How did you start your financial journey?

Hi d c,

This is a very good question, to start your financial journey, there are 3 main categories

(1) Good Habits
(2) Risk Management - You & Your Family

(3) Your Portfolio - Invest and Diversify

(1) Good Habits are the most important, one example would be to always allocate your income into different portions, for start you can break it into expenses, savings, investments. Generally rule of thumb would be 50% of your net income goes to expenses, 20% savings, 30% investments. These ratio changes overtime to suit one's financial situation.

(2) Risk Management - Many times for financial journey, its not just about investing, investing, investing. Many times it is a combination of accumulating wealth and also to protect your wealth & Income. For example, when one fall sick, and unable to work, it is very likely that there will be loss of income. At such, how can one prevent the risk or lower the risk. This is when risk management comes in, insurance and hospitalization coverage which can be very crucial and the beginning steps to financial journey.

(3) Your Portfolio. Once you get used to it, you can slowly break into even more different portions such as even properties, or subset of investments breaking down into bonds, funds, equities and such.

Many successful investors are very clear about their ratios, the allocation of their income, the risk management as well as all the figures. Hope these informations are useful!

Take care and stay safe!​​​

Hey d c, I'd say that my financial journey began when I was serving NS in 2018. I've always wanted to become more financially savvy but never knew how or where to start. NS was when I had more time to read up and I found Seedly, which gave me a great kickstart. Here's a timeline in chronological order:

2018

• Opened CIMB FastSaver (1% p.a), moved over all of my funds from POSB Kids (0.05%) account

• Opened POSB SAYE for 2% at the end of 2 years

• Started to DCA in Smartly, which I pulled out after a few days due to a loss of a few cents/dollars haha - Always had this mindset that I can go bankrupt from investing

• Signed up for a CIMB AWSM credit card (1% cashback on certain categories)

2019

• Opened Etiqa Elastiq (2.02% p.a), moved over all of my funds from CIMB FastSaver (1% p.a)

• Terminated POSB SAYE so that more funds go into Etiqa Elastiq

• Signed up for Maybank eVibes credit card (1% cashback on all spending), cancelled CIMB AWSM credit card

• Signed up for Standard Chartered Jumpstart (2% p.a)

• Started to DCA in StashAway, Syfe and MoneyOwl, but eventually sticked to StashAway only to prevent myself from over-diversifying and to consolidate the funds into one robo-advisor instead of branching out with lesser capital in each robo

• Opened CDP account

2020

• Signed up for Singlife Account (2.5% p.a)

• Started DBS InvestSaver in STI ETF, yes it's not the best index to invest in but with the current price, I believe that I'll be able to make some capital gains in the long run

• Started buying stocks to hold for long-term

• Tried day trading which I lost about a thousand dollars haha ( https://seedly.sg/questions/was-there-a-time-in...)

Honestly, I'm still learning every day and made a few mistakes along the way which I learn from. With my current arrangement of finances, I'm getting slightly over $100 per month in interests, which I see as a form of passive income that will help to cover my daily expenses in University. All the best!