Free $5 for DBS Multiplier Account Holder

Facebook reminded me earlier that 75 people that liked our page have not heard from us in a while (about one week ago only!). Sorry for disappointing everyone as I have been busy playing Monster Hunter World! Hahahaha.

This is for all DBS Multiplier Account holders! CZM and I changed our bank account from OCBC 360 to DBS Multiplier Account last year December when DBS revamped the product. There are many reviews and comparisons done for all the different bank accounts (e.g. Seedly Cheat Sheet: Best Savings Accounts For Working Adults 2018?) so I will not go into that.

What we like about the Multiplier Account is that it is hassle-free and does not encourage/force spending (minimum spend of $X amount on credit card). One simply has to credit their salary to the account + credit card spend of any amount ($1 also can!) or any of the 3 other categories (home loan, insurance or investment).

Back to the free money! DBS has launched/created a closed group on Facebook called The Burrow. In order to get the free $5, you need to do the following 2 things:

1. Own a DBS Multiplier Account

2. Join The Burrow

Once you have done that, you will have to fill up a form by DBS - "Help us identify you as a DBS Multiplier account holder in The Burrow". Free money! The good news is that there is no limit on the number of $5 that will be given out and the qualifying period is from 1st Jan 2018 to 30th June 2018, lots of time for you to decide if you want to sign up for the account and then participate to get the free $5.

Terms and Conditions apply :) Back to Monster Hunter World!

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Automating Capital Growth Through StashAway

A reader asked how does StashAway fit into our strategy of increasing passive income. The short answer is it does not!

If you look at our portfolio, you will see a few counters that are very red. Those are some of my attempts at picking growth stocks as compared to the usual REITs/dividends stocks. When growth stocks do not meet its growth expectation, expect the share price to drop significantly! Personally, I find it extremely difficult to pick value/growth stocks and the idea was reinforced in my mind when I came across another article by Thumbtack Investor - What Makes You Think You Can Win? The Case For TheTrue Value Investor – LTC Corporation & S I2I Limited. Imagine the level of effort required for one to analyze a particular company, understand its business and forecast its growth. KPO just can't do it due to 1. limited/no knowledge in each and every industry/business and 2. limited time, so we have decided to outsource it to StashAway (paying a small fee in the process) while we continue to invest in REITs/dividends stocks for passive income.

The next question is why StashAway? I will share what I wrote on Seedly's Review Platform here:

Pros:
- Fractional shares: every single cent is being invested (make all your money work for you)
- Investment framework which I feel differentiate themselves from other robo-advisors (do spend some time to understand it, how the different regime would change the portfolio allocation, how is the portfolio being reoptimized/rebalance)
- Actively engaging the public (talks and monthly CIO updates article)
- Excellent customer support
- Nice and clean UI
- The convenience of a mobile application
- No minimum amount required to invest (event students can do it!)
- Cheap for a hassle free investment service that provides diversification (as compared to unit trusts/mutual funds and diversifying yourself is not going to be cost-effective unless the sum is significant)

Cons:
- Limited visibility into the transactions in the UI (everything can be found in the monthly statement but that requires the user to wait a few weeks for it)
- Exchange rate (SGD deposit to USD) cannot be found in the UI or monthly statement (this can be reversed/computed from the USD cash flow in the monthly statement)

I find the cons pretty annoying as they have all the data but are not presenting them to the users. Regardless, I believe the pros outweigh the cons, hence the 5 stars review.

On a side note, I would like to share my observation (walk the talk) - I met up with the CEO of StashAway, Michele and asked if he has invested his own money. He immediately logged in and showed me his account. Not so much of a pros/cons but I thought it shows a lot :)

Of course, do not take my word for it, do check out the other 99 reviews (65 + 24 + 11 - 1) too.

$500 per month - 50% probability of getting $934,618 by 2047 (30 years)

After tracking and reviewing it closely for the past 6 months, together with the increment in our salary, we are now more comfortable with allocating more money into StashAway! From $500 per month to $1,000 per month! This is how we will be automating (scheduled monthly transfer) capital growth through StashAway.

$1,000 per month - 50% probability of getting $1,869,384 by 2047 (30 years)

Oh. Back to our strategy! We are greedy and would like the best of both worlds (capital gain and dividends):
1. At least $1,000,000 portfolio in SGX for dividends/passive income (tax free!)
2. Around $1,000,000 StashAway portfolio through capital growth ($1,000 x 12 months x 30 years = $360,000 capital. An annual return of ~5.88% is required for 30 years which seems pretty realistic). No idea what we will be doing exactly with it (drawdown or buy other assets), will think about it when the goal is nearer. lol.
3. $1,000,000 in other assets (property and CPF)
4. Retire and enjoy life :)

What is your strategy?

StashAway Referral Link for Our Readers
Here you go: KPO and CZM Referral Link

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
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3. Click here to subscribe using email :)

Salary - You Are Your Best Investment

It is official now! KPO has been promoted and is no longer the smallest fry in the team. lol. The best part of the promotion is not the change in title but the salary increment that comes with it. I was given an increment of more than 20%! Always thought that I would never see such increment unless I change a company.

With this, we have unlocked a few achievements in life:
1. Beating the CPF Ordinary Wage Ceiling ($6,000) - Going forward, we get to keep more cash!
2. CZM and I can no longer BTO for HDB - Income Ceiling ($12,000) - Fortunately, we have successfully applied for one a few years back :)
3. My salary has increased by > 50% as compared to my first drawn salary
4. CZM's salary has increased by > 100% as compared to her first drawn salary

I have a spreadsheet to project our salary increment and track the actual increment which I will be sharing with the readers :) Based on our starting salary and an assumption yearly increment of 5% (I thought this is conservative but CZM thinks otherwise), it would have taken me 9 years and CZM 17 years to reach our current salary.

Ministry of Manpower (MOM) published a summary table on Singapore Median Gross Monthly Income From Work (Including Employer CPF Contributions) of Full-Time Employed Residents. For the year of 2016, it is at $4,056 including the employer CPF. I will be using the 2016 median income as an example in the spreadsheet, excluding the employer CPF portion ($3,467) because who does that! Imagine people negotiating with HR for a higher salary with X% increment based on their current salary including the previous employer CPF contribution. lol.

The cells highlighted in yellow are for you to input manually, everything else is formula linked. The spreadsheet projects your yearly salary based on an assumption of 5% increment. The "Salary Projection" projects based on your first drawn annual salary while the "Revised Projection" projects based on the latest "Actual Salary" specified by you. As you can see, it would have taken this imaginary person 6 years (31-25) to reach his current salary (27-25).

What is the purpose of doing this?

In my opinion, there will never be enough money and there will always be others that are poorer/richer than you. On the other hand, time is limited, we all have the same number of seconds, minutes and hours in a day. When you work, you are actually selling away your precious time to the company/employer. Why not sell it to the highest bidder? One has to take ownership of your own career/time because you are your best investment in life. I have friends/colleagues that complain about their increment (1/2% - losing out to inflation) and bonus and yet year on year they continue to stay in the same company. If your company is not compensating you "fairly" (performance review can be pretty subjective/dark), maybe it is time to look externally? Having said that, I do see people that are less motivated or should I say different priorities in life. Regardless, my advice is to work hard, bump your salary and invest for financial freedom so that you can stop selling your time one day...

You can get the google spreadsheet here - $$$ Salary Projection $$$

On a side note, CZM has taken full control of the Instagram account where she will be posting lots of food and their prices! I doubt she will be blogging anything in the near future. lol.

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
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3. Click here to subscribe using email :)

ThaiBev

We made our 1st purchase for the year! We purchased 6,000 units of ThaiBev (Thai Beverage) last week (9th January 2018) at $0.92. At the point of writing this article, the price is currently at $0.935. Yay!

The latest news on the acquisition of Vietnam’s top brewer Sabeco sent its share price falling from a high of $0.975 on 15th December 2017 to as low as $0.90 on 26th December 2017 which is totally understandable. It is an expensive price to pay for an effective stake of only 26.3%. Vietnam Beverage Co Ltd won the bid for 53.58% of Sabeco which will be funded 100% by ThaiBev although they only own 49% of Vietnam Beverage indirectly through Beer Co. (53.58% x 49% ~ 26.3%). The method of financing has yet to be confirmed but it will definitely increase its liability significantly.

Honestly, I think this is a bad deal too but this is probably the only/best way for ThaiBev to proceed with the acquisition. Sabeco is sort of "backed" by the government (The government had set a minimum sale price of 320,000 dong or $14.1 per share for Sabeco, formally known as Saigon Beer Alcohol Beverage Corp - Thai beer magnate extends SE Asia push with $4.8 billion Sabeco deal) and there is no way it will be owned externally with foreign ownership capped at 49%, hence the weird structuring.

If we were to look at the bigger picture, the acquisition is in line with its "Vision 2020" strategic roadmap to create greater value and deliver more sustainable returns to shareholders. This is extracted from ThaiBev's 2017 Annual Report - To support and sustain ThaiBev’s growth, we plan to diversify our revenue streams, increasing revenue contribution from non-alcoholic beverages and the sale of products outside of Thailand.

Based on the 2017 Annual Report, ThaiBev is trading at a PE of 16.36 at $0.935 - EPS of 1.37 Thai Baht ~ 0.05716 SGD which is pretty reasonable. Its NAV is 5.13 Thai Baht ~ 0.214041803 SGD and this translate to a PB of 4.37 (not so relevant/important). I will not go too much into the numbers as the 2016 numbers are reported based on a 9 months period hence it is difficult to compare its year-on-year performance accurately. However, a rough estimate on the 2016 numbers (numbers / 3 x 4) seems to indicate that ThaiBev did better in 2017!

Screenshot from 4-traders

Out of the 708 companies listed in SGX, ThaiBev is ranked lucky 8th in terms of market capitalization (around $23 billion). It is so large that it owns 28.4% of Frasers Centrepoint Ltd, 28.5% of F&N and 79.7% of Oishi Group currently (Sabeco soon).

Screenshot from ThaiBev website

Most importantly, ThaiBev has a dividend policy of distributing more than 50% of net profits after deduction of all specified reserve, subject to investments plan and as the Board of Directors deems appropriate and they have been meeting it very comfortably (dividend payout ratio between 50% to 80%) for the last 10 years with increasing dividends! People still need to drink during a financial crisis, maybe drink even more. lol.

We see the recent weakness in share price as an opportunity to accumulate some. Will the share price drop below $0.90? Maybe/maybe not. Will the share price be more than $0.92 by 2020? Most certainly! $2.020? Hahahahaha (laughing at my own foolishness).

Would you be interested in reading about our last purchase for the year of 2017? APAC Realty

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
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3. Click here to subscribe using email :)

StashAway Referral Link for Our Readers

A couple of readers have actually contacted me and ask for our StashAway referral link because we have motivated them to start investing. Unfortunately, I have been rejecting/turning down their nice offers because sharing our referral link would reveal our real identities and we prefer to keep them hidden as compared to saving a few dollars in fees.

I contacted StashAway and they were kind enough to entertain me. So I am proud to announce that we have a referral link for our readers! You no longer have to go around asking friends/colleagues for one (my suggestion when I turned them down).

Signing up through our referral link (you will need to click on the green button "Get up to $10K Managed for Free" to signup) will provide you the exact same offer as any other referral - SGD $10,000 free management for 6 months.

What do we get in return? Nothing :) This is a referral page specially created for our readers and is not linked to our actual StashAway account so we will not be enjoying the benefit of the referral programme. Honestly, that is unfortunate but the purpose of the blog is not for us to get referrals and minimize the fees. It is to motivate others to start investing, have goals in life and work towards them and most importantly, lead a happy life with their other half. We are glad to see some of that happening.

Here you go: KPO and CZM Referral Link

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)

StashAway - December 2017

StashAway did its first reoptimization for the month and you can read more about it here - StashAway Portfolio Reoptimisation. Unfortunately, USD continues to fall!

1. ACCOUNT SUMMARY (as of the last day of the month)

Based on the statement (29 Dec 2017), we have $53.87 profit after taking into account a -$18.69 currency impact.

The first week of 2018 has been great! Our returns went up even more to $129.54 but so did the currency impact -$58.71.

SGD time-weighted returns: 4.4%
USD time-weighted returns: 8.3%

2. PORTFOLIO DETAILS 

We receive USD $10.27 dividends which have been paid and reinvested. This amount of dividends would have easily offset the fees incurred till date!

3. TRANSACTIONS

We see the first "SELL" transaction when the reoptimization took place. The timing was almost perfect! GLD was bought at $119.74 and XLP at $57.02 on 20th Dec 2017. The current price at the time of writing is $125.46 (4.8%) for GLD and $56.68 (-0.6%) for XLP.

I am still going to complain about the amount of USD we are getting from our SGD deposit and the exchange rate. Technically, this can be easily computed from the USD cash flows and once the USD amount is obtained, the exchange rate will be revealed.

SGD $495.00 converted to USD $369.65
Exchange Rate: 1.339104558

4. FEE CALCULATIONS

No fee till April 2018 because I recommended a friend. The projected fee (assuming no referral) would be the monthly-average assets SGD $2,609.14 x 0.8% / 365 days * 31 days = $1.77

StashAway VS STI ETF
Since there is no way to compare the performances among the robo-advisors, I came out with a spreadsheet to track our StashAway portfolio performance (General Investing - Risk Level 28) against that of STI ETF which I will be updating on a monthly basis. For simplicity, I shall assume that one can either invest in Nikko STI ETF using POSB Invest-Saver or invest in SPDR STI ETF using SCB Priority Online Trading (no minimum commission). These would be the opportunity costs while we continue to invest in StashAway.

This month commentary: In terms of absolute P&L after fees, StashAway returns is ranked number 1 at 2.2%. Using SCB Priority Online Trading to invest in SPDF STI ETF gives the next highest returns at 1.69% as compared to using POSB Invest-Saver to invest in NIKKO STI ETF with the lowest returns at 0.67%. Although both STI ETFs are tracking Singapore Straits Times Index, the difference in returns can be attributed to the effect of fees/commissions due to the usage of different platform to invest. The same can be said when one chooses to invest in ETFs vs unit trusts/funds - fees/costs matters.

Apart from the absolute P&L, we should also look at the Reward-to-Risk Ratio where risk/volatility is taken into account. For more information, do read StashAway Clarifications - Reward-to-Risk Ratio. StashAway has the highest ratio of 1.25 which is significantly higher than the other 2 STI ETFs (< 0.4). Let me quote Freddy Lim (Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer of StashAway), "for every dollar of risk taken, StashAway P28 is producing 1.25 times the return".

Which is the best? Only time will tell :)

This is the link to our spreadsheet - KPO & CZM StashAway Portfolio VS STI ETF which I have also added to Our Portfolio page.

StashAway Referral Link for Our Readers
Here you go: KPO and CZM Referral Link

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)

Portfolio Update - December 2017

Our portfolio increase by 5.35% to $296,159 - $10,344.29 of capital injection and $4,692.21 of  capital growth/reduction. The last few days of 2017 brought our portfolio value closer to the $300,000 mark! You can refer to Portfolio Performance in 2017 for more information on the performance for the whole year :)

BOUGHT
- APAC Realty (12,000 units) @ $0.86

I did a write up on APAC Realty previously. In short, looking at its PE and our entry price, the stock was worth more than when it first IPO-ed at $0.66. At the point of writing this article, it is currently trading at $0.89 :)

Dividends
The total dividends collected this month is $540.25. The breakdown is as follows:

Company	Symbol	ExDate	Shares	Total
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd	Z74	18-Dec-17	3,000	$294.00
Asian Pay Television Trust	S7OU	13-Dec-17	5,000	$81.25
Accordia Golf Trust	ADQU	04-Dec-17	10,000	$165.00

Total dividends collected for 2017: $11,237.48
Average dividends per month for 2017: $936.46

We were so close to meeting another of our short term goal of having a passive income of $1,000 per month! Guess we got to try harder this year.

StashAway

Capital: $3,000
Current: $3,053.16 (IRR: 3.4%)

Do take a look at this article if you missed it - StashAway Clarifications - Reward-to-Risk Ratio where Freddy Lim (Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer of StashAway) clarify how StashAway is optimising return by taking on lesser risk.

StashAway Referral Link for Our Readers
Here you go: KPO and CZM Referral Link

Health - KPO Needs to Lose Weight
Date: 2018-01-02
Weight: 72.5 kg (Lost close > 10 kg already!)

BMI: 24.2

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
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2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)