Spending Patterns

[Mr Nobody]

I kept track for 6 months after that I roughly know how much I spend: less than 50% of my pay. When I spend bigger sums, usually meals, trips, gifts for family members, I make sure I / family members get good satisfaction. Money, after all, is a limited resource. My problem is how to invest the rest. I have been an unintelligent investor, of ETF's, unit trusts, and unexciting dividend stocks.

[guru1237]

Hi Kopikat,

Just out of curiosity, how many months savings or emergencies income do you keep for your family? I guess it is much tougher if you are the sole bread winner

cheers
guru

I don't have a fixed practice. I have 3-4 different bills paying bank accounts (for visa cards) and I top up 1-2mths' worth of cash every time it gets depleted. So, I guess I ought to have 0-8mths worth and on average, more likely, 2-4mths' worth of emergency funds at any one time. Anyway, I'm not too concerned here as my stocks are liquid enough to be sold in case of any real emergencies.

BTW, I was never the sole breadwinner. I stopped working 1st (lost my job during the Asia Financial Crisis) and we'd managed to survive on a single income + investment income (using my limited skillset) since. I guess we were lucky as it coincided with the beginning of the bull run. With this lucky run, we'd managed to build up what we think is enough for both of us to stop working from late last year. I have a dividends projection for 2012 with some 40-50% safety margin (in case dividends get reduced/cut or I make some dumb investments) and I think this is going to be both an interesting and exciting year for us as we are now in unchartered grounds. Wish us luck!

Wow Very impressive investment portfolio, can you share which are the stock holdings you are holding? Do you a have a blog I can check?
cheers

http://personalfinancemaster-guru.blogspot.com/

[KopiKat]

Wow Very impressive investment portfolio, can you share which are the stock holdings you are holding? Do you a have a blog I can check?
cheers

http://personalfinancemaster-guru.blogspot.com/

I think you'd do better by reading many of the quality posts in this forum by the many experts here. I continue to learn from them. As posted earlier in this thread, I'm suffering a -5.81% loss for 2011, so, it's not impressive at all.

I do have more than 10 blogs, both private and public. Private ones are meant for certain targetted family members and friends and serves to disseminate or share private info, so no way I'm going to reveal it here. As for the public ones, they started out as private blogs but as the info are quite general and may be useful to others, we'd (I have co-bloggers) opened it out for public sharing. Previous experiences had been too stressful and time consuming and we no longer identify and associate ourselves with the blogs publicly as we don't have the luxury of time and energies to follow through any comments/queries.

Sorry about that!

[Musicwhiz]

I think you'd do better by reading many of the quality posts in this forum by the many experts here. I continue to learn from them. As posted earlier in this thread, I'm suffering a -5.81% loss for 2011, so, it's not impressive at all.

I think you're doing admirably well! Don't take just one year as evidence of indication of performance - one should at least review a 5-year period to see if one has been consistent in generating decent returns, and if one has been able to consistently out-perform the benchmark index.

It is very true that there are many experts here, but most of them comment on individual companies, and not everyone measures his/her performance closely and even less are willing to publicly disclose their performance. So essentially, it is a black box out there with regards to how investors are performing in general. Not to say that others have fared worse/better, but without measuring we cannot compare apples to apples. Even my personal method of computing XIRR has received some "flak" because of the way I compute the returns (e.g. including dividends, or not).

So ultimately, it's a personal satisfaction you get when it comes to managing and growing your own money. Please continue to share, thanks!

[guru1237]

yes please do share, we all learn from each other when we share. By the way, who are the experts here apart from kopikat and musicwhiz? cheers

http://personalfinancemaster-guru.blogspot.com/

[hyom]

I'm suffering a -5.81% loss for 2011, so, it's not impressive at all.

Anyone who suffered less than 8% loss for 2011 has done well. It is not only because he beat the STI, he has also beat the average hedge fund manager who lost 8.7% in 2011 through November. KopiKat, you are too humble The performance was impressive indeed.
To be fair to the hedge fund managers, we retail investors have a strong advantage over them. We manage a much smaller fund size.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...0UQVI9.DTL

I was wondering ... I think it will be healthier if forummers were to speak of the investment lessons learnt during the year rather than announce their gains/losses for the year. Everyone benefits when they share the lessons learnt. Nothing much except ill feeling is gained for the newbie who lost a fortune while reading about the gains made by others. I remembered as a newbie when I shared the investment lessons and disclosed my losses in a year when STI rose >17%, I was quite depressed when I learnt of the huge gains made by others or when they questioned my losses disrespectfully.

I am sorry to admit I am too lazy to start the ball rolling by starting a new thread on investment lessons learnt. I did that in 2004 as a newbie at the old WallStraits forum. Still hoping someone could retrieve some of the old postings there (Thread title: Investment lessons learnt and advice for newbies).

By the way, I respect forummers who put their portfolio to public scrutiny on their blogs or disclose their year-end results. Takes quite a bit of courage to do that.

[hyom]

Last year was really a bad year for even the experts. Equity hedge funds tumbled over 19%. I think quite a number of forummers here outperformed the average equity hedge funds.

I think the reason the best minds in this industry underperformed is their huge fund size and the pressure of coping with redemptions during unsuitable times.

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/news...37,00.html?

[Jared Seah]

My experience and take is the extreme volatility during the 2nd half of 2011.

I cannot remember a year where the Dow can drop 300 points 1 night and go back 300 points the next night.

Whipsawed?