Financial Freedom SG

This is how the porfolio looks like in 2017 after rebuilding it in 2016 with the sales proceeds from property sales of our previous flat. 

The main aim of this portfolio is to target dividends so that it will help to offset the new higher housing loan that we have. We hope to eventually have enough dividends to help cover more than 50% of the monthly housing loan payment each month.

At the same time, I am using a small part of the salary to divert to the Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) for tax-savings and use it for the monthly dollar cost averaging into the STI ETF, a unit trust- Schroder Asian Equity Yield and a REI- Capita Mall Trust. Hopefully, this will help build up to another substantial part of the portfolio. 

The bulk of the portfolio is leaning to bank stocks, with DBS and OCBC taking up 25.3% of the total. The other key part is REITs, with the total REITS in the portfolio at 21%. Index funds on S&P500 and Singapore ETFs takes up another major part with 13.6%. Bonds offered on the STI take up another 8.56%. The rest of the portfolio are a mix of industrial, telco, consumer, grocery, electronics, financial, medical etc.

Within it are some that don't pay dividends out like the Infinity S&P 500 (dividends are reinvested) and of course Berkshire Hathaway. We are building our war chest slowly again using bonuses, dividends gained while using dollar averaging of $700 each month while my wife does about half of that I think. I strongly feel that it is important to invest first so this is automated mostly while I have been channeling part of that to the SRS account every half yearly (seems that you can only automate maximum 6 months using OCBC, after which you have to remember to set it up again).

Meanwhile, costs are up as we have to pay income taxes again after all the tax benefits a new child brings are all used up. At the same time, we have to pay the management fees that condos have which are much higher than those from HDB conservancy fees. Then you have the higher tariffs that water and electricity will charge soon. So it shows even more that it is essential to invest if you want to stay ahead of inflation.

Looking at a few interesting counters which can invest into, one of which is Thai Beverage. But maybe I have to start to trim off some of the existing stocks in the portfolio first. Starting to look like a unit trust fund already :)