Net Worth and Life Update (July 2020) – S$248,045

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Written by Liz

Just your regular 27-year-old, queer, super-introverted, FIRE-chasing, frugal Singaporean, who lives a pretty good life while earning only a modest salary, but still plans to retire at age 40 with $1,000,000. Click here to read more

August 2, 2020

Hi! Welcome back to another month-end net worth and life update.

Every month, I track my net worth progress towards my $1,000,000 milestone, which is how much I need to retire early. Let’s find out how July 2020 went.

Life Updates for July 2020

As usual, because of the COVID-19 situation, there haven’t been many exciting events to update, but I’ll still try my best to make this as interesting as possible 🙂

Visiting Universal Studios Singapore

The most memorable event that I had the opportunity to enjoy this month was visiting Universal Studios Singapore (USS). Back in December 2019, I bought my girlfriend and I season passes (6-month passes) to USS. We were supposed to go frequently during the 6 months that we had our passes, but our plans had to be scrapped when USS closed due to the lockdown.

Thankfully, USS extended the validity of our passes and we were able to visit again sometime in July. It was lovely as usual, but there were insane queues to get in, and snaking queues just to sit on the rides.

I wasn’t comfortable with queuing up in an enclosed place with many other people, so all we did was sat on 1 ride (that didn’t have a queue), took pictures with animated characters, and then went shopping.

Universal Studios Singapore

Taking photos of Universal Studios from where there aren’t too many people.

Hershey's Chocolates

Shopping, because there was a sale for up to 70% off chocolates!

Craft beer

Having a beer in the morning in an empty restaurant. It was awesome.

I’m still working from home!

 Singapore is still in Phase 2, which means telecommuting is still the default. I’m extremely thankful for that, and I love working from home every day that I get to do so. I still don’t know when this will end, so I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.

Productivity for the month

I started a new niche site in late June 2020, and I spent July 2020 churning out content for the site. Progress is slow, as things always are when you first start something new.

I’ll definitely be posting more updates on this niche site monthly, so do keep a look out if you’re interested in that.

Other than the niche site, I still have tutoring and my part-time job, which adds up to about 30-40 hours a month. I’m still debating on whether to quit my part-time job at the end of the year.

Financial Updates for July 2020

And now, let’s get into the financial aspect of things. A few things to note, as usual:

  • I track my net worth in Singapore Dollars (S$)
  • But I also include a conversions to U.S. dollars (US$) in my net worth update.
  • At the time of writing, the exchange rate is S$1 to US$0.728.

Without further ado, here are all the numbers.

 

What’s my net worth?

Net Worth30 June 202031 July 2020Gain/Loss
Cash in Bank AccountsS$25,424S$26,804(+S$1,380)
Brokerage (Singapore)S$130,704S$128,341(-S$2,363)
Brokerage (International)S$36,243S$37,966(+S$1,723)
Retirement AccountsS$52,305S$54,934(+S$2,629)
Total Net WorthS$244,676S$248,045(+S$3,369)

As at 30 June 2020, my net worth was S$244,676, or US$175,395.

As at 31 July 2020, my net worth was S$248,045, or US$180,577.

My net worth reached another new high this month, though it’s not much higher than the “new high” that I hit last month back in June 2020. My increase in net worth was mostly propped up by the retirement contributions made into my retirement account. If you’re wondering why it’s higher than normal, it’s because my retirement contributions were for June 2020 (when I received my bonus). I’ll get July 2020’s contributions only in August 2020.

There wasn’t any activity in many of my accounts this month, especially because I had (stupidly) forgotten to make my monthly investments in the U.S. and international stock market. It was only when I updated my accounts that I realised that it had slipped my mind. Oh well, not much harm done I suppose. I’ll just double my investment for next month then. ?

What’s my asset allocation?

In my book, “Become a Millionaire and Retire Early on a Modest Salary”, which you can find right here and download for free, I explained why I’m aiming for an asset allocation that looks like this:

Here’s what my current asset allocation looks like:

Definitely still not ideal, but I’m slowly inching toward my ideal asset allocation.  

I don’t include retirement accounts as part of my asset allocation as they are sitting in cold, hard cash. (I don’t have much control over these retirement accounts.)

Also, I’ve decided to stop publishing the further details of my net worth. I’m not sure why, and it’s just a feeling, but I don’t feel too safe with excessive amount of financial details online anymore. I feel like the above provides sufficient financial information to follow along with my journey to financial independence and early retirement on a modest income, and I’ll continue to publish only the above until I decided to further tweak and update these monthly reports. ?

How was your July 2020?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting this blog.

Become a Millionaire and Retire Early on a Modest Salary Book Cover

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2 Comments

  1. Budget Life List

    Looks like July was a fun month for you! Your net worth looks stellar as usual! Keep up the inspiration! 🙂

    • Liz

      Aww thank you! Thanks for taking the time to stop by 🙂