I'm a 26F, working for 3 years, earning 5k a month after CPF. I bought insurance, with current savings of about 100k. 80k invested in local dividend stocks and robo (DCA $250 a month). Any financial advice for me?

Jacky Yap

07 Jun 2019

Hello there, a lot of people will tell you to start reading up etc. that's a given. :)

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Let me share with you my personal experience, but this is by no means a formula or financial advise (im not affiliated with any financial institutions too).

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When i started to decide what to invest in, i first decided what is my risk profile.

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As an impatient guy, my risk profile is quite high, hence i dabbled into US stocks. US tech stocks have been going up so i was lucky to catch some part of it since i started a year ago. US stocks is probably one of the investment product with the highest risk (daily fluctuation of 1-5%).

Understand that my investing journey will be 10-20 years, so i am more focused on building my capital now (because no money) - hence US stocks fits me best because it can provide a decent capital gain in a short period of time (can go both ways), and i can stomach the risk. Other products like ETFs, REITS etc, you can only see the return in 5-10years for the compounding interest to kick in.

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After putting in some money into the US stock market, i realize that i need to balance out my portfolio with lower risk investment products, hence i looked into funding society for p2p lending, and then a little bit in SG REITs to build my long team dividend portfolio. These are done using the capital gain from my US stocks, diverted into my smalll dividend porfolio (ie REITs).

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So to sum up:

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my first 2 years of investing:

• US tech stocks for capital gain (super high risk)
• balance risk of US tech stocks with p2p lending (medium risk)

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my hypothetical 2-5th year of investing (not there yet this is my 1st year only)

• capital gain from tech stock slowly converted to SG Reits for future dividend portfolio (medium to low risk)

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my hypothetical 5th - 10 year of investing

• slowly build up dividend portfolio and waiting for dividend to compound the returns (medium to low risk)
• CPF should have some money (low risk)

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And the constant thing from start of investing:

1) Read up, follow financial bloggers

2) Save money

3) Reduce expenses (sometimes it is harder to think of how to make extra S$200 a month, than to cut down on S$200 a month in expenses, both resulting in +S$200 in wealth)

4) optimize on credit card rewards

5) be insured

6) always remember that this is a long game (10-20 years)

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At least that's the plan la hahah.

Don't put all your eggs in the local basket, lah. Throw some into robo-advisor for global exposure, maybe dabble in REITs for steady income.

Dont marry the wrong man, and your financial trajectory should be smooth

Kudos on saving up $100K at your age! We get this question alot but would waanna know if you have specific areas of concern? e.g. are you invested well? Or Insured properly? With the limited details, some questions I would ask is, are you insured well with a hospitalisation insurance and life insurance for income replacement should something bad happens? You have sufficient cashflow so the investment front, i'll probably ask why you seem to be invested mostly in singapore dividend stocks and not globally diversed instruments?