My 30yo update

This year marks another important milestone - the big 3 is here.

As age catches up, health and fitness feel more and more like an uphill battle. But well, all things considered, I am still fine, and I do what I can despite more aches and slower recoveries. I still love working out though. After all, if the price of keeping healthy feels too much, the price of not doing so is surely greater.

This is also why it's easy for me to draw parallels to my financial health, which is to me a higher priority than my physical health. Only if these two are okay will my mental health be good. I guess.

Slightly less than 4 years ago, I graduated and started working full time, and came up with this retirement planning table of sorts, and currently it's in the 4th year. Of course, things do not always go according to plan and my last 2 years of income entirely went into my resale flat - about 100k cash upfront was needed then. So obviously, my investments stalled.

To be clear, I did not miss out on accounting for my house, but rather the original plan was to get a BTO which would only require $$ much later, but the lottery doesn't favor us.*Shrugs*

Not only that, the Russia war, amongst many things, spiked inflation to ridiculous amounts which was not accounted for, and would probably result in lower purchasing power, but I don't think it's anything too catastrophic in the big picture.

Luckily, I did start accumulating and investing much earlier and with some luck in speculative options, managed to add more to the stash and is somewhat keeping up with the plans.

So far, my investing strategy did not really change - it's very conservative. Maybe too conservative to most people but in this lifelong financial marathon, personal risk tolerance and being able to sleep at night are of utmost importance.

Based on Seedly , I am not even earning the median income of $5070 (where do people even find these jobs man?), so surely this is doable for at least 50%+ of the population. Maybe I am just lazy or not the most capable person, but my take-home pay, after most essential spendings, is able to hit the monthly investment plan of ~$2k. Not great, not terrible.

Here's a rough breakdown of my assets right now, property excluded. Only the 'investments' section counts towards the table calculations, so it's a little behind schedule. I am supposed to hit $100,233 by the end of 2023 and it's currently sitting at $82k. It's already March so things would probably be a little tight. Not the end of the world if I don't hit it though so let's try and see.

I could theoretically shift more 'cash' into investments but it kind of defeats the purpose because that is meant for emergencies and would be spending future money. The latter would remove my margin capabilities to dabble in options which is something I still want to do and is part of an overall diversified investment strategy.

Bonds are well, bonds. They do not do much, nor you can do much with them.

Moving forward, here's very roughly how much I plan to distribute my income. Most I am powerless to decide, but investments are fine. ~400/mth passive income is solely from the dividends of the ~80k worth of stonks above. It's probably closer to $300 right now but I did the calculations assuming 100k worth of stonks so that's about a ~5% yield.

Noticeably, I would start allocating a small portion towards US stonks because they allow option strategies. Of which I would go with a conservative wheel strategy with mostly established companies with solid cashflow and business prospects. If nothing goes wrong, estimated yield is 10-15%. Of course, at such yields, things do go wrong, so I do not bet much here.

A little bit of cash would also be squirreled away for future market crashes, corrections, bear markets, or in similar situations whereby stocks are relatively undervalued.

That's about it, investments are literally as passive and boring as it gets, hence my slow ass updates because I am mostly going to be doing the same thing for a very long time.

If you're constantly emotion-filled, be it euphoric or depressing, actively buying, selling, or always on the lookout for a new thing to buy or dabble in, then you are probably not investing but speculating. Nothing wrong with that but as you can see, it's very different from what I call investing. Also, most people who reached out to me regarding 'investments' have a wildly different expectation that are more like speculations. Unfortunately, reality is often disappointing.

I have no issues sharing my high-risk, speculative plays, but it is not something I would recommend at all.