Welcome to the inaugural post in yet another series in my finance blog – My Financial Breakdown.
No, I don’t mean the mental kind of breakdown. Though that seems increasingly likely as I begin to grasp how complex finance management is once you start adulting. Don’t even get me started on rising housing prices.
Anyway!
In this series, I intend to breakdown my finances in full as a 30-year old white-collar Singaporean. My income, my expenses, my savings and my investments. Essentially, I’m laying bear my net worth. 100% transparency as promised, down to the dollar.
In addition to that, I will try my best to explain the rationale behind my allocation and any changes I make. After all, our priorities change as we enter different life stages and in extension, the way we manage our finances. And now that I’ve finally hit the big 30, I’m at the stage of life where one has to sit down and seriously evaluate their finances and set some goals.
I intend to update this series on a quarter-yearly cadence so there are actual noticeable changes. And of course, because I can’t see into the future, whenever I update this series, it will be for the preceding quarter.
Before we hop in, allow me to establish some facts about myself.
1. My end goal is financial freedom.
The holy grail. The ultimate goal for every Singaporean aspiring towards FIRE.
And while everybody unanimously agrees that financial freedom is the elusive light at the end of the tunnel, it’s worth noting that it means different things to different people. Every individual’s definition – and the amount they associate with it – varies based on many factors such as upbringing, lifestyle aspirations and financial obligations.
For me, I personally define that by achieving a net worth of S$2 million. As for when I want to achieve this by… I don’t have a strict timeline since I’m still far off, but in the spirit of setting a SMART goal, let’s say 45.
45 years old. I want to achieve financial freedom by the time I reach 45.
In other words, I have just under 15 years to make this a reality.
Oh, and just to be crystal clear, this figure excludes my first property.
I have already done some quick math with the help of trusty ol’ Claude based on my existing net worth and worked out that this is actually possible. A couple of factors have to go in my favor such as my salary growth and market movements, but to be entirely honest, it isn’t as far-fetched as I initially thought.
Here’s an outline of the allocation I’m aiming to achieve in 15 years time.
2. I want to generate passive income from my assets.
Kevin O’Leary, one of the sharks on the infamous Shark Tank who achieved his wealth through shrewd investments in both the stock market and promising companies, loves investments that promise some sort of monthly payout. He’s infamous for cutting deals that involve royalties until he makes his initial investment back.
He likens this to owning an orchard of apple trees. With most growth stocks, the only way to realize a profit on them is to sell them off after they increase in value. This is the equivalent of nurturing your orchard of apple trees till they reach maturity and start bearing fruit. You then sell the entire plot of land to another farmer at a profit.
Yes, you earned a hefty profit. But you have nothing left. You have to let go of everything you own to make that profit.
Dividend stocks, on the other hand, let you enjoy the harvest without giving up ownership. You still hold the land, and every few months, you get to sell the apples.
I don’t just want a paper net worth of S$2 million.
I want my assets to work for me. If I ever want to retire early, I need my portfolio to generate income on its own. That’s why I plan to invest 50% of my total net worth into dividend-paying assets that reward me for holding them.
I document this journey in a separate series, Dividend Investing to $1 Million. Feel free to follow along if you’re keen to see how it plays out.
3. I come from a humble, middle-class family.
No, I’m not from PAP. I’m not saying this for extra brownie points. I actually mean it. (If you’re reading this Mr. Wong, sry I’m just kidding. Pls give me a good queue number for the Telok Blangah BTO also can?)
I didn’t receive any inheritance or a hefty cash injection when I started working. I don’t earn 5-digits at a FAANG company. I had a rough start to my corporate life with a low-balled salary and made multiple bad financial decisions in the past (and admittedly, possibly even now).
That’s why I firmly believe my net worth and ensuing journey at 30 years of age is and will be relatable to most.
As the icing on the cake, I’m also an avid fan of consumerism.
I don’t scrimp and save to an obsessive degree. In fact, I like to think I’m fairly liberal with my spending – as you’ll soon see with my expenses. Of course I don’t spend needlessly and too extravagantly, but I strongly believe that life is too short to not allow ourselves certain indulgences.
I don’t care what anybody says. Not getting that iced americano every morning and saving $3 a day isn’t going to change the course of your fate and make you a millionaire.
If this doesn’t make my journey relatable, I don’t know what will.
4. And most importantly… I’m not a financial expert.
I have never claimed to be some sort of money guru or licensed financial advisor. I’m only a regular millennial documenting how I’m managing my finances and growing my net worth. I simply want to ensure I’m fully prepared for the upcoming milestones in my life and to provide a comfortable life for me and my loved ones.
I will make mistakes. I’m sure of it.
But nobody’s perfect and to err is human. We’re all figuring things out as we go along. All that matters is that we learn from our mistakes and never, ever make it again.
And hopefully, as you follow along this series, you’ll pick up some tips and tricks or learn how to avoid making those mistakes yourself too so you can fast-track yourself towards your financial goals.
I think that about covers it. If you have any other questions, feel free to pop them in the comments below. If you’re shy and introverted like me, you can always email me instead.
Anyway, onwards to my finances!
My Financial Snapshot
Monthly Income
Figured it’d be nice to kick this off by disclosing my income. I only have one reliable source of income at the moment, which is my salary. And as you can see from the screenshot below from my Budget Planner, I earn S$6,500 every month from my full-time job. After CPF, this leaves me with a take-home pay of S$5,198.
Notice how I have a Miscellaneous row? That’s for everything else. Government payouts, angpao money, striking $10m Toto… all goes under this income category. The sum in the February column was the angpao money I received during CNY.
And of course, the last income source I have listed is my blog. I have been transparent about my desire to monetise this blog, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. I highly doubt I’ll be able to monetize it this year – or maybe even the next – but I have included it just in case.
As the saying goes, money in, money out. Once I receive my salary, I immediately transfer them into separate accounts, each with a distinct purpose. Here’s how I allocate my income:
$1,800 into savings
$1,700 for expenses
$1,700 to investments
Monthly Expenses
The most dreaded portion of this section. I genuinely winced when I was taking the screenshots and creating the relevant charts in preparation for this overview.
As mentioned before, I budget about $1,700 to spend on expenses every month. Take away my fixed expenses, and I have around $1,200 left to spend on everything else.
The $505 is my fixed expense, or recurring expenses
At this point, you probably have lots of questions. But let’s go one by one, starting with…
Why the hell are my fixed expenses so high?
In lieu of an answer, let me just show you.
A half of my fixed expenses every month goes to my mom’s allowance. Yes, I’m grateful that she’s satisfied with such a small amount. I also pay my own phone bill (it’s expensive because I needed a plan that provided cellular data for my Apple watch and it’s not available with SIM only at that point in time) and my gym membership, while reasonably priced in my opinion, isn’t cheap by any means.
I have already cut out the non-essential subscriptions earlier this year. The subscriptions I have here right now are important enough to me to justify their price tags.
Next up… the all important question: how the hell am I spending so much every month?
Once again, let me show you.
Below is a table of my April spendings. (I plan to refine the categories next quarter to better capture where my money’s going, so bear with it for now)
While the sub-categories aren’t the most defined, it’s clear that the bulk of my expenditure lies in entertainment-related spending. Specifically with games and social outings.
… Yes. I know it’s bad. I’m aware I have a problem. You don’t have to tell me.
Anyway, while my spending varies from month to month, they mostly follow a similar allocation as April. So it’s quite obvious what the areas I need to cut down on are.
Monthly Savings
Let’s talk savings now. Unlike my expenses, this portion is thankfully pretty straightforward.
I typically allocate a minimum of $1,800 to my savings every month. It was a little lower in the beginning of the year due to some special circumstances, but I’ve been keeping to this in Q2.
Monthly Investments
I dedicate about $1,700 to investments every month. This is an amount I refuse to compromise on as I understand how important investing is towards my goal of financial freedom.
This number does fluctuate throughout the year. You can see this most notably in February when I invested a total of S$3,400 (big shoutout to my family and relatives for funding my FIRE initiative over CNY). It became more consistent in Q2.
Let’s now dive a little bit deeper into the investments I’m holding.
1. Stocks
Value: S$40,964
Portfolio Allocation: 47%
Platform: Syfe
I am heavily invested in stocks, with this asset class taking up 47% of my entire investment portfolio.
Stocks have traditionally been considered a risky asset class.
I’m comfortable with this though, since I’m still (relatively) young. I can afford to take on more risk as I don’t have many responsibilities yet.
As a famous somebody once said… “If not now, than when?”
2. Bonds
Value: S$6,702
Portfolio Allocation: 7.8%
Platform: Syfe
Bonds typically trade in opposite directions from stocks. When the markets are volatile, investors flee to safer assets. Bonds are one such asset class, and when demand for something rises, so does its price.
Consider it a counterweight of sorts for all the stocks I hold.
On top of that, bonds are a highly reliable source of passive income. I personally invest in Syfe Income+, a diversified portfolio of global bonds managed by PIMCO, the world’s largest fixed income manager.
3. Crypto
Value: S$5,934
Portfolio Allocation: 6.9%
Platform: Crypto.com
I definitely fit into the finbro archetype, so crypto being in my portfolio should come as no surprise.
I mainly invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum and stay far, far away from meme and altcoins.
Yep, I’m boring as hell.
4. ILPs
Value: S$16,565
Portfolio Allocation: 19.2%
Platform: Great Eastern
Welcome to the bane of my existence. ILPs stand for Investment Linked Policies and I have a sizeable amount invested in it.
I bought this from a friend in the past out of support for his insurance career. I knew it wasn’t a wise investment, but damn, never even in my wildest dreams did I expect it to be this bad.
I won’t elaborate too much here. I explain more on why it’s a bad investment choice in my plan for H2.
5. Money Market Funds
Value: S$502
Portfolio Allocation: 0.6%
Platform: Maribank
Money market funds are mutual funds that invests in short-term, low-risk financial instruments. An example is T-bills, which is essentially lending money to the government. Naturally, since governments are (typically) stable, such investments are considered very safe with almost zero default risk. Depending on the fund provider, you also get interest paid out to you on a daily or monthly basis.
Sweet stuff, right?
The best part, however – and the main reason why I have money invested here – is its unparalleled liquidity. You can pretty much withdraw your money anytime or at very short notice, most of the time within 24 hours.
This makes it the ideal place to park idle cash I don’t need in a hurry but also have no immediate use for.
I don’t have much in here at the moment because I don’t have much savings period, but you can be certain that I will deposit more in the near future.
Overall Allocation
Lastly, this is how my portfolio asset class allocation currently looks like. Expect it to change somewhat over the course of this series – I plan to slowly grow the bonds (to offset my exposure to stocks) and MMFs (for more liquidity in case of emergencies) portion and reduce how much I have in fixed deposits.
My Net Worth
Great! Now that we’ve established what my finances look like, we can move on to how much I’m really worth.
As a reminder, I am a Singaporean Citizen. I’m 30 years old this year. I have been working for about 5 years now in Marketing, give or take a couple of months. This is a complete overview of my net worth as of time of posting in early July of 2025.
Assets
1. Savings
I figured I’d ease you guys in and there’s really no better place to start than my savings.
Mainly because I don’t have much, so it’s going to be a short section.
I mean, I always knew that I wasn’t the most stocked up in that department, but now that I have it down in actual numbers staring back at me…
Damn, I really got to do something about this.
For full transparency, when I say savings, I’m actually referring to the amount of cash I have on hand. It must be highly liquid. In other words, I’m literally able to get my hands on it within a day and deploy it wherever I wish.
My savings are kept in two platforms at the moment.
One, a DBS Multiplier account that yields me about 1.8% every year. This is currently where my salary is credited to and serves as my base savings account.
Two, a Maribank savings account that yields me about 1.9%* every year. This is where I intend to park additional cash over the minimum amount of savings I want to have at any point in time. Maribank guarantees instant withdrawal from this particular savings account (don’t mix this up with Mari Invest SavePlus, the MMF I mentioned in the above section, which offers higher interest rates but only supports instant withdrawal up to S$10,000) so I’m comfortable putting my emergency cash here.
Disclaimer: this rate is as of time of writing. Take note that this rate does change quite often so I can’t guarantee that it will still be the same when you’re reading this. Make sure to do your own research first!
My goal is to build up my savings till I have S$10,000 and S$5,000 in my DBS and Maribank accounts respectively. I want to achieve this by the end of the year, and since there’s only 6 months left of this year, I need to save roughly S$1,500 a month out of my salary.
It’s 100% doable – I have been doing this for the past few months. The only problem is that I almost always end up overspending which results in me digging into my savings. It’s a bit like two steps forward, one step back. So even if there’s any progress, it’s been painfully slow.
Jialat. I know. No need to tell me. But that’s why I started this blog. To become more accountable to myself.
2. Investments
I’ve been investing for a little more than 6 years now. I’m not sure what the exact number is, but it definitely took me some time to get to where I am today.
And as you can see, my investments take up a very, very sizeable chunk of my net worth.
Fun fact: I actually started investing when I was still studying in University. I started out with an insignificant amount at that time since I didn’t have a stable salary. Naturally, due to the small capital, the returns weren’t much in the beginning. My portfolio only really started growing when I started working and drawing a salary.
3. Insurance Policies
This was a tricky one. I deliberated for a long time whether I should include my insurance in my net worth. I have no clue whether it’s common practice to do so since insurance isn’t guaranteed money per se. It’s a plan to safeguard your future in the event of certain incidents.
But that’s where I was wrong. According to Gemini (a lifesaver for deep research, you guys need to try it if you haven’t yet), while certain insurance policies indeed have no part to play in an individual’s net worth calculation, there are some plans with surrender values.
A policy’s surrender value refers to the cold hard cash you receive upon early termination.
Typically, only life insurance plans have surrender values. And coincidentally, I have two of them to my name bought by my mom many, many years ago when I was still in my diapers.
Here they are with their corresponding surrender values as of June 2025 included in my net worth calculation.
4. CPF
CPF presents yet another question: should I be counting every account towards my net worth? OA and SA should naturally be calculated since I will gain access to most of them in the future.
But what about MA? I am only able to use it for medical purposes. It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to exhaust it (hopefully not anyway) and most of it will end up being unused. If that’s the case, is it right to even add it to my net worth?
This blogging stuff really ain’t easy.
Once again, Gemini comes to the rescue with a compelling argument to include every account.
Just because I might not use all the money doesn’t mean I can’t. This logic applies to all my CPF accounts, not just MA.
What matters more is my ability to spend the money — and in the case of MA, I can definitely use it to cover future medical bills. That’s justification enough to include it in my net worth.
That said, CPF funds — especially those with restrictions like MA — aren’t as flexible as cash or investments. So while they deserve to be included, they shouldn’t carry the same weight. Their limited utility means they’re less “valuable” than funds I can use freely.
So yeah. That was my thought process. And here’s how much I have in my CPF, split by accounts.
Liabilities
I consider myself lucky as I don’t currently have any outstanding payments or loans. I pay off my credit card in full every month, so I genuinely don’t have any other liabilities. This section is going to remain empty for now, but don’t worry – I’m sure this will change in the next couple of years once my partner and I get our BTO.
Just the thought of all the things that we’ll need to buy then makes me sweat, ngl.
Until then… let me enjoy my debt-free life la.
Total Net Worth
If you’ve read everything up to this point, color me impressed. I feel like I tried too hard to give context and ended up regurgitating my entire life story.
If you skipped all the previous sections straight here, fair play to you as well. Work smart, not hard, huh?
Anyhow, here’s my entire net worth as a 30 year old Singaporean man who has worked for slightly more than 5 years.
I tried to dig online and find data on what the mean or even median net worth of Singaporeans around my age is, but such information is (understandably) hard to find.
So… I will refrain from making any guesses on where I am in life compared to others. Besides, comparison is the thief of joy. I’m just going to focus on myself.
Takeaway & Reviews
One of the reasons I decided to start this blog is to force myself into action by properly reviewing my finances. After all, I can’t exactly call my self sgfinanceguy if I don’t know what my own finances are like, right?
It’s funny how having everything broken down into actual numbers in front of you rather than a mere estimate in your mind forces you to take things more seriously. I used to look at these numbers separately. How much I have left in my savings account. How my investment portfolio is doing. How my CPF value is growing.
In isolation, everything seems okay-ish. I know I’m not going to buy my own private jet anytime soon, but I was under the impression that things are good.
Zooming out, it’s really not as good as I thought. At the very least, I need to work on certain areas if I want to achieve FIRE by 45.
Here are some of my main takeaways.
1. I need to grow my income.
I strongly believe you can only reduce your expenses to a certain extent before your quality of life begins to suffer.
That’s not to say that I can’t cut my expenses further. It’s quite the contrary actually. Anybody can see that I’m spending way too much. I intend to touch upon that in the next point.
But the fastest way to financial freedom is not through only cutting your expenses and neither is it just by growing your income, but a combination of both.
Unfortunately, this is not a short-term goal. It’s going to take me time to build multiple streams of income. But most importantly, I’m going to get started on this in the second half of 2025 with the goal of hopefully making it a reality sometime in 2026.
2. I’m spending too frivolously and need to cut back.
I’ve exceeded my budget for 6 months straight, and my emergency savings are stuck at $6,000.
There are two ways to look at this.
I’m allocating an unrealistic amount to expenses every month or;
I’m spending way too much
This is where my budget planner comes in handy in showing me where my money is actually going.
The main takeaway is that essentials only account for 40% of my expenses.
The biggest categorical expenditure over the past quarter is actually in entertainment. I have also spent a sizeable amount on games (yes, I still play games from time to time to unwind… all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!) and shopping.
These are all areas I can easily cut down on. Okay, maybe it isn’t exactly easy since I’m a big fan of consumerism, but it’s not a big ask. It will simply require lots of discipline and self-control.
I’ll try my best. As the Chinese saying goes, 先苦后甜. This is a small sacrifice for a better life in the future.
3. I need to track my expenses better.
I noticed that I need to do a better job of categorizing my expenses.
This point is complementary to cutting back on my expenses. After all, I need to first identify the areas I’m overspending in order to take action.
I have way too many expense records parked under “Others”. This wasn’t an issue in the past as:
I, well, didn’t care too much about what I was spending on
I usually leave a comment on the monthly view to remind myself what the money was spent on
But that’s not going to cut it anymore when I’m making a concerted effort to cut down my expenses and want to know where every dollar is going.
And to be fair to myself, this is also because of my shift in lifestyle as I move into another stage of life. When I first created this Budget Planner, I didn’t have that many expenses. These main and sub categories were more than sufficient.
But now that I have a partner… hmm, how do I phrase this without getting into trouble? My expenses have gotten more… diverse.
So yep, time to rework my categories so it’s apparent at a glance where my money is going.
4. My investments are doing decently, but I need to diversify.
I cover this quite extensively in my Dividend Investing to $1 Million series.
In summary, I have too big of an exposure to US securities. This means that I’m highly susceptible to happenings in the US and I’m not the most comfortable with Trump at the wheel.
Besides, the US continues racking up debt. At this point, there’s growing doubt whether they can even repay the interest on government bonds. Other countries are hesitant to buy more bonds, and bond yields has increased to numbers unseen since XXXX when XXXX was still president and the internet was not invented yet.
Heck, the phone was still a legitimate murder weapon back then with its brick-like size and weight.
In short, experts are hedging their bets on when the entire structure collapses under the weight of their debt.
But let’s get it straight. US remains a global economic powerhouse. I don’t think that’s going to change in the next decade. And I will continue investing relatively heavily into US securities.
I’m just reducing my risk by betting on other economies around the world. And I don’t have to look too far from home for my first choice.
SGX.
I’ll expand on this in my H2 Plan segment below.
5. I still have lots to aspects of my finances that can be optimised further.
Optimising my finances is something on my to-do list for the longest time, but I have never gotten around to actually doing it.
Why?
It’s an almighty herculean task, that’s why.
That, and I’m incredibly lazy.
Now, I don’t think I’m the most financially literate guy out there. After all, I only really got into investing about 3 years ago. And while I might possess a tiny amount of investing knowledge since I’m genuinely interested in it and read up on it in my free time, that’s just 1 small aspect of an individual’s finances.
Insurance. Credit cards. Bank accounts. Property. Those are some crucial areas that play a big part in one’s finances besides investment that spring immediately to mind.
I have as close to zero knowledge as possible regarding everything there.
Absolutely nada. Zero. Kosong.
To put into context just how clueless I was (or still am, to be honest, I’ve gotten only slightly better), I have been using one bank my whole life for my banking needs – DBS/POSB.
To be honest, that’s actually fine. As long as you’re putting money in the right accounts.
Up to roughly 2 years ago, I have been using my POSB Savings account that my mom opened for me when I was a kid for salary crediting.
This account does not earn any interest.
Just one example of how much of a mess my finances were in the past.
I have taken baby steps towards rectifying this throughout the course of this year such as opening a DBS Multipler account and storing the bulk of my savings within it, but I still have a long, long way to go.
As usual, tentative plan outlined below.
My Plan for H2 of 2025
Going into the second half of the year, it’s obvious to me that I need to lock-in.
I may have derailed slightly in the first half of 2025, but the damage isn’t too bad. Since it’s still salvageable, I just need to stay disciplined and steer myself back on track in the second half.
Let’s go over every section one by one.
Income
Growing one’s income feels like an impossible task. I’m sure everybody who’s in corporate feels this way – your annual pay increment feels nothing more than an adjustment for inflation and bonuses are few and far between nowadays, if at all.
Having been in start-ups my entire life, I understand entirely.
So… it should come as no surprise that my salary doesn’t play a starring role in my income growth plan.
Rather, I’m planning to start and grow new streams altogether. Here are two streams of income I’m planning to explore with some degree of groundwork already laid out.
Blog
Digital Templates
Referrals
Sponsorships (Very far away for now, and not reliable as I’m going to be very selective)
E-commerce
Health & Wellness supplements
Realistically, I don’t expect income in the next 6 months. My goal is just to build a solid foundation to scale next year.
Savings
The goal for my savings is simple – I want to grow it to $15,000. That’s the minimum amount I want in my bank account and within easy reach.
As to why $15,000, I really don’t have a concrete answer for you. Put simply, I believe it’s more than enough to cover any emergencies at this point in my life.
Previously, when I was in my early to mid 20’s, $10,000 in savings was more than enough for me. But now, as I’m entering another stage of life and my expenses have diversified, I’m no longer comfortable with keeping it at $10,000 and decided to bump it up a little.
And more often than not, there’s no “right” amount to have as savings. Some people say 3-6 months worth of salary, some say a year worth of essential expenditure.
At the end of the day, it boils down to what makes you comfortable. As long as having that amount in your bank keeps you at ease, it’s justification enough.
Anyway! To achieve this amount by the end of the year, I need to save $8,000 over the next 6 months. Do some quick math, and I need to save roughly $1,350 every month.
That’s very doable. In fact, I’m saving more than that every month. As long as I don’t dip into my savings because I overspend, I’m good.
Which brings me to my next point.
Expenses
So… here we are.
The main reason why my savings continue to dwindle every month.
I have two expense-related goals I want to accomplish in the second half of 2025.
1. Reduce my expenses
There’s not much to elaborate on this. My plan is simple – reduce my expenses by cutting out certain “luxury” purchases/experiences.
Some examples of changes I intend to make are:
Cooking at home more often instead of eating out
Totally cut spending on games (GTA 6 comes out next year anyway)
Limit retail spending to only the most essential of items
These changes should be sufficient to keep my spending under $1,700, bringing me a step closer to my savings goal.
2. Rework my personal budget tracker’s expense categories
I touched upon this in my takeaways above. I intend to rework all my expense categories (both primary and secondary) so I can better capture the nature of my expenses at a glance. I already have an idea how to do it. At the risk of sounding incredibly nerdy, I’m genuinely excited about as it will allow me to have clearer data on my spending habits and allow em to make better informed decisions.
Investments
My investments are quite literally the only aspect of my finance that I’m relatively happy with. It’s been doing well over the past few years, steadily growing even though the market hasn’t been the most cooperative with crazy up and down swings. But as the famous saying goes: there’s always room for improvement.
Let’s tackle this one by one.
1. Stocks
Starting with my biggest asset allocation – stocks. Put simply, too much of my stock portfolio is invested in US-based companies. I’m uncomfortable keeping around 85% of my current portfolio invested in the US, especially when the future is so uncertain with tariffs negotiation still ongoing and Trump’s erratic decisions.
So, I plan to combat this by heavily investing into Singapore stocks over the next half of the year. I might dip my toes occasionally into the US market if opportunities that are too good to pass up present itself, but for the most part, I’m going to be focused on Singapore stocks.
My eyes are on DBS and OCBC. Those are the two Singapore stocks I will definitely be buying into. I will be on the lookout for 1 or 2 more stocks to add to my portfolio that tick the following 3 boxes:
not in the finance industry (I don’t like putting all my eggs in one basket since I already have DBS & OCBC) and;
have incredible financials and growth trajectory over the past 5 years and;
operates a business I (kind of) understand
2. Fixed Deposits
Fixed deposits are my second biggest asset class allocation by value. I have it invested in Syfe’s Cash+ Guaranteed, which promises a certain amount of payout at the end of the lock-in period based on prevailing interest rates. This made plenty of sense back in the first half of the year when interest rates were high and I was yielding around 3% p.a., but that is no longer the case. Since rates continue to drop and are only at 1.8% now, I am looking to move my money out of my fixed deposit account into another asset class to make better use of my capital.
The tentative plan is to shift some of it into stocks to fund the purchase of DBS because a lot (100 shares) of the most valuable company in Singapore is expensive at around $4,500. I can’t afford to DCA into it every month, so this money goes a long way.
Another possible destination is a high-yield bank account. I’m considering opening a UOB One savings account as it offers up to 2.3% interest on your first S$75,000 as long as you fulfill 2 easy-to-hit criteria:
Spend min. S$500 on eligible UOB card and;
Credit your salary via GIRO
This rate is already higher than what Syfe is offering with their Cash+ Guaranteed.
3. ILPs (Investment Linked Policies)
This is the last big change I intend to make. I have a fair sum of money locked up in ILPs with a current value of more than $16,000.
Without preamble, I want to put it out there that this is one of the biggest regrets of my life. I firmly park it in between dating my ex and playing Valorant during its beta launch.
I am currently contributing $350 into it every month. This might not sound like much, but it’s 20% of the $1,700 I set aside for investing on a monthly basis!
But to be honest, that’s fine. I can justify it if the returns are decent. Keyword here being if.
My ILPs are currently worth $16,600. My capital investment adds up to $14,700. My total returns so far is about $1,900, or 13%. Over 3 and a half years, this translates to roughly 3.7% p.a.
Three point seven.
That’s literally close to the fixed deposit rate just a year ago.
Disclaimer: I’m not expecting generational level gains, but this is just absurd considering these portfolios I’m invested in are heavily equities-based.
And even though the gains are really shitty, I can’t just withdraw it immediately. There’s an early withdrawal penalty. This penalty fee decreases by 10% every subsequent year, so I’m only allowed to withdraw the full amount without any penalty on my 11th year.
Thankfully, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I can opt to stop contributing from my 5th year by applying for a premium holiday. As of July 2025, I have paid for 3 years and 7 months of it so far, leaving me with a year and 5 months left to go.
Once I’m able to cancel my monthly premium, you can bet that I’m immediately doing it. It hurts my heart when I think about how much this decision has caused me. Opportunity cost on full display right here.
4. Everything Else
My crypto, bonds and MMF are not worth mentioning too much. At the very least, I’m not going to make any big changes to them in this upcoming quarter.
TL;DR: My To-Dos for 2025 Q3 & Q4
Build and grow new revenue streams
Keep working on my blog
Grow my E-commerce store
Increase my savings to $15,000
Save $1,350 every month
Cut down on my expenses
Keep my expenditure to $1,700 every month
Rework my personal budget tracker’s expense categories
Optimize my investments
Shift out of Syfe Cash+ Guaranteed into other assets with better growth potential
Invest into SG stocks (DBS, OCBC etc.)
And there we have it! A comprehensive summary of my net worth and accompanying financials. I hope you now have a better idea of what ground zero is for me.
For me, I’m excited as to what the future holds. Breaking down everything to such a granular level took a lot of work, but it was definitely worth it considering the insights I gleaned in the process.
This is only the beginning of my journey towards FIRE. Follow me along this bumpy ride if you’re interested in more content like this.
Until the next one. Stay safe, stay healthy, and above all, stay invested.
Aspiring millionaire trying to achieve financial independence through any ethical means possible. And every year that passes without me reaching my goal, the ethical requirement gets just that tiny bit smaller.
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