Looking Back into One Year Of Blogging

In a blink of an eye, the 53rd birthday of Singapore has came to an end, and so does our public holiday rest. It is already the weekend after our rest.

And in time soon, really soon, I will be conscripted to the National Service and it will be my time to serve the nation.


While I can still vividly remember about a year ago, I started writing on this little space here. 




Time truly flies. 

Do beware as this is probably gonna be a relatively heavy post for the week.

Taking a look back, I can still remember my initial aim of contributing $15/day for the year of 2017 to the newly created investment portfolio of mine, after being humbled of my past.

Read:  
My First Post 
Portfolio - July 2017 

 
Not long after, I became lucky and received a notice on the opportunity for an overseas attachment program and will be heading to Japan for the winter. This opportunity has brought me to penning down several different fun and widen my perspective greatly.

Thinking back, I recall that I do have another post for Sapporo Winter 2017 which still lies in my draft and I'm really guilty that I did not manage to complete it. I guess this is something I will be moving forward to next to share my journey in Sapporo the past winter.




Read:  
An opportunity to Japan
Hakodate, Hokkaido (Autumn 2017)
Self Drive - Niseko (Autumn 2017)
Self Drive - Lake Toya, Onuma Park (Autumn 2017)
Tokyo, Japan (Autumn 2017) 

Shortly after, I've started to read more about the different type of vehicles that can be used in Singapore such as CPF. 

Read: Peep into the 19 year old student's CPF Account - Transfer from OA to SA

In the process, I've also read more about the past financial disasters to understand from more from history. While they are definitely insufficient till I experienced it personally, I don't think I'm considered as an investor still. 

I've read up too on the 2008 Subprime Mortgage Crisis too. However, the post unfortantely is still stucked into drafts as I've yet to complete writing about the crisis, which I guess I will have to do it soon.




Read:
A lookback into 1987 Black Monday
A lookback into 1997 Asian Financial Crisis
A look back into 1986-1991 Japanese Asset Price Bubble
A look back into 2000-2002 Dot Com Bubble 

In between, I managed to understand majority of the investor's fear and evolved into reading and writing a little about the various fallacies of an investor. 

Read:
The trap in stock market
Transaction Cost - Are you trader or an investor



Fortunately or unfortunately, this sparked off another topic as I went into learning how to perform a Technical Analysis, and I'm sure that is not in my field of competence. This event had moved me into being a small trader deep down, venturing into the cryptocurrency market, which I got lucky and managed to profit a little from.

Read: 
A month as a cryptocurrency trader - Results 
Cryptocurrency for Dummy Series (link to other part at the bottom of each post) 

I've also went on to build up more positions with different companies, albeit some of them are not a good call. This had actually allow me to learn more from Mr Market and through the different books and blogs written by wise seniors, I managed to learn a little more on Mr Market. 

 
My portfolio size remains relatively small today still but hopefully with my fingers crossed, I hope that I'll be able to learn more along the way and get myself equipped with more sufficient knowledge. 




Read: 
Accumulating CDG
Portfolio Update - Far East Orchard
Increasing stake in SingTel by 250%
SGR's Analysis

As I'm learning more from Mr Market, I started to learn more to operate my personal finance to which successful companies are doing, hoping that my money will do more work for me. As I'm not a smart person to begin with, I decided to keep in simple and look into various government incentives to help us out like the SSB and deeper into CPF. 

Read:
Singapore Saving Bonds (August) - 1.78%
My 19 Year Old CPF Account - For Millenials and Young Adults
Polytechnic Student with $3.63 as net worth - 1 Year Later
Planning Ourselves and Our Finances 
Controllable VS Uncontrollable Factors 

I've been really lucky for the past year. 

Moving forward, I hope that with fingers crossed, I will be able to learn more from everything that is coming. 

 
With this, I would like to thank all the regular readers for the support as well as the wise advises from seniors and everyone that has left comment on this small space of mine.

Have a great weekend ahead!



You will also be able to look for me on some other platforms:
1. FB Page - The sleepydevil
2. InvestingNote - sleepydevil
3. SGX Cafe - sleepydevil
4. You may also subscribe to receive my latest email updates here. 

20th Birthday Post

Today, I have bid farewell to the 1X club and officially entered the 2X club.

While I'm still relatively young as compared to majority of the peers around, this does not indicate that we are different.

Age is just an indicative number that tells us how long we're around on planet earth. What's more important is our mentality towards dealing with issues that cropped up in our lives.

We are all humans. And having to mention about this, I vividly remember one of my favourite sentence in AK's blog.

Source: AK71

Link: Chinese New Year of Dog (2018)




Much contradicting to my statement above, but we should take a look at the key in this statement - We must know ourselves.

Hence, I felt that irregardless of age, we are not different and we have to know ourselves. 

As we live longer on this planet, we've obtained something in return for our time - Experience and Wisdom.

I've been very busy lately which explained the reduce in blog post over this couple of months. Nonetheless, I still have many drafts awaiting for my to write on and publish.

Hence, to the regular readers who is looking forward to my post, I deeply apologize for it and please pardon me for that.

As this is a birthday post, I shall do a brief review for the my 19th Year of planet earth:



1. Finances
In my 19th year on this planet, I've embarked on this financial route. I started reading extensively on the topic of finances. I've also started to pen down my thoughts, learnings and route in this small little area here, despite having a poor command of English.

Personally, I'm not born in with a golden or silver spoon. Or rather, I should be. But that spoon happen to went to another side of the family 2 generations ago.

By a twist of fate, I ended up with a plastic spoon. But, I do not blame the fact that the spoon fell off and in fact, I embrace that situation.

Coming to it, as a single-parent student that is born in a plastic spoon. This has taught me many valuable lessons in life and finances.

Having this situation above, I'm unable to make significant contribution to my wealth building pot, but I know this deep down that this shouldn't be one thing that is stopping me from taking up this financial path.

Looking back, when I first set foot onto this journey. I've made a plan to allocate $15 into my portfolio each day, to a sum of $15 x 365 = $5,475.

Read: My First Post



After 10 months of hardwork, the plan materialize with a small help from the market and a huge contributing factor to it would be the income I receive from my part time job to finance this goal.

This allowed me to understand that your Primary Income is a big supporting factor and a push for you to finance your goals towards financial freedom.

Read: My First Pico Milestone - Conquered

I've made some adjustment then and have decided to go with a target of $7,000 by the end of 2017. As a lonely guy in Japan back then, I've decided to start with some trading and selected the cryptocurrency market to be my tool.

I do not know anything about TA prior. As I'm not a smart guy, I took a couple of months to understand it. Sadly to say, even till today, I'm not proficient in TA either.

I got lucky, and my wish once again came true with the help from my cryptocurrency adventures.

Now, in this episode, I understand that In order to achieve our goals, a plan is required. A big pushing force would be your luck.

Read: Portfolio - December 2017
 



Just before 2017 ends, I've made plans to obtain my first 5 digits in my portfolio before 1H2018, which is just before my birthday.

Once again, with the help of the bull market and the injection from my meagre income. Today, I'm glad to once again announce that I've achieved my 3rd goal I've set ever since I embark onto this journey.

The amount is little and insignificant to many around. But this lesson to me is indeed remarking. I've also made several adjustment to my portfolio this month and I'll soon be giving an update about it in my Portfolio Update for May 2018.

In the process of obtaining my first 5 digits, one of my adventures with CDG has allowed me to further understand the bigger concept behind Account Size and Market Timing. 

Read: Free Shares from CDG



There's still many lessons awaiting me ahead. All I could do is to get myself geared up and be prepared to learn.

There is a great number of people who are extremely curious about my transaction cost and how silly I am to take a huge shave off my gains from these expenses due to my peanut-sized portfolio and holdings.

Today, I'd also like to take this as an opportunity to share some of my thoughts about it.

This is an adventure taken by me to achieve financial freedom. And being educated is a part of it.
One can always not start if they feel that they're uncomfortable with fees being paid. Afterall, investing is not the only way towards achieving financial freedom.

There is many ways available. It's important to find out the way that is most suitable for you.  



2. Personal
I'm glad that things are starting to fall into places after some plannings made a year ago. Probably this is telling me that my hardwork is starting to get paid off? However, I guess I'm still a silly guy afterall.

I've missed out on many things.

I will not jump in too much on this area. But I guess I will have to learn more about things around me and how to better optimize myself.

In this year I manage to understand myself better and differentiate things better.

Sometimes, theory lessons are really simple and easily understood. But practically, it becomes a big problem for us.

To keep things short, there are 2 different things around us.
1. The Controllable
2. The Uncontrollable

If we are always thinking about the uncontrollable factors affecting us. We will soon be affected by things that are controllable. 

Exercising self discipline and controlling factors that are controllable is what human should be doing. But it seem that sometime, our heart takes a better lead.

I guess.. I shall not continue too much about this here. And today, I shall be a sleepy devil. A true sleepy one.

Good night.

My first pico milestone - Conquered!

It's getting colder here in Japan. Currently, the temperature is about 6-7 degrees in the night and about 10 in the afternoon!! I must admit that the weather is fantastic! Just not when the wind is blowing in my direction.

It has been a week since I last updated my blog, as I'm pretty occupied with work, learning Japanese and going out during the weekends. Oh well. I will be updating and writing soon about the places I've been to and exploring Japan.

I've started out this journey towards financial freedom this year in January 2017. As mentioned earlier in my first blog post, my initial plan for 2017 is to have a portfolio and warchest amount totaling $5,475 (derived from allocating $15 aside per day x 365). I'd have to say that this amount is nothing impressive and can be easily earned in the future.

Last Friday, I had a mini-shock while I'm looking through the portfolio updates sent by StocksCafe.
I've actually hit my targets that I've set for myself earlier this year! 

confetti throw!

Did my portfolio perform well? I must say, in this bull-market we're in today, and the short window of time, the performance of my portfolio is nothing impressive. I'm really glad that I've embarked on this journey towards financial freedom as well as creating this blog as a platform for me to pen down my thoughts and most importantly, the opportunity to learn from wise seniors along the way. Nothing can be more rewarding. Thank you very much.


So how did my portfolio perform? I'll usually update my portfolio at the beginning of each month. However, as this milestone of mine came in the middle of the month.. Here's a sneak peek into my current portfolio:

 
Earlier on when I've created this blog, I had a page about "Goals/Milestone". However, I've removed it as it has nothing on it. Today, I've re-published it here. In this page, I will be writing about my short term goals and upon hitting that milestone, I'll add a link to it.

Not to be happy first, I've revised my targets for this year, raising it slightly to an amount of $7,000 for this year in one of my other post too. I'm looking forward to it - My next update on my milestone.
 
Read: My First Post , The 19 year old investor - Part 2

Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” 

—George Herbert

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth. Bradley Whitford
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/bradleywhi410518.html?src=t_motivational