Net Worth and Life Update (June 2020) – S$244,676

Hi! Welcome back to another month-end net worth and life update.

Every month, I track my net worth progress towards my $1,000,000 milestone, which is how much I need to retire early. Let’s find out how June 2020 went.

Life Updates for June 2020

TV shows, alcohol, snacks and late nights

I feel that I’ve become lazier, and less disciplined in the past month. Maybe I’ve been taking all my extra time for granted, and I’ve also picked up quite a few bad habits along the way, the worst of which is excessive snacking and staying up late.

I’ve been watching lots of TV shows on Netflix, and this year alone, I’ve gone through:

• All 9 seasons of How I Met Your Mother (Re-watch)
• Season 1 of the Witcher
• All 3 seasons of Attack on Titan
• Season 2 of One Punch Man
• Season 2 of Kingdom
• The first 3 seasons of Lucifer (Still watching)
• The first 2 seasons of Glee (Re-watch) (Still watching)

Honestly, I don’t regret watching any of these shows. My youngest brother loves to join me in my show-watching binge, and it’s usually a really fun time. I know I’ll probably look back on this time with some kind of fondness.

My brother and I enjoying a beer and chips while watching the Witcher.

But what irks me is that I have no self-control over my snacking while I watch these shows (because shows are always more fun when you’re snacking). I also usually get too hooked to an exciting episode, and go to bed way past my bedtime.

As a result, I’ve become a lot unhealthier (in terms of food consumption) and my bedtime is now regularly an hour or two later than it used to be. As a morning person, I always consistently regret my late-night decisions (although they feel so good in the moment).

I’m hoping to slowly turn this around next month though ?

Productivity for the month

I started a new site as a side project this month, in the hopes of beefing up my resume and also to earn a little money (hopefully).

Since I plan to focus the majority of my free time on this site (which I will definitely update on this blog in time to come), I decided to go from posting multiple times a week on this personal finance blog, to just once a week. I do feel that a weekly schedule is still pretty good though, and will be doing this for the foreseeable future.

Apart from these side projects, I was also slightly busier at work and tutoring. But I love that I still have money flowing in and increasing my net worth each month.

I just hope that I don’t get too busy, because my job isn’t my priority, whereas my side project is.

Financial Updates for June 2020

And now, let’s get into the financial aspect of things. A few things to note, as usual:

• I track my net worth in Singapore Dollars (S$)
• But I also include a conversions to U.S. dollars (US$) in my net worth update.
• At the time of writing, the exchange rate is S$1 to US$0.717.

Without further ado, here are all the numbers.

What’s my net worth?

As at 31 May 2020, my net worth was S$235,085, or US$166,910.

As at 30 June 2020, my net worth was S$244,676, or US$175,395.

It was a very pleasant surprise to see a close to 5-figure increase in my portfolio this month. A big factor in this increase was a 2.25-month bonus that I received for the Financial Year 2019. This was supposed to have been distributed in March 2020, but they decided to (sneakily) push back the distribution.

After I received my bonus, I felt a little bit of regret that I had decided to transition into part-time work, which made me lose out on a few thousand dollars of bonus (due to my 40% pay cut). It stings a little, but I am really loving the part-time arrangement along with the work-from-home arrangement, so I don’t have much to complain about. ?

I also received a bunch of dividends this month, so that contributed to the increase.

After my net worth peaked in February 2020, coming in at about $242,663, the following months saw brutal cuts to my overall net worth due to the stock market entering a bear market. It’s since recovered significantly, which brings my net worth to a new high this month! Yay! (Or maybe I shouldn’t be cheering since I can no longer buy stocks at a massive discount.)

What’s my asset allocation?

In my book, “Become a Millionaire and Retire Early on a Modest Salary”, which you can find right here and download for free, I explained why I’m aiming for an asset allocation that looks like this:

Here’s what my current asset allocation looks like:

I realised that my May 2020 net worth update had mistakes in my asset allocation – for my U.S. stocks and international stocks, the amounts were in USD instead of SGD, which led to those parts of my portfolio being understated. Oh well. This time, I made sure the figures were correct. ?

Still not ideal, but I’m not investing as aggressively as I did before. I’ve gone back to my regular schedule of anywhere between S$1,000 to S$2,000 a month. But all of this goes straight into U.S. and international stocks, so my asset allocation should get better over time.

I don’t include retirement accounts as part of my asset allocation as they are sitting in cold, hard cash. (I don’t have much control over these retirement accounts.)

If you’re looking for more details of my net worth, here they are. ?

Brokerage Accounts

Singapore Portfolio

Bond Index ETF – S$28,035
Stock Index ETF – S$77,366
Individual Shares – S$25,303
Total – S$130,704 (US$93,715)

United States and International Portfolio

Stock Index ETF – US$19,813
International Stock Index ETF – US$3,024
Individual Shares – US$3,144
Total – S$36,243 (US$25,981)

Cash in Bank Accounts

Brokerage Account 1 – S$967
Brokerage Account 2 – S$41
Bank Account 1 – S$7,900
Bank Account 2 – S$631
Bank Account 3 – S$10,604
Bank Account 4 – S$505
Bank Account 5 – S$1,003
Cash on Hand – S$3,773
Total – S$25,424 (US$18,229)

Retirement Accounts

Retirement Account 1 – S$32,426
Retirement Account 2 – S$9,073
Retirement Account 3 – S$10,806
Total – S$52,305 (US$37,503)

How was your June 2020?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting this blog.