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.