Year in review - 2022
The annual tradition of end of the year review continues in the blog. So how was 2022?
If COVID was considered the defacto news in all start conversation in 2021, then Russia / Ukraine conflict and inflation were the equivalent for 2022.
We finally managed to visit India after a break of 2.5 years, rushed but good trip mid year.
Now let us review the numbers.
Monthly Savings Rate (MSR)
Monthly savings rate as a percentage of income
Lots of pent up expenses and some splurges from my side as well
Vacation to India
New OLED TV
New home theatre system
Minor home renovation work
A few staycations
Some gifts for the family
So with these additional expenses, my MSR has fallen much more than expected. I thought I could get to a level of 30% MSR but guess not.
India Portfolio
India portfolio starting base of 2017
Unlike 2021 where there was a euphoria and sharp bounce flowing from May 2020 all the way. 2022 wasn’t quite the same. The increased interest rate environment and the recession word being thrown around didn’t help. But when compared to global markets India market was still doing well.
The increase in portfolio size by 16% is mostly due to fresh investments via SIP. I also revise the SIP amount every year in January by 5 to 10%. So this has given a boost to the overall value. Not great year for Indian equity performance but I will take it provided that it is still marginally positive.
Global Portfolio
Global portfolio value increase starting from end 2017 as base
Stashaway has been complete bummer with their ERA model which made all the wrong calls in 2021 and the performance was very poor. As a part of the annual review, I decided to exit Stashaway in favour of endowus which was easier. Choose globally diversified ETFs and they buy it for you. Yes, I could potentially do this myself directly via interactive brokers or some other trading platform but since I am planning to use SRS for these long term investments I decided to stick with Endowus.
The investments are global and Singapore based ETFs across equities, bonds and REITs. The portfolio is down 4% despite the monthly DCA (SIP) into it. Given that most of the heavy weight US indexes like S&P and NASDAQ are down more than 20% I am ok with this.
As they say “ Money is made in the bear markets” - So stay invested. If the market crashes in 2023, I would want to invest more.
Salary
So three years in running my salary has been stagnant now. I guess my firm is trying to force our hand to mover out. Maybe it is still for me explore opportunities elsewhere. Given the inflationary environments this puts me in the negative territory in terms of real impact to be bottom line.
Look ahead into 2023
This will again need to be a post on its own for 2023, my goals for the year. Coming up soon compared to the targets that I had set at the start of the year.
Conclusion
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous 2023.
Good luck and Happy Investing.
#MyFatFIRE
