Year in review - 2019
TLDR: My investment journey 2019 - a review
It is that time of the year to rewind and reflect on the happenings of the year. Let us review the numbers.
I want to start off with my monthly savings rate (MSR). If you are not saving enough as a percentage of your income, then you are not going to FIRE early. I have written about this number being the most important number when it comes to retirement.
Monthly savings rate as a percentage of income
I have used end of 2017 as my base for the rest of the charts. So all the percentage increase is based on 2017 as the starting point. I am constantly adding to all of the portfolios every year, so the increases or not just from investment gains but also because of increase in investments.
Some of you will be surprised by these percentages with regards to salary growth, especially if you are in India. The typical salary increase in Singapore is between 3 and 7% annually. The reason being very simple. Singapore is a low inflation country with the 10 year average inflation is 1.66%. So salary increases reflect this but beating the inflation slightly.
Salary growth starting base of 2017 to 2018 and 2019
I post updates on my ETF portfolio on a quarterly basis with the actual size and counters that I deal in here, here and here. I am recently discussed about moving to index funds from ETFs and covered by kuvera portfolio of index funds. I invest in other funds over and above these listed which can’t really go into at the moment without revealing the size of my portfolio. Let us keep some things private still.
India portfolio value increase starting from end 2017 as base
I started creating a diversified global portfolio via robo advisor StashAway only from Nov of 2017. So this is a slow start which is why you will see massive jumps in the portfolio as a percentage. But the portfolio itself is quite small, but I aim to add to it over the next few years to make it sizeable country and currency hedge.
The investments are global and Singapore based ETFs across equities, bonds and REITs.
Global portfolio year on year increase from 2017 base.
Look ahead into 2020
I plan to continue on this path for 2020, creating a well diversified portfolio covering multiple markets, countries and currencies.
I am also in the process of building out my emergency fund and establishing a war chest in preparation of a correction / recession. So a higher percentage of my investments are going to be routed towards debt instruments in 2020. I expect a more subdued increase in my portfolio in the year 2020 because of that.
Conclusion
The post is not a humble brag about my portfolio, but rather a self accounting of how I am doing. It is to keep my current self accountable my future self. Provide the transparency to everyone who intends to learn from my experience through the blog.
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2020.
Good luck and Happy Investing.
