It was a tricky month. Mid-January I moved to a Spanish island off the coast of Africa, which was legally allowed with a negative Covid test, but judging myself it was still a silly idea. I am working from here for the time being.
Unfortunately, this led to very high spending since I did not shop around well enough for apartments and got a too expensive place, but featuring a sea view and a terrace.
The nice beach just outside my apartment
Spending and saving rate
In January I spent SGD 6,926 which is totally unacceptable. Because of high income I could save 64% of my income.
One of the worst months on record.
My spending was dominated by travel costs, but also some useless expenses, such as paying for my car and its garage a few thousand miles away, not cancelling my house cleaner (she depends on this job and i did not want to cancel) and paying utilities for the empty far away apartment.
Needless to say, costs would be different in retirement, as the above items would not be there, I would choose a cheap apartment etc.
Portfolio development
In January my portfolio increased from SGD 664,215 to SGD 690,843 (~USD 521,000). Fresh investments of SGD 9,100 were supported by gains of SGD 17,528.
In this strange bull market I am getting closer and closer to the magic USD 600,000 number, which allows withdrawal of USD 2,000 per month at a 4% withdrawal rate.
Making some lifestyle changes I could retire from corporate life at this amount, the thought is very comforting. My original plan from 2015 was to retire in 6 years from now at the age of 45. At that time it seemed tough, but now the markets have increased and so has my salary. If I stay healthy, I can retire quite a bit before the goal.
Dividends received
My holdings paid out SGD 627 of tax free dividends.
Asset allocation
I am currently buying bonds each month, to bring the bond allocation back up to around 20%. In March I had sold bonds to go bargain hunting for cheap stocks and REITs – was a bit of a gamble but paid off.
Renaissance man skills
I spend some time on the weekend learning Python, so much fun! I wrote a small script to automatically convert, rename and format all the images for this post. Before that I had to do this by hand.
Outlook
Mental health and fitness have improved quite a bit in one month of beach life with daily long walks and eating clean 80% of the time. Lean Financial Independence has a high chance of being reached this year, which helps a lot.