Seeking some day-to-day financial advice

EDIT: Thanks a lot everyone for your advice and encouragement. I came back to this post because I wanted to reflect on my journey and also see how far I've come. Towards the end of 2023 I got a job offer that came with a 50% increment. This gave me a boost in my financial journey.

Over the past three years, I've completed my wedding, downpayment, and renovation.

Today, I've accumulated about $172k in investments and over $200k in total assets excluding CPF/property. My monthly expenses remain at around $2000 and I've been investing at least $2500 a month through automated contributions. The rest is saved or channelled to vacations.

I'm starting to really appreciate the incredible power of compounding. My goal now is to keep at it (through automation to leave the emotions and guesswork out), take a step back and think of what I want to use the money for. Some of that would include taking parents on a holiday, family planning, etc....

Looking back, I have two main regrets:

I should've invested more aggressively when I could because TIME truly is your greatest ally. I've now increased automated investments to $4k monthly.
Don't spend too much on your wedding.. after all it's just a day... Renovation is where you can really make some improvements to quality of life

Now - if you have any advice for me, such as how to allocate the cash accumulation over the years, and how to optimise life, i'm all ears!

25 year old female - I currently take home $5000 a month and spend about $1750 (food, shopping, bills, personal care) thereabouts, which means about 65% of my income is saved or invested.

Out of this 65% -- $500 is going in AIA Pro Achiever (which many people have told me is a horrible plan, but I'll go through with this and keep the sum for retirement), $1700 is going into mid-term savings for wedding/renovations, and the rest is either invested into S&P500 and individual stocks, or idling in the bank. I don't have a disciplined investment strategy and I usually just open my TIGER app every month and buy additional units when I feel like I'm comfortable with the price.

My net worth now is about $45k right now (with > 6 months of expenses in the bank). With my current rate of saving, I will likely take an extra 17 months to reach $100k.

In view of an upcoming house which means I will be bombing at least $25k on renovation (after splitting with my partner), does anyone have any advice on how I can further optimise my finances and reach my goal earlier? Thanks in advance for your advice!

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tinycents

28 Apr 2023

Go top up CPF every year! watch that CPF grow.

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SH

10 Apr 2023

You seem to be doing great and are doing the main things really well like saving and not spending too much of your income.

You're on track and doing better than most people your age. If you really want to optimise even more, you can look into using the best savings accounts, credit cards rewards etc.

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AlpacaInvestments

09 Apr 2023

Sharing my FIRE journey at @alpacainvestments on Instagram

I think you're already doing great! the reno seems to be a short / mid term expense, so I don't think there's a need to take too much risk for those funds. Perhaps T-bills / FDs / SSB may be suitable.

As for investments, I think you might want to broadly think of how you want to allocate your portfolio - think of diversification across geographies, industries and asset classes. All the best :)

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