What will be the best strategy to invest with srs?

Invest in safe, blue-chip stocks and etfs. These are your retirement funds. Please be careful when investing them as you want to ensure you do not lose all

Personally, I view SRS as a component of my total portfolio of assets, alongside cash, cpf etc.

Hence my answer might be slightly "off" as I view everything in totality and plan for the "better way to allocate resources to increase overall wealth", and not just SRS alone. I mean I could, but then I would turn all my portfolios into semi clones of each other, rather than taking it overall, and I would probably pay more fees across my cash / srs / cpf ia portfolios if I paid to get the same stock in all three.

Back to the qn, with me turning 65 as my timeframe, and considering everything, I would buy stocks till the withdrawal time frame, and focus on dividend plays, and rebalancing.

• its a super long horizon.

• insurance I still feel iffy. With a 20+ timeframe, yes its an option. But at the same time, if I dont die by 62, I think I can build and maintain a portfolio with better XIRR vs the insurance co. If I am average, then I would probably live to 84/85, and well doesn't hurt to cater for 90 (i think govt said 1 in 5 lives past 90).

• ssb I consider as last resort coz you will barely beat inflation with that return.

Some of my other considerations from an alternative point of view:

• my purpose in holding cash and ssb is to tide over emergencies. So they belong outside of SRS.

• stocks that pay scrip dividends... The benefits are not immediate until sold, and you should use a longer time horizon to handle the buy / sell timings ==> these go to SRS where time is part of the equation.

• I tend to manage my portfolio to control and produce a stable stream of dividend / interest income across the year for my cash portfolio. So quarterly dividends (feb/may/aug/nov), and those that pay in other selected pairings (mar + sep, jun + dec) tend to remain in cash. Those that dont fit my cash dividend plan, or only pay once a year => I chuck them in srs.

So my game plan for SRS:

• go for dividend plays where possible. End goal is stocks withdrawn from srs / cpf ia, complement my cash portfolio and cpf payouts to provide me income that is ideally 80++% of my salary at retirement.

• you have a long horizon and fixed max contribution cap. In the 20-30 years, there will be probably at least one or two mega sales with massive discounts. If you try to time, then most likely you will hoard too much cash earning pitiful interest for most of the time while waiting for that sale. I would split the contributions and dividends paid into SRS into 2/3 monthly investments (stay in market), and the remaining 1/3 for selective rebalancing or leave till next year. So when the sale does happen, the monthly investment plan can do its work, the dividends received and current year contributions can also help in averaging down.

• keep transaction fees low and try to rebalance by "topping up" a position (vs sell and buy which triggers fees both ways). I mean sell / buy can be done where necessary but too much of these pile onto the fees, and eat into overall returns.

• some people focus on the drawdown method (if I can withdraw $x, then that is the allowance of payout I can live on. The inadequate aspect is... If you live very long, there is a very high chance you will finish drawdown your wealth before you die. The other method is to look at the annual dividend + interest received from your assets and try to live within that, but this requires a very large base to produce meaningful spending amounts.

• contrary to opinion, with a long horizon, going for 2% per year with SSB is probably not going to cut it. Based on the rule of 72, at 2%, your contribution will only double in 36 years (thats longer than the time horizon), and is worse than cpf oa. If you aim for return of about 5-6% that is moderately safe, then 72 / 5.5 = 13.1 years, you actually could triple to quadruple your contributions at withdrawal age.

Because SRS is supposed to be savings for your retirement, I would personally pick low risk but more consistent returns such as SSB or STI ETF.

Depending on your age and risk profile and also what your current portfolio is. As SRS is supposed to be for your retirement I would recommend a slightly less risky strategy - this means buying ETFs, bonds or annuities.