$$$ KPO and CZM $$$: January 2022

Thursday, January 20, 2022

2021 Net Worth

We dabbled in crypto in early 2021 with the plan to allocate just a tiny 1% of our net worth into it. However, I fell deep into the rabbit hole, discovered LUNA/Terra and eventually persuaded/convinced CZM to screw/ignore the 1% allocation. lol. Now it is taking up close to 50% of our net worth.

Our WhatsApp group chat

In addition, I started exploring DeFi with my friends (some of you can probably tell why it was named that way. Hint: BSC. lol) and eventually we started a crypto business with just US$3k capital. It is currently generating conservatively a few thousand dollars of passive income monthly (probably not that passive for my friends because they are doing the heavy lifting/coding. lol). It is a crazy amount for us because this was achieved in months as compared to our dividends portfolio which we spent years building.

Besides crypto, another factor that contributed to the growth of our wealth is the use of leverage.

Debt/leverage breakdown:
Stocks - SG$271,199
Crypto - US$75,269 (~SG$101,433)
House - SG$350,538

Total: ~SG$723,170

I believe the amount of debt we have taken might make some of you sleepless but it isn't really that much. If you think about it, anyone buying a private property without investing would have taken on much more debt but grow their wealth much slower (just my opinion). Anyway, we borrowed ~SG$372k to invest and it has exceeded our mortgage of ~SG$350k. Once again, leverage isn't for everyone and most importantly, never put yourself in a position where there is a high chance of being liquidated/margin call.

Let me introduce the concept of net worth and its importance once again for the new readers.

Net worth can be calculated by taking all the assets and subtracting away all the debts/liabilities. This is the classic comic where everyone is actually poorer than the beggar who has a net worth of $2.73. Your friends/colleagues may be living in a huge condominium, driving some fancy car but it could all be financed by debts. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as their income allows so but anything can happen! Do not be the The "Poor" Pilot With Multiple Properties. You can refer to the following article on the importance of net worth by InvestmentMoats - Don’t Track Your Expenses or Budget First. Plot Your Net Worth Instead

Cash
This is all the money we have in our savings accounts. Regular readers will know we are investing aggressively that we hardly keep/hold onto cash. No emergency fund as well which I do not recommend since it is personal finance 101. We felt that there's no need for it at the moment, will probably work start saving when CZM retires?

Our Cash: ~ $25,000

CPF
Every month, I will try to show CZM her net worth in order to motivate her to work harder towards financial freedom. However, she would always say I inflate her net worth because I included CPF. lol. I am sure some of you may have the same mentality but like I always tell her, CPF is our money and should be included as our retirement planning.

Our CPF: ~ $380,000 (OA + SA + MA)

Investment - Stocks/TradFi
The return through the use of leverage is not being captured and should be higher. Anyway, our overall time-weighted return is 18.01% and XIRR is 6.99%. The majority of our portfolio is tracked using StocksCafe except for Endowus which is about 35k and we have about 271k of leverage/debt. You can refer to Portfolio - December 2021 for the detailed breakdown.

The screenshot was taken after 2021 so numbers will not tally

If you are interested in the smart portfolio tracker (StocksCafe) which I am using as shown above, sign up using my link for a longer trial period :) Refer to our Referrals page for more information.

Our Investment: ~$756,000

Investment - Crypto/DeFi


The majority of our crypto investments are in Terra. You can refer to Portfolio - December 2021 for the detailed breakdown.

What's excluded:
- Crypto Business


I minted/purchased our first NFTs last year September. It costs about 3 LUNA or US$123 then. I sold one for 118 LUNA (~US$4,838 then or ~US$9k now) and kept the remaining 2. One of them (#10902) has a silver crown with a floor price of 250 LUNA or ~US$20k and the other (#9868) is a top 5% glitch punk. Both of them are much rarer than what the floor is trading at but conservatively, they could be sold/valued at a minimum of ~US$40k in total. Of course, the most conservative valuation is 0 which is why they were excluded :)

Our Investment: ~$1,073,000

Property
I believe that property should be included in the computation of net worth. If one excludes the value of the property, the money (cash/CPF) you use to pay for the loan/mortgage will be no different as disappearing into the thin air or throwing it into the sea. Hence, I will be valuing the property based on the total payment (interest + renovation cost) till date. This ensures that our money will not "disappear" and act as a floor/minimum amount (total payment + remaining loan + markup/profit) to sell in the future.

I can imagine people selling their house at market value + markup, thinking that they made money from the sale but it is totally possible that market price + markup < total payment + remaining loan. Does this make sense or is it too confusing? lol.

Anyway, the cost of our HDB + the payment made so far is ~520k and the current outstanding loan is 351k.

Our Property: ~$168,000

Total


Our Net Worth: ~$2,404,000

Here you go! Our net worth pie chart, it looks pretty yummy to me :) 


Oh, we also have about 465k miles which are just as valuable/useful as our NFTs at the moment and are valued at 0 dollars as well. lol.

Are you tracking your net worth?


On a side note, Futu's moomoo app free AAPL share sign-up promotion is back for this month. Do read the T&C here for more information. If you have yet to open an account, you can do so using our referral link :)

Accidentally clicked on the annoying ads? Let me thank you in advance as you are indirectly doing good as we will be Donating 100% Ads Revenue Going Forward!

You might be interested in these blog posts too:
2017 Net Worth: ~$510,000
2018 Net Worth: ~$640,000
2019 Net Worth: ~$886,000
2020 Net Worth: ~$1,107,000
- 2021 Net Worth: ~$2,404,000

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 :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Monday, January 17, 2022

Our CPF 2021

This is a slightly overdue post for a couple of reasons. Besides Baby Ong sleeping much later and staying awake much longer which translate to lesser me/blogging time, the honest truth is CPF yearly interest no longer excites me. lol. Anchor pays out much higher interest (~19%) per block (~6 seconds) vs once a year -.- You can take a look at our last article on how we are using Anchor to semi-retire :)

CPF plays a crucial role in retirement planning (probably not so much for us but might still be applicable to you) and should be managed accordingly. Our plan remains to max out MA (which will then overflow to SA/OA), then follow by SA (meeting the FRS) and let compounding take over to ensure that we will always be able to meet the new minimum sum in the respective accounts. Our CPF update will be done annually together with the interests that are being paid out. 

KPO's CPF

Age 31, Total CPF ~$179k

I was transferring OA to SA for higher interest once I started working and blogged about it here - CPF Milestone ($40k in Special Account) and The Power of Compound Interest. I stopped transferring and began to build up OA to prepare for our BTO HDB downpayment in 2018. There was a change in policy (HDB 想通了/achieved enlightenment. lol) and we can now keep up to $20,000 in OA. You can read about why we do not wish to wipe our OA here - Chiong Housing Loan or Take It Slow?

In 2019, we paid the remaining downpayment for our BTO, hence you can see a drop in OA. The plan now is to keep at least $20k in OA as a buffer in the event if we lose our job/income, we can still continue to pay off the housing loan for the next 2-3 years without any worry.

2 years back, we chose to refinance our HDB housing loan to a bank loan for a saving of ~$200 per month. You can read more about it here - My Experience with Mortgage Brokers - Redbrick and iCompareLoan. I also did CPF RSTU (7k to CPF SA) and Voluntary Contribution (VC) to CPF MA for tax optimization.


Interest received:
OA - $844.11
SA - $4,029.60
MA - $1,583.28

Total: $6,456.99

CZM's CPF

Age 31, Total CPF ~$201k

As we have been planning for CZM to retire early, we made sure that she has as much money as possible in her OA to contribute to the monthly mortgage. Based on our current mortgage of SG$1.5k, that's going to last us about 5 years once she stops working.


Interest received:
OA - $1,022.99
SA - $4,512.56
MA - $1,800.49

Total: $7,336.04

Together, the interest received are $13,793.03 :)


I have a spreadsheet that attempts to forecast CPF minimum sum and tracks how close/far are we to meeting/hitting the minimum sum. This is computed by adding OA and SA together (which forms RA when we hit 55). As of 2021, I have only met 70.85% based on the current minimum sum of $186,000 while CZM is at 81.56%. More than half the journey done to meeting FRS!


Something I like to do, assuming that CZM stopped working now and there will be $0 contribution to her CPF, will she be able to hit the minimum retirement sum? Using a finance calculator and her current SA of $104,887, the future value when we are 55 is $258,516. Pretty close to the lower bound of the estimation ($238,000 which is compounding the minimum sum at 1%). Regardless, I am pretty sure she will hit the minimum retirement sum even if she stops working this year as I will probably top-up her CPF using crypto profits. lol.


On a side note, Futu's moomoo app free AAPL share sign-up promotion is back for this month. Do read the T&C here for more information. If you have yet to open an account, you can do so using our referral link :)

Accidentally clicked on the annoying ads? Let me thank you in advance as you are indirectly doing good as we will be Donating 100% Ads Revenue Going Forward!

You might be interested in these blog posts too:
2017 Net Worth
- Our CPF 2021

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 :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Portfolio - December 2021

Last month, we celebrated Baby Ong turning 1 year old! Time flies! I'm guessing it was very fun for her (lots of presents too) but it was extremely tiring for us because we had to hold multiple parties across different days/weekends for our families and friends due to the covid visiting restrictions.

Last month has been a crazy month for LUNA as it broke all-time high a couple of times to reach a high of ~US$100. When that happened, I received a couple of DMs from FB and Twitter thanking me for sharing about LUNA. The thing is you guys made the decision to invest in it so thank yourself for taking the action and not me. Similarly, I wouldn't want you to be blaming me if things turn out the other way. Like Chicken Genius always says, "you burn, I burn more". lol. 

Interestingly, I also received the most ridiculous email/request since I started blogging many years back - someone actually reached out and asked for financial help after losing money/getting liquidated by trading speculatively on crypto (money which he needs to pay for his uni fees). I replied and told him the honest and harsh truth - there's zero chance an anonymous blogger is going to help him financially and there's no easy way out in life. Regardless, I hoped that he will overcome this difficulty and learn from his mistakes.

Anyway, our portfolio reaches another new high! It increased by 39.07% to $2,100,909 - $82,160.52 of capital injection and $508,044.82 of capital gain. This includes $271,199 of leverage/debt (gearing/debt ~14.82%).


If you prefer to look at numbers, this is the raw data used to generate the above bar graph. These numbers are as of the last day of the month.


"Cash Flow" is the amount of money being injected/withdrawn from the portfolio (buying stocks = +ve cash flow while selling stocks and collecting dividends = -ve cash flow)

SOLD
- None

BOUGHT
- Mapletree Logistic Trust (12,000 units) @ $1.870
- CapitaLand China Trust (20,000 units) @ $1.160
- Ascendas REIT (12,000 units) @ $2.920

We are going to change our plan again given that our crypto portfolio is much bigger than the stocks portfolio now. I am pretty sure that we will become crypto multi-millionaires *finger crossed* even if we stop investing more now. UST hitting US$10B market cap is just the beginning... 

Instead of converting the crypto back to fiat in the future to derisk, it makes more sense to just go back to stocks now. Another reason for doing that is we are planning to retire CZM soon but we are also planning to decouple and get 2 properties in the future (another 3 years once we reach MOP). Yes, that sounds like a boomer move but we are actually using leverage/good debt to convert crypto profit into physical assets. I believe no bank is going to lend her anything without an income or based on our crypto portfolio but we might be able to borrow using stocks as collateral. Grand plans or it could just be a dream. lol.

Hence, we took on more leverage (~SG$78k) by purchasing more REITs. The idea of using leverage is simple, borrow the money, buy a good/excellent REIT/stock, use the dividends to pay the interests, and keep the difference while ensuring that we will never get a margin call/trigger. Once again, leverage has its risk and is definitely not for everyone. We see it as our way of buying a second property without incurring any of those taxes (ABSD, rental income tax, etc.). You can take a look at this - Leverage Performance 2020.

Given that it is the last month of the year, I have contributed another $1,264 to my SRS to max it by year-end. As mentioned previously, I will be using only Endowus for my SRS as I proceed to move funds out of StashAway.

Our Monthly DCA for December - $1,264
$1,264 KPO's SRS - Endowus Loss Tolerance -60%

Dividends
The total dividends collected this month is $3,027.71The breakdown is as follows:

Company                                PayDate     Shares     Total
Frasers Hospitality Trust 29-Dec-21    4,000     $32.16
Mapletree NAC Trust         24-Dec-21    15,335    $525.37
First REIT                         17-Dec-21    9             $0.05
AIMS APAC REIT                 17-Dec-21    1,600     $40.00
Frasers L&C Trust                 16-Dec-21    24,297    $624.42
Sysma Holdings Ltd         15-Dec-21    10,000    $550.00
Mapletree Logistics Trust 14-Dec-21    8,000      $173.84
Parkway Life REIT         8-Dec-21      5,000     $178.00
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial 6-Dec-21      3,000     JPY 34,296.48 (SG$417.15)
Mapletree Industrial Trust 3-Dec-21      9,600     $333.12
NetLink NBN Trust         1-Dec-21      6,000     $153.60

Total dividends collected for 2021: $31,265.01
Average dividends per month for 2021: $2,605.42


According to StocksCafe, our projected dividends for 2022 will be around SG$3.2k! Deducting our estimated monthly interest of SG$120+, we should have around SG$3k per month of passive income.

StashAway

KPO

CZM

Capital: $25,222.39
Current: $‭‭‭‭27,126.11

If you are interested in StashAway, do use our referral link. You get $10,000 free management fees for 6 months and we will get $16!

If you want to extract those transactions information from StashAway, do take a look at this article - StashAway Transactions Parser.

Endowus


Capital: $29,430.00
Current: $35,725.48

I decided to invest my CPF OA a few months back and blog about it here - Investing CPF OA Through Endowus.

If you are interested in Endowus, do use our referral link for our readers! You will get S$10,000 managed free for 6 months ($20 equivalent) and we will get $20 too! This access fee has no expiry date.

Crypto
Tracking crypto investment becomes very painful when the number of coins increases or when I move across to different networks. Hence, to simplify the tracking, I will just be tracking the capital I put in vs the current value at the end of the month.


Capital: SG$186,623.00
Current: SG$‭‭‭1,078,702.58


If you prefer a pie chart. 

Crypto - FTX


I am holding some RUNE on FTX. Initially wanted to try out providing liquidity on Thorchain because of the unique ILP (Impermanent Loss Protection) but got lazy to deep dive further because the set-up was troublesome (new wallet, upgrade BEP2 RUNE to native RUNE, etc.).

FTX: We will receive 25.00% of your trading fees and you will receive a 5.00% fee discount on all of your trades.

Crypto - CakeDeFi


As mentioned previously, I withdrew majority of the DFI when it was unfreeze and sent it to Kucoin which I sold to purchase KDA and QRDO. It is showing "N.A." in my spreadsheet because I have already withdrew more than my initial capital already. In my opinion, CakeDeFi is still a good starting place for someone that is planning to try out DeFi/getting high yields in crypto without worrying about any rug and exploit. Alternatively, try Terra!

CakeDeFi - Deposits US$50 or more into your CakeDeFi account, you will earn US$30 in DFI and we will earn US$10 in DFI too.

Crypto - Kucoin


Similar to Kadena (KDA), I bought some QRDO due to Twitter Terra influencers. QRDO is supposedly the new tech/infra that will be onboarding institutional clients to crypto. Both allocations are kept small because of the lack of conviction.

Kucoin - You get stars after you complete certain tasks which can be exchanged for free USDT and random coin. To be honest, it looks complicated. You can check it out here.

Crypto - Celsius Network


I still have a bit of BTC and Celsius token which I accumulated previously while earning high interest using GUSD. No plans on moving them at the moment.

Celsius Network: Earn US$50 in BTC with your first transfer of US$400 or more and we will earn US$50 in BTC too.

Crypto DeFi - Harmony ONE & Avalanche

Wonderland (TIME) on Avalanche

Euphoria (WAGMI) on Harmony ONE

I started looking at other alternatives and decided to try out these OHM forked which I blogged about here - DeFi 2.0 - Protocol Owned Liquidity (OlympusDAO, Wonderland and Euphoria) back in November 2021. I average down and bought another US$2k worth of TIME when the price dropped to ~US$4k and have finally accumulated >1 TIME. Not going to allocate more money and will just watch it crash to 0 or huat. lol. Similarly, small allocation due to its risks.

Crypto DeFi - Terra


Astroport launched last month and I decided to lock about US$30k worth of LP for a year to get some astro tokens and to prevent my itchy finger from selling/trading anything. lol. Besides that, I have decided to become more aggressive by borrowing more UST from Anchor (if you compare against last month, our debt have almost doubled), buying LUNA and pledging back as bLUNA.

In my opinion, LUNA can easily go to 3 digits (it already did so maybe a high 3 digits xD) because it is based on the demand for UST which will only increase as time goes by where more projects are being launched (it is happening right now!), UST going cross chains, and getting listed on more exchanges. We have about 6.4k LUNA now with 57% of them staked, 35% in bLUNA used as collateral in Anchor and the remaining in the wallet/exchange.

Regardless, you can refer to our Terra portfolio on Ape Board below for a more detailed breakdown:


I have also created another wallet (non-ledger so we can use it more flexibily) and move some funds into Anchor for CZM's retirement which should give us US$3.3k (SG$4.4k) monthly of passive income. The interest here can be used to offset/pay for most of our daily expenses by using Bidali and Terra Cards to purchase gift cards (with UST) from Grab, Shopee, Amazon, Lazada, Redmart, Dairy Farm, Cold Storage, etc. without the need to off-ramp. We have decided to keep this wallet address private as there's nothing to see/learn except how we are living our semi-retired life.

I guess this is what they meant by making life changing money from crypto. Our passive income is estimated to be around SG$7k conservatively but it is definitely much higher. At the start of 2021, we never thought we could accelerate our FIRE journey by so much. I remember telling CZM that we should be able to FIRE in the next 5 years but all it took was a few months into DeFi (specifically Terra LUNA). I am glad that I finally decided to take the plunge after all these years instead of sitting on the fence (know and read about it but not doing anything about it). Even CZM is a convert now who can transact on the Terra blockchain. lol.

2021 has been a great year for us and hopefully 2022 will be better! Huat ah!

Anyway, I have blogged about different ways to leverage crypto to build wealth for people with different risk appetites:

If you are interested in the platform I am using, do sign up using our referral links for some bonus :)
BlockFi: Deposits US$100 or more into your BlockFi Interest Account (BIA), you will earn US$10 in BTC and we will earn US$10 in BTC too.
Celsius Network: Earn US$50 in BTC with your first transfer of US$400 or more and we will earn US$50 in BTC too.
CakeDeFi - Deposits US$50 or more into your CakeDeFi account, you will earn US$30 in DFI and we will earn US$10 in DFI too.
Gemini: We will both receive US$10 of bitcoin after you buy or sell US$100.
Crypto.com: Sign up using our link, stake SG$500 worth of CRO and we both get US$25 in CRO
FTX: We will receive 25.00% of your trading fees and you will receive a 5.00% fee discount on all of your trades.

If you are interested in the smart portfolio tracker (StocksCafe) which I am using as shown above, sign up using my link for a longer trial period :) Refer to our Referrals page for more information.


On a side note, Futu's moomoo app free AAPL share sign-up promotion is back for this month. Do read the T&C here for more information. If you have yet to open an account, you can do so using our referral link :)

Accidentally clicked on the annoying ads? Let me thank you in advance as you are indirectly doing good as we will be Donating 100% Ads Revenue Going Forward!

You might be interested in these blog posts too:
2020 Net Worth
1% Net Worth to Crypto (I went down the rabbit hole and it is ~50% now. lol)
Portfolio - March 2021 - $866,309 
Portfolio - April 2021 - $946,521 $935,646
Portfolio - May 2021 - $952,839
Portfolio - June 2021 - $988,215
Portfolio - August 2021 - $1,179,579
Portfolio - October 2021 - $1,452,947
- Portfolio - December 2021 - $2,100,909

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 :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Saturday, January 1, 2022

Donating 100% Ads Revenue Going Forward!

Happy New Year everyone! Let's all work hard to make this year a better year!


We started the blog with the plan to document our FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) journey by 40 and I am proud to share with everyone that we have achieved the FI part this month! This means our passive income has exceeded our expenses and we can technically retire early but only one of us (CZM) is going to do that. Shall blog/share more information of our plans in the future when things are confirmed.

We have reached a stage where we are now comfortable with donating some money. In fact, we were contemplating whether to do it last year but the level of comfort just wasn't the same, hence it didn't happen. To be honest, we are very fortunate that we were not impacted by the pandemic, Baby Ong is growing up healthily and our wealth grew a lot during this period (mostly from crypto). The least we can do now is to donate and help the less unfortunate.


As a result, we have decided to donate 100% of the ads revenue from our blog going forward (I will round it up to the next hundreds). For the year 2021 (Dec 2020 to Nov 2021), our blog generated SG$559.02.


We have decided to donate SG$600 to these 3 charities:
- Children's Cancer Foundation
- Canossaville Children and Community Services
- Singapore Children's Society

Yes, the common theme is "Children". Ever since we have Baby Ong, I got to say our mentality/mindset have somewhat changed and we just hope that our donation will be able to help the less fortunate children as they definitely deserved better!

Full transparency - I will be getting a SG$1,500 (SG$600 * 2.5) tax relief which will translate into SG$172.50 tax savings (at 11.5% income tax rate).


Oh. For those that are in Terra, we have also donated US$108 to the restore earth campaign - https://finder.extraterrestrial.money/mainnet/tx/05687EE9DA7F6F4F9FF999000527E8484779E2D4565EAA629E4F1D4B4CAD38C6


Maybe I should set up a "KPO and CZM Anchor Fund" similar to the Angel Protocol using my tax savings for those 3 charities. How cool is that - a donation that will keep giving forever. Shall KIV this idea first. 

Hopefully, 2022 will be another great year! Huat ah!

On a side note, Futu's moomoo app sign-up promotion is slightly different every month (AAPL shares, cash coupon, etc. Do read the T&C here for more information). If you have yet to open an account, you can do so using our 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 :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)