to SA in May 2020, as I felt confident I didn't need that amount to pay for any immediate housing commitments, and this generated better interest at 4%. However on hindsight, I should have transferred more to SA, as it didn't make sense for extra money to be sitting idle in the OA at only a 2.5% interest rate.  

But $4,638.85 in total... not TOO bad, seeing how my CPF interest for FY2019 was only $3393.54. 

Hope to get better returns this year, and therefore I'm looking into investing my 'extra' CPF OA monies (above the $20k minimum). Most likely through Endowus, which is currently the only robo-advisor that is allowed for CPF-OA monies. 

Will update on how this goes!