Simple ways to save money

Am writing this post to share some of the ways I have adopted to help me saving 45% of my salary

Every month

• Automatic transfer of fixed amount (45%) to my saving account

Every day

• Loose change - I will empty my purse of any loose change first thing in the morning when I reach office into a container which holds all my coins
• $5 dollar note - Whenever I get a $5 dollar note, I will try to not spend it and then when I reach home, I will place my $5 dollar note into a container that holds my $5 dollar notes (so far I have already saved 350++)

There are months where I can't hit my target because of the holiday expenses etc. I will not beat myself over this because it is expected.

Online shopping again

This week was a short week as my department had teambuilding on Friday. Friday was Black Friday and coming Monday, Cyber Monday.

I was able to hold off my online shopping for Fri, but i bought 7 tee-shirts on Sat, another damage of 71 bucks done.

Though at that time, I knew that I should stop but once again, the irrational side of me won. I excused myself saying that my tees were not appropriate for work, and previously I bought 4 pair of jeans. There was difficulty finding a tee that I can wear to work.

So once again, I gave in.

This morning, I did another online shopping, this round for dog food. So this is a necessity, my dog wet food supplies are low.

Christmas is an exact 25 days from today. For the past years, I have been giving xmas gifts to all my colleagues. But as I search around, I couldn't find an useful gift. So this year, I decided not to give anything.

Coming week is another short week as I will be on a 2-day course. for first 3 days, I will be going for my fightzone session with my colleague.


7 December 2019 (Saturday)
Another week has just passed. I have not bought any things online although there was a lot of promotions especially yesterday.

I have practised that if I bought something online, I will transfer the same amount that I have spent to my saving accounts (I have this account whereby I transferred a fixed amount to it on my payday every month). I put it into practice when I spent 71 bucks last week. Since then, I didn't make any online purchase.

The week had been an uphill one. Received news that the year end bonus was going to real bad and it was. Luckily for me, I did not spend alot because I always assumed I would get 0 year end bonus. And I also did not plan to buy any xmas gift this but as of now, I am thinking to buy a $10 dollar vouchers.

Throughout the week, what kept me going was my fight zone. It was the only thing to look forward to everyday. I have a colleague who is as crazy as me over it. We have been doing it 3x a week for the past 3 weeks.

In another 3 weeks, I will relook and review my finances. I would have accumulated around 24k savings. The year 2020 is going to be a recession year, the stock prices will be hit. I am monitoring the situation. If the price is right, I will jump in. So far, the stock prices have held on.

Youtube video on nice and grand houses

For the past few weeks, whenever I have free time whether in the mornings before I head off to work, or whenever I am on my commute to work, I would browse Youtube videos on condo, landed or hdb that showcase nice looking houses for sale.

Everyone has an ideal dream house, so do I. For me, my dream house is Interlace Condo (the 4,000 to 5,000 sqft ones). I like big spaces mainly because my grandfather's house (in Muar) was a huge bungalow. I still remembered the living room (it was easily 3000 sqft).

So whenever I got time, I would kapo abit and see what are the units for sale at Interlace condo. But recently I got a change of heart. As I look at the youtube videos showing the nice houses, I realised that given my lazy personality, my lifestyle (I am the kind that would just laze on the sofa after coming back from work), it wouldn't make any sense for me to get a nice big house and then spent tons of time in keeping it pristine.

My current HDB is 1356 sqft and I feel tired having to mop the floor 4 times a week. Sometimes I would wish all my furniture just vanish, so I wouldn't have to wipe the dust.

Imagine if I have a 5,000 sqft house, the cleaning and upkeeping is going to take up all my time. This is a nightmare! I wouldn't want to be a slave to my house (my house should be my slave).

I came to appreciate my house more. It is functional, and able to accommodate me. I have spaces to do my exercises.

Though my location is abit far from the central area, I feel consoled when I talked to colleagues who also took 45 mins to go to work (I am not alone :)).

Trying out this new habit

Recently I was reading online how to curb my shopping spree.

One of the ways was to save an equal amount of dollar for every dollar spent.

As usual, I was in a shopping mood today. Went to buy 2 yoga exercise pants that costs me 81 bucks. 

I just transferred 81 from my account to my other saving account. Not sure how this pan out.

Sign up for muay thai gym

I am really not a gym person as in, I have heard people such as some of my colleagues whi have joined a gym,, but seldom used it.

But yesterday i decided to try a free-trial for fight zone which opened in my office. A very enthu colleague and me went for the trial, there was a total of 9 stations and every day they are different.

Although i was very put off by the price 169 per month for 6 months, I actually enjoyed the stations. Some were hard.

So I decided to sign up for 6 months because of it is not effective, I will stop after that.

My current weight 64.5, 30.8% body fat. I shall monitor this again on month basis.

11.11.19 mega sales

I felt guilty as I write this post. For the past few days, I had been thinking about my online window shopping experience.

As indicated in my earlier post, it seems that I am getting addicted to online shopping.

In month of Oct, I made approx 180 purchase of clothes through zalora. Then 2 weeks later, I spent 100 on 2 books.

The root of this is the stress and anxiety I felt from my work. I want to escape from them, and in doing so I immersed myself in shopping...

I will not make any purchase for myself for the next 2 months. This cannot persist.

How to save money

I recently started to ponder about how I came to saving what I am now.

Rewind back to 2013, this was the year that I decided to move out of my home and rent a place with my bf then.

We were looking at renting a whole flat, and came across one in Teban, near my family home. The rent of 1500 covered 1 living and 2 rooms. 

We signed an agreement to rent for one year. In the end we stayed for two years.

During this time, we also bought a 2nd hand car. It was a Proton wira car.

During this period, I couldn't save much because I was paying around 2k for the rent and car.

When we got married, we bought our hdb in 2016 and also changed our wira to a toyota altis car. Because we could pay the housing loan instalment using cpf, this was when I finally could start to save more.

Now I could save about 45% of my take-home pay. 

I beg to differ with people who advised to sell their place and rent one. Renting takes cash from your pocket whereas buying takes cpf from your pcoket.

To me, cash is king. Cpf can't feed me (cos I am just in my mid 30s) if I lost my job now. Cash can.

So to people who aren't saving alot already, I wouldn't suggest renting a place which takes more cash from you.

job

I think with the impending recession, I should be happy that I have a job. Even though it is not the perfect job, I can still pay my bills because of it. 

In my earlier posts, I wrote about thoughts of quitting my job. But I couldn't because I should not leave without securing a job. 

Everytime I thought of the next job  or my dream job, I can't think of any reason why any employer would employ me. Firstly I am in mid 30s, secondly I do not have the skills nor the experience - one could easily employ 2 fresh grad with the pay I am getting.

With banks carrying out retrenchments, it is even more harder to get into the banking sector.

I am resigned to being stuck at my current job, till I am axed or fired. 

My biggest fear is losing my job. But because of my passive income (from dividends from stock purchases), even if I were to lose my job, the dividends could help to cushion some of my expenditures.

Earlier I did some budgeting, my expenditure is 2k a month. My dividends are around 800 a month. In actual fact even if i were to lose my job, i could survive with a lower paid job - 1500/mth job. Nowadays, job easily pay 2k plus a month.

This gave me some assurance in that I would be able to survive even if my greatest fear come true.

Investing

Is there anything greater in life? What is my purpose here?

I have been pondering these questions for a while. Having read about the stories that people are going through, I wondered where do I want to choose to spend my time on.

I hope to use my ownself as an example of how a normal person can also reach financial freedom.

My goal is to earn at least 2k passive income from stock dividends. Assuming a 3% dividend, this means that I would need a capital of 800k.

Hmmm I am still 3/4 quarters away from this goal. Even if I save 2k a month, it would take me 25 years to reach 600k. I do not think I will live that long. My goal is to hit this before 40 years old, a mere 4 years away. This meant that I would need to invest 12k a month....my take home pay is not even half of this.

Though it is disheartening to learn this, it is a challenge to me to do this and I will think of how to hit this. Aim for the sky and hit the tree.

Ipoh 5D4N trip

My family decided to take a short getaway to Ipoh from 1-5 Oct 2019.

Why Ipoh? Because it is just 1 hr flight away from Singapore. Previous times that we went to Ipoh, we hire a private hire to drive us all the way from Singapore to Ipoh, this would take at least 10 hours since we would stop for frequent toilet breaks.

Ever since FireFly started flying to Ipoh, we started to take the flight route.

This time round, we decided to stay longer, 5D4N. We stayed two nights at Cameroon Highlands. Temperature range from 16 (at night) to 20+ degrees in noon.

Cameroon Highlands does not have much to shop, most stalls sells the same stuff wherever we went. So our main motive for going to Cameroon was to enjoy the cool weather.

So we roamed around to take some pictures, and then we go food hunting. For me, I am never a foodie, I do not know how to appreciate food so when my family went around eating Ipoh Zi Char, I just followed. They were saying how good this dish or that dish was, but all I could think of, was where is my coffee.

We ate until we are so full each time, I think all of us gained weight now that we are back to Singapore.

For me, as I grow older, I started to dislike travelling - I don't drink much so you can imagine the inner heatiness and the breath. Can't help it since drinking alot of water means always looking for toilets. I also don't go shopping (well this time round, I did some shopping because I desperately needed a pair of slippers after my sketchers shoes smelled badly).

I prefer to just stay at a hotel with walking distances to attraction. I guess to my husband, it is simply a waste of money to go overseas to do this.

Short recap of our trip
1) First 2 days spent in Brinchang, Cameroon Highland. A 2-hour drive from Ipoh town
2) Remaining 2 days spent in Ipho Town

During my short trip, somethings hit me. The kind of prices of stuff (be it food, clothings etc) way way exceed what an average Malaysian earns. E.g. a pair of Sketchers cost RM300+. In Singapore, a pair of Sketchers is from S$70. So for a worker who earns RM2000, the shoes is a whopping 15% whereas the same Sketchers is only a  3.5% for a SG worker.

I should be grateful that I have a well-paying job in Singapore. But I am not. I am always complaining about my job when I see others in less developing, doing all they can to feed themselves and their families.

Retirement

Having lots of thoughts on this lately.

Probably due to my work environment, new bosses come new changes. 

I am seriously thinking of throwing in my letter. But the rational side of me always prevails.

I have plans to stay on my current job for 5 more years, will be 41 years old then.

If everything goes as planned, l should have accumulated 400k worth of investment. Assuming a measly return of 5%, this woukd give me an annual passive income of 20k, which comes to 1.6k a month.

Although my household expenses is around 2.2k (previously wrote that it is 3k but I added some buffer), I think i could scrimp abit and live within 1.6k a month.

Everytime I think of this, thoughts of hastily quitting in a fit of amger dissipates. As the saying goes, when the going get tough, the tough get going.

Private property

I was thinking about the popular belief that buying private property will allow one to retire, by renting it out.

Given the high prices of condo, i still feel that stocks is a better choice. I would easily need to commit 200k to a property that might not pay me after deducting property tax and maintenance fees.

Although same can be said for the dividend streams that it is not guranteed. But in terms of the 200k, i could easily mitigate by investing in 3-4 stocks. Whereas the same 200k would be committed to one property.

Tenancy is also an issue.

Stocks are still my best bet to move towards my financial freedom.

Boredom shopping

It is a nice long weekend so once again I found myself having blogging as I could not think of anything to do on a lazy friday evening.

Had been running errands the whole morning, and playing online games.

I decided to take some time to review my finances. I had not been able to save 25k by August due to some unplanned expenditure (china trip, msia trip etc). Beating myself up over the shortfall will not help. Will try to save more in the coming months.

For now, i have plans to save more and stock up on Singtel shares. The stock market had been battered lately and Singtel shares had fallen from 3.50ish to 3.26. Am expecting it to go lower and will move in at 3.00 price.

Addicted to shopping

I realised that the more I try to control my spending, the more shopping I do.

Recently, due to many expenditure, I found myself 8k behind my planned savings.

As a result, I was trying very hard by trying to spend below my means. But instead, I found myself more stressed up and then doing online shopping i.e. ended up spending more.

As I look around, I found that most of my female colleagues are kind of addicted to shopping. Some are always shopping for clothes, shoes, others are shopping for kid stuff etc.

This is definitely an obstacle.

Budgetting

Budgeting is the first step to creating a financial plan. Because only through this, you can know how much you could save every month.

Without savings, one cannot invest.

There are many budgeting apps nowadays that one can use to track your expenditure.

For me, I tried using apps for a month or two before I will give up because of the hassles. I am a macro person so instead I resorted to using excel to do a budget. This is less hassle as I just need to review it once a year if there are changes to my income.

After coming up with this, I will get the expected savings amount. So again, I just mark my calendar to check the amount in my acc at end of every 3 months if i has the expected amount.

E.g. my saving is X amount now and I can save Y amount every month (note: i used a separate acc from my main account for savings so i will set up auto transfers).

At end of 3 months, I should have X + 3Y in my savings account.

This is not a guaranteed method one can use to save because there will be times when I cant save the y amount due to paying for income tax, holidays etc.

So what i do is that I will try to make up for this in coming months by either saving more than Y. Or when there's bonuses. This involves abit of balancing.

Hunting again

I were expecting to make another investment in singtel in july or aug. But the price of singtel had shot up by 50 cents to 3.50 per share.

I decided to hunt around. Were considering sembcorp industries. It had hovered below 2.50 but one con is that its gearing ratio is quite high and considering the recent loan obligation to sembcorp marine, I decided to wait abit more.

SPH Singapore Press Holding
It is in a sinking industry with revenue from media decreasing. Unless it could transform itself, future outlook is bleak.

SingPost
Initially I thought that with online shopping explosion, logistics companies should benefit. Even though revenue is increasing, i was dismayed when lookig at how thin the profit was over the last 5 years.

Decided to hunt a little longer.

Goal in life

My goal now, is to earn enough passive income to cover my monthly expenses of 3k.

If things go my way this year, I can expect to earn 10k passive income. Around 800 a month.

In 10 years time, I can expect to reach my goal. I am 36 yo this year. I can expect to achieve financial freedom by age 46.

Spending abit too much

Recently, I made 2 impulse purchase.

- a pair of nike air zoom pegasus shoes $169 after discount

- a yoga (dual side) mat costing $185

Almost immediately I experienced buyer's remorse. I asked if the price was a tad too high.

But after running in my new shoes, i realised I made a good choice. Shoes have the cushion needed. Legs were lighter when running. Was worth it.

For the mat, I did a plank workout. It was heavy and solid. As of now, still remains to be seen if it was worth the price.

Should I leave my job?

This thought has been on my mind especially on my commute to work on weekdays. It has been so since beginning last year.

The only thing I look forward to work, is having to drink my tea and coffee. Other than that, it is dread all the way.

I will try to read articles, anything to dispel me from impulsively throw my letter without securing a job first.

Today I came across KC blog, which mentioned that he was retrenched at the age of 31. It struck me because here I was self-pitying myself everyday having to go to work when there are others that will die to get my position. This is really a big wake up call as I am 36 yo.

I always think I am young when I will reach 40 soon but the reality is that I am very unlikely to compete with the young graduates.

I remembered a lesson I learnt when I quite without a job in 2007 when I was working in a call centre in a local bank. After that, it was pure agony as I was not prepared. Started re-jigging my resume and updating it.

After that, it was a game of hitting apply in the online job website. I remembered growing despondent and depressed with every passing day without securing an interview despite sending out 5-10 resumes a day. I was growing desperate and that was when my sister recommended me to do some temp work at her colleague's sister workplace at Pandan Loop. Why not, I hopped on to whatever was available.

2 months into the job, I continued to send my resumes during this period and I secured an interview. I t was for a supposedly dream job writing articles related to stocks. This was what I wanted all along. Went  for the interview and secured the job.

My dreamed job morphed into another boring job. Everyday was boring and I kept getting stuck with no ideas of what to write for articles. I felt a bit ashamed as I seen colleagues writing articles every week as if it's a piece of cake. We had 2 weeks to come up with an article. I looked back in my stint there. In the course of 2 years, i only wrote 20 articles which meant 10 a year which equates to less than 1 a month..... This was quite bad. I was underperforming...

I wanted out and I went for interviews and secured a job for a contract post soon.

Things were rocky. I was given a C- appraisal performance in 2011 which was damn lousy. This was really bad as I heard colleagues who have been there for very long, said that C- is below average. People usually get a C or C+ performance.

I was devastated, despite me putting in hours in weekends. I thought my bosses appreciates this but apparently, it was for nothing. I was bitter. I didn't leave though in that fit of moment, i wanted very badly to. I worry about my contract as it was reviewed yearly and though my performance was not good, my contract was still renewed in April 2011.

I worried about my job as I was on a contract position. Then came 2013, the news hit that the project which my position is tied to, was halted and stopped. Many departments had to let go of the extra headcount. I was worried and it was impossible that my department will allow me to stay. I had to go out to search for jobs. I remembered I went to a govt stat board interview and did very badly at the interview. Till now, I remembered how sucky it was. I nearly gave up until one day, my HR confirmed me as a permanent staff.

Then I got a new boss J. She was encouraging and positive. Despite the challenges I faced, she braced through it with me. I stayed on all this while because of her, I promised myself that I will do what it takes for her. Then last year in 2018, the news came that she will be transferred to another dept. It was damaging. I contemplated quitting since then but again the rational me told me to stay and monitor the new boss C.

My new boss C is almost as good as J. I am willing to stay for her cos I can't bear to let her take over my shitty projects. I have overcome many challenges in this job and I should not quit. There was alot of blood and sweat.

I hope with my renewed resolve, I will be able to flourish on my job until my passive income is enough to cover my expenses. Wish me luck!

Mar 2019

I just bought 5k shares of Singtel.

I have another 15k on hand which I plan to buy Singtel if the price of the share dropped lower. Currently it is still hovering in the region of +-3.

Lately I have been following up on hyflux news. Not because I owned it shares, rather because I want to know the lessons that could be gleaned.

It boils down once again to the cashflow. Negative operating cashflow is a warning sign that something could be wrong if the company is still profittable. This suggests to me to look at the cashflow from financing. Is the company borrowing too much?

I also took a step back and relooked at my shareholding. Sembcorp Industries caught my eyes. It is currently over leveraged but i could see that its operating cashflow is positive. But it does not have free cash flow because of the capital exenditures back into the business. it also had more than 1 billion cash on hand to help tide over any difficulties.

I would not get too worried to sell it off.

My portfiolio

Keppel Corp 20k shares
Boustead 20k shares
Sembcorp 9k shares
Singtel 10k shares

Aiming to buy another 10k shares of Singtel this year

Update

Bought 5,000 shares of Singtel with cash on 22 March 2019.

As at 20 April 2019, I have $17k cash on hand. This will serve as my emergency funds (sufficient to last me for 6 months if I lose my job).

Debt - Housing loan

Recently I chanced upon some YouTube video of Dave Ramsey.  In each video,  there will be listeners who call in to ask for his advice on their debt problem.

There were times where listeners told of their debt of 300k against annual income of 80-90k and Dave would said that their debt levels are very scary.

When I think about my own situation,  I too am in this same situation but I didn't think I was in that bad a shape.

This kept me pondering about myself.  I always had this thought that if I ever made enough money,  I would go buy a large condo and live there. But after listening to Dave Ramsey,  I realised living with a peace of mind without having to worry about my debts is more practical.  I remember him saying (cant recall exactly his words though)  why do you want to spend money that you don't have,  to impress people that you don't know and don't care about you.

This is so very true.  I ditched my idea of buying a condo,  and will focus on repaying my housing loan.

My loan is 300k,  20 years. MI is 1559, fully financed with cpf. 4 years fixed interest rates. I intend to pay off my loan in 13 years. At the end of 2021, I would have 266k loan left with about 100k in cpf increasing at at annual of 10k. At end of 2031, I should have 200k in my cpf. And I will pay off the rest in cash.