Net Worth and Life Update (April 2020) – S$231,276

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

April was an interesting month.

Work from Home Bliss

As the COVID-19 global numbers soared, Singapore was placed into lockdown mode, like the rest of the world. It was announced to be put in place from 7 April to 4 May, a period of 4 weeks. Just two weeks into our lockdown, the government announced that this would extend for another 4 weeks, until 1 June.

In other words, that’s almost 2 months of working from home! As someone who works in a super traditional company, which values face-time over productivity, this felt like a dream come true. (Only the work-from-home was bliss, not the fact that the entire world is under attack from the COVID-19 virus.)

And I must say that working from home is everything I ever dreamed it would be. There are so many wonderful benefits to it, like:

• No soul-sucking commutes.
• Less office politics.
• No distractions from co-workers.
• Less useless meetings.
• Double the amount of productivity.

This means that I’m able to finish my work faster, and I have more time leftover to do as I please. With the extra free time, I’ve been:

• Working out more.
• Writing more.
• Relaxing more.
• Drinking more alcohol.
• Gaming with friends more.

As a highly-introverted person, the past month has been fantastic, and I’m hoping for more of these work-from-home arrangements (although I know that it’s impossible once the lockdown ends, since my company would never allow that). So, in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts. 

Indulging in nostalgia with a childhood game of mine, Club Penguin. It’s a kid’s game, but still adorable.

Financial Update April 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$0.705.

Without further ado, here are all the numbers.

A $15,900 increase in net worth; that’s huge!

Last month I mentioned that I had lost so much money that even some part of my original capital had been lost. Well, this month I went from losing my original capital to now being in the green. Not that much in the green, but still in the green, nevertheless.

I know I probably shouldn’t be happy that stocks aren’t on bargain sales anymore (especially considering my long investment horizon), but I guess a part of me is relieved.

I would like to see more sales in the future though, as I still have cash and bonds to divest.

From this April 2020 net worth update onward, I’ve decided to switch up the format of my total net worth to better display my asset allocation. In my book, “Become a Millionaire and Retire Early on a Modest Salary”, which is a complementary resource available to you as a subscriber of this blog, I explained why I’m aiming for an asset allocation that looks like this:

I go into much greater detail in the book, down to the specific ETFs that I buy, but the above should suffice for the purposes of this net worth update.

And my current asset allocation looks like this:

Yikes. Still a lot of work to do to get to my desired asset allocation. But I’ve been slowly paring down bonds to invest in the U.S. and International stock indexes. I’ll probably also be using my spare cash to buy more stocks.

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$28,737
Stock Index ETF – S$77,074
Individual Shares – S$22,133
Total – S$127,944 (US$90,200)

United States Portfolio

Stock Index ETF – US$16,188
International Stock Index ETF – US$1,016
Individual Shares – US$2,968
Total – S$28,644 (US$20,172)

Cash in Bank Accounts

Brokerage Account 1 – S$8,203
Brokerage Account 2 – S$26
Bank Account 1 – S$3,909
Bank Account 2 – S$636
Bank Account 3 – S$6,040
Bank Account 4 – S$504
Bank Account 5 – S$1,002
Cash on Hand – S$3,681
Total – S$24,001 (US$16,921)

Retirement Accounts

Retirement Account 1 – S$31,420
Retirement Account 2 – S$8,810
Retirement Account 3 – S$10,456
Total – S$50,687 (US$35,734)

And that’s it!

I hope to improve on these net worth updates over the months, in content and in form. Hope you stick around for that ?

Thanks for reading!