How to Invest $25000 dollars? What’s the best approach?

My advice is increase your financial knowledge first and understand your personal risk appetite! Are you investing in hopes of realising it all in the future to fund my child's future education/buy a house? Or do you just want it to be a source of annual income that can come in terms of dividends for example.

My advice is do not rush into buying popular stocks now just because they're cheap.

I would recommend investing 50% in a market portfolio like STI and another 50% in more risky investments for higher yields. Diversification is always important (put your money in different stocks and industries). There is no reward for bearing unnecessary risks!

You could read here what not to do, the rest is simple, just stay with the market(s) average, I would not recommend single stocks, though I hold different titles myself (from past times), passive indexing stock ETFs do at least as well:

https://seedly.sg/questions/what-is-your-genera...

Instead of asking for mentorship here (an anonmymous platform), best is you be your own sensei and improved your financial literacy.

Go download the national library app, libby.com. And borrow as many books on personal finance/value investing book as a start.

Good luck

Hi Anonymous!

Growing your wealth is a very vague end result.

There are too many ways to grow your wealth, and it depends a lot on life situation, financial needs in the next 5/10 years, and your risk profile.

Based on your numbers, you are estimating $2k net salary, with about 35% spending. Those are pretty good numbers. One question I would have is, what differentiates between savings and investment? Is it a time horizon thing, or is it a risk profile thing?

I'm gonna give some fairly counterintuitive suggestions, so don't get overwhelmed

I would combine the savings and investment bucket. Essentially these are money not used for daily living. From here, you would then look at it as multiple portfolios of investments. For example, there should be a chunk for long term retirement planning. This is money you will never take out until then. Hence, you are more likely to look at putting into something passive. Something that gives a decent equity type return, but will never give you any mega returns. This should be a fixed amount. Say 20% of your income. Forever.

Then, there will be another bucket for what I would call, investing for learning. The reality is this. If all you did was passive strategies, you will never gain much knowledge, and you can never outperform the market. In the old days, people could put their money into saving accounts and get 5-7%. Even as near as 1985, the bank interest rate was 6% per annum. But we live in different times today. Imagine folks then who relied on putting their money there, they would not have had the knowledge to get a higher return today. So I would say, take a chunk of your investments to learn. Buy stocks, buy funds, buy options, whatever. Sometimes, you get lucky and make 30%, sometimes you suck and it drops 30%. But make sure this isn't too much of your money. I believe for most people, they spend way too much time trying to chase returns, such that they neglect career progression. The money you earn when you are young is a fraction of the money you earn when you have the skillset and progress in your career. I would recommend putting a lump sum cap, it could be 5k over 1 year, or 10k, or 20k. Up to your comfort. But make sure you set up the retirement plan first.

Thirdly I would put money aside for liquidity. This would be used for investments, and it is NOT your emergency funds. The idea is that in life, we need to take risks or we will just get the market average. Imagine if the current crisis came about, you spent time to learn about the markets over the last few months/years, and you know that it's probably a good time to put in a significant chunk of money, but then all your money is already invested. What's next? So in this bucket, I would say keep your money liquid, and don't worry about the interest rate. Liquidity is key. So this could be in a fixed deposit, in a higher interest bank account, or just in your bank. Realistically, at $20k, even if you got 1.5% of interest, that's $300 over a year. This can dynamically change, when economy is better, you shouldn't keep too much money here. Money here isn't working for you. Most people will call this the warchest.

Lastly it would be the emergency fund bucket. These are money that will never be used for investments. It is to help you when you lose a job, have a medical emergency, or whatever reason.

I don't know you, and I am not sure if you are a high flyer, or prefer a lower profile work, or if you want to earn a lot of money. This will affect decisions.

So back to your specific situation, my assumption is you graduated from poly, started work with a decent job paying about $2.5k, and have worked part time over the last few years and garnered a total of almost $60k of savings.

I would assume that if something happens to you, your parents are around to bail you out. In that case, honestly I would not keep an emergency fund. BUT, if you are a significant breadwinner in the family, then I would keep a 9 months fund of expenses, which is about $6,300.

I would keep a warchest of about $10k. This is in the situations markets drop, AND you made a calculated risk that it is a good time to take risk.

Out of the remaining $35k, I would put a lump sum of $15k into a long term investment vehicle, followed by a monthly regular investment plan of $400 a month. This will never stop. Ever. (Even if you get married)

Out of the remaining $20k, I would consider putting $10k into invest to learn. This is up to you to choose your weapon of choice. I personally do options writing, but you can do forex, or stocks, or crypto or whatever works for you. This is to build up your knowledge about assets, and hopefully you don't pay $15k for some seminar or tuition fee.

The last $10k, I would also invest, but choose things that you know. If you don't know much now, then just dump it into a roboadvisor, or some unit trusts. or some bluechip stock. The purpose of this is NOT retirement planning, but to grow your wealth as a whole. I would then funnel the remaining monthly salary excess into this. ($700+600 - 400 = 900/mo) The purpose of this is to have it for flexible use. As you have more financial committments, this is the account that will be touched the most. Maybe if you made a good return for the year, you can treat yourself to a holiday. But at least you are more assured that you have a retirement plan, a learning plan, and a wealth plan.
NOTE!! This is not financial advice or an inducement to trade. Please seek complete financial advice before making any decision.

Cheers!

Fergus

PS: Need more specific advice on your situation? Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram https://rplg.co/fergusig

Or you can find me on facebook in the Seedly Facebook group!