KPO's Salary 2018

Another year has passed since I got promoted with a ridiculously huge (>20%) increment which I blogged about here - Salary - You Are Your Best Investment. I was given my new compensation package last week and it was still pretty decent (exceeded our expectation of 5% yearly). Monthly/Annual salary increases by 8.6% while the bonus remains the same in terms of the amount but decreases when converted to the typical measure of x number of months (1.4 months vs 1.71 months). Sounds like some mathematical problem sum? lol.

With that, I have unlocked another achievement - a tiny step into the 11.5% income tax bracket and will be doing all I can to bring myself down to the next tier:

- New Strategy: StashAway + Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS)

- CPF RSTU - Is It Worth It?

To be honest, I am not even a top performer, just slightly better than average. Some of my peers/batch mates who are the top performer got promoted again or those that changed job/company all have a higher salary than me and I am happy for them! I was once very motivated too (imagine receiving >20% increment last year and was prepared to give it your all again) until your manager tells you that you cannot be promoted again at the start of the year during goals/performance setting because too fast??? #gottowaitoneyearfirst

The frustrating part is when there are other "senior" people in the team who are doing exactly the same kind of work and are less effective/doing lesser when it comes to improving processes/automation/initiatives but getting a lot more pay. I guess they are already in the cruising stage! Oh well, I can imagine a few years down the road and I become part of those "senior" people and the new graduates will come in thinking KPO is earning too much for doing the same work as them.

It is pretty interesting to read my previous salary article (above) and see how my thinking/opinion towards money/time/life has changed...

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?

We still believe that time is limited and we definitely do not want to spend the majority of our time working. One year ago, I used to think that money is everything. If I were to look out and get a higher offer, I should just leave because that will probably accelerate our plan for early retirement/financial freedom too. However, the highest bidder may not be as attractive as I thought it would be. My current workplace is really almost perfect except for the above rant. lol.

Salary Spreadsheet
I have a spreadsheet to project our salary increment and track the actual increment. 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 10 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 2018, it is at $4,437 including the employer CPF and we are well above that :)

I will be using the 2016 median income ($4,056) as an example in the spreadsheet (because it was created then and I am lazy to change the numbers), 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).

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

All the best to our readers! Hope you get a nice increment too!

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Honeymoon to the United States - 2 Days 2 Nights in San Francisco

Continued from our previous post - Honeymoon to the United States - 3 Days 2 Nights in New York

Day 3

We took the domestic Alaska flight from EWR airport to San Francisco. Guess what, the flight duration from NY to SF is more than 6 hours! That's enough for us to fly from Singapore to Japan? I didn't know America is so huge (okay I am a sua ku). Thankfully, due to the time difference between NY and SF, we managed to "fly back in time" and reached SF around 10pm. We checked in at the nearby Four Points by Sheraton San Francisco Airport Hotel (free shuttle bus provided) and that basically sums up our first night in SF.

Effort A+!

Day 4
7:00AM - Breakfast checked
7:30AM - Check in @ The Park Central San Francisco checked
8:00AM - South of Market (SoMa) checked
9:00AM - Twitter HQ checked
9:30AM - San Francisco Cityhall checked
10:00AM - The Walt Disney Family Museum checked
12:30PM - Golden Gate Bridge checked
1:30PM - Lombard Street checked
2:30PM - Tony's Pizza Napoletana (award-winning pizza) checked
3:30PM - Coit Tower skipped
4:30PM - Fisherman Wharf / Pier 39 checked
7:30PM - Chinatown checked

Reality:

If you have been following from the previous post, you will notice that we have been waking up before 7am everyday. Yes, our travels are always highly ambitious as I always want to cover as much as we can. So I basically have to drag KPO out of bed every morning. Poor KPO CZM!

Back to our travels, we woke up and walked to the Dunkin Donut outlet near our hotel for breakfast. It was cheap - a burger + coffee only costs under $4 (and no need for tips haha). After that, we took a Uber from Four Points to our next hotel, Park Central San Francisco. We realized that Uber is much cheaper than Taxi because 1) the rate is generally cheaper, 2) no need for tips again. Furthermore, they have much more options/types of Uber - they have the normal Uber, Uber Pool, and Uber Express. Uber Express is something which we do not have in Singapore. It is cheaper than Pool but doesn't guarantee that you will be picked up and dropped off at the exact location that you requested. So you may have to walk a small distance so that it is more convenient for pick up/drop off. But the fares are really worth it! It is almost the same price as the public buses!

The view from our hotel room. The haze >.<"

Our initial hotel booking at Park Central did not come with free breakfast. However, KPO managed to find cheaper rate + breakfast from those OTAs (either Expedia or hotel.com) and did a Best Rate Guarantee claim with SPG. Before leaving the hotel, they also gave us free N95 masks due to the bad haze there. Good service indeed.

SoMa is just within walking distance from our hotel. Hence, we decided to explore the area by foot. However, it was probably too early so none of the shops were opened :( Tip: suggest people to only visit the area during afternoons/evenings. We then headed to Twitter HQ and Cityhall for some photo takings. Not that I have a Twitter account, but since we were there, why not.

Encountered hotel staffs protesting/on strike - One job is enough?

San Francisco City Hall

We took the local public bus to The Walt Disney Family Museum after that. The ticket costs $25 per pax. It introduces Walt Disney and his family, how he built his career and eventually the Disneyland theme park as well. It is quite interesting, but probably not meant for kids as the exhibitions can be rather wordy. We spent quite some time in the Museum and only left around 2pm.

Did you know Disney Snow White was created in 1938?

As Golden Gate Bridge is only round the corner, we took the free Presidio shuttle outside the Museum to the Golden Gate Bridge and took some photos there.

Limited visibility/view due to the haze :(

By that time, I was famished. Hence, we decided to try the Uber Express to the Tony's Pizza place. Tony's Pizza is home of 13-time World Pizza Champion Tony Gemignani. Thankfully, because of the odd meal hours, we did not have to wait very long for our turn.

Yummy!

After our late lunch, we decided to give Coit Tower a miss, and head straight to Lombard Street - the street which is famous for a steep, one-block section with eight hairpin turns. Lombard Street is also a stone throw away from the Fisherman Wharf!

Lombard Street!

Fisherman Wharf!

As the sky starts to darken by then, we decided to walk further down to Pier 39 first to catch a glimpse of the seals lying by the pier. I was only expecting a few seals, but was surprised to see the entire pier filled with seals! I wonder why the seals are only attracted to this pier.. hmmm.. Anyway, I highly recommend this place!

Look at all the seals!

Fisherman Wharf, on the other hand, has the Clark Quay vibe. It is filled with restaurants and souvenir shops. Bought some souvenir for our colleagues before we took Uber Express again to Chinatown for dinner. I am addicted to Uber Express! We ate dinner at Hong Kong Clay Pot Restaurant which has one of the best ratings on Google. Sadly, we were disappointed again. The portions were huge, but the food was mediocre in my opinion. After dinner, KPO forbid me from taking Uber Express again so we had to walk back to our hotel! What a Kiam Pok indeed. :(

This pretty much sums up our adventure at San Francisco. Travelling down to Yosemite the next day. Stay tuned to the next post. :)

You might be interested in these blog posts too:
- Honeymoon to the United States - 3 Days 2 Nights in New York
- Honeymoon to the United States - Renting a $275,888 Mercedes Benz Convertible with Hertz
- Singapore Airlines Suites Experience - SQ26 Singapore to New York
- Singapore Airlines Suites Experience - The Private Room

- Singapore Airlines Suites - Book the Cook

- Redeeming KrisFlyer Miles for Singapore Airlines Suites = 38.6% Cashback!

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.)

Portfolio Performance in 2018

Let's take a look at how our overall portfolio did for the year 2018.

If you prefer looking at a graph. Ideally, the red line should be above the orange line >.<"

For the year 2018, our portfolio time-weighted return was -10.37% vs -6.63% (ES3: STI ETF). The overall performance since 2014 is -1.56% (time-weighted return) and 0.35% (XIRR). This is pretty bad and I will go into details later. If you are wondering what is the difference between time-weighted return and XIRR, do read this article by common fund. In short, XIRR takes cash flows into account while time-weighted return does not so the way they are calculated is different.

Looking at the top 5 losers and you can see that these are huge losses:
1. APAC Realty (average price $0.862 vs current price $0.465). This was one of our best investment when it went up to $1.20+. Then the cooling measure came and everything became a horror show. Looking at its latest quarterly financial report, its fundamentals have not changed so we will not be selling it. The possibility of averaging down exists.

2. QAF (average price $1.333 vs current price $0.595). Fundamentally, QAF has been struggling qoq/yoy and I should have sold it earlier. Oh well, it is now on the "cold storage" list. Definitely not averaging down.

3. CityDev (average price $9.963 vs current price $8.34) - Similar to APAC Realty, its price tumbled after the cooling measure falling from a high of $13+ and we decided it was a good time to attend. You can read about it here - Portfolio - August 2018. The possibility of averaging down exists.

4. Thaibev (average price $0.86 vs current price $0.615) - I have blogged about Thaibev a couple of times and continues to believe that it will come out stronger after the extremely expensive Sabeco acquisition. The possibility of averaging down exists.

5. Geo Energy Resources (average price $0.233 vs current price $0.182) - I just average down last month. You can read about it here - Portfolio - December 2018. The possibility of averaging down exists.

Ignore Ezion warrant (those are "free"), TSH is now a shell company after it sold everything and did a capital distribution and Gold shares are from StashAway portfolio.

Looking at the top 5 winners, 4 of them are REITs and that is why I love REITs so much. lol. They are less volatile (apart from those that do ridiculous rights issues, typically the "weaker" REIT without a strong sponsor) and pay out dividends regularly!

Generally, the market sentiment has been pretty weak and we have gotten more selective/humji.

Together, we have a capital flow/injection of $93,466.73! Capital flow is the amount of capital that is being injected or withdrawn from your portfolio where the dividends collected are considered as capital withdrawn. Our rate of saving/investing has dropped due to higher expenses from our wedding and honeymoon. It is around 50-70% of our salary this year.

Our portfolio gave us a total dividend of $14,347.58 at an average yield of 4.20%. That is $1,196.63 passive income per month! Unfortunately, the yield of 4.47% is below our target/expectation of 5%.

StocksCafe is even smart enough to project the dividends we will be getting for next year assuming everything remains constant. Seems like it is still at a low 4%, probably need to go back and hunt for REITs.

Based on our 10 years plan to accumulate a $1,000,000 portfolio for extremely early retirement (age 36), our target for this year was $357,268 and we have failed to the target despite injecting more capital than expected :( The current market value of our portfolio is $354,145 (close enough?). Our next year conservative target is $431,301 with a capital injection of $53,865. Our yearly target is pretty conservative as we believe our expenses will be growing exponentially year on year. Just like how some babies are unplanned, we bought First Class ticket on the first day of the year and will be flying to the United States again thanks to Cathay Pacific. We will also be getting our BTO house this year which means more $$$ flying away... We have yet to budget for baby/babies too so plan will change! Plans are made to change :)

Let's hope 2019 will be a great and better year for everyone and your investment!

You might be interested in these blog posts too:
- 2018 Net Worth
- Portfolio Performance in 2017

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.)