Spending Patterns

[guru1237]

After I downloaded a iphone app to track my daily expenses, after monitoring for 2 months, I was shocked to find my expenses exceed my basic income. My excuse for that is for the family expenses,this might be only temporary.. but I ensure I do not get into any credit card debt.It is really essential to track one's expenditure, as even if you achieved high yields and high capital returns, you might ended up spending them.
My aim for 2012 is to limit my expenditure and be frugal.

My overall cash portfolio in stock is down 23%..annual yield is about 6%. Portofio value is only about 47K$...

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

[piggo]

Haha I tried tracking my expenses as well to see where the money's going >.< but halfway through I accidentally wiped my phone and gave up...

Currently 45% in investments (forex & equities) with an average savings rate of ~75%... Performance for 2011 sucks big time, with net drop of 2% in portfolio value and XIRR (from october) of -24% =( still have lots to learn. Though I don't really keep track of my expenses, I just try to spend as little as possible without causing excessive discomfort to myself.

[KopiKat]

When I was single, I didn’t do much budgeting as my expenses were low and I was often on business trips and hardly had the luxury of time to spend my own money. For me, those were the best years to accumulate savings. Almost all my savings were invested into stocks and I usually have less than $1,000 cash in my bank accounts.

After marriage, I had debts (housing) and lots of household expenses to manage. That was when I was doing very detailed record keeping of our expenses and cashflow. I did that for a couple of years and when I judged that we were disciplined in our spending, I stopped keeping records of our expenses as it was just too time consuming. Instead, I focused on the monthly cashflow (eg. How much left in each individual bank account) and assets (stocks, cash, …). As long as we were not spending more than we earn, I won’t be spending any time to analyse our expenses.

Today, my spreadsheets have evolved massively into multiple interlinked worksheets that keeps track of our total assets and it’s populated with macros, formulas, charts,…etc. so that I can easily get a snapshot of our financial health / worth at any time. Haha.. sometimes, I even forget what some of the figures were for and how I derived them (nowadays, I try to insert comments/notes in case I forget again).

For investments, I have separate spreadsheets which I update more regularly (includes financials from quarterly reports) , plus my usual formulas to give me a quick snapshot for my investment/trading decisions.


As for this years’ Report Card,

Total Assets : -4.55%
SGX Stocks : -5.81% = -14.64% (Unrealised Losses) + 5.08% (Dividends) + 3.75% (Realised Profits)

I’m too lazy to do XIRR / NAV. For stocks, I used Cost as the base (denominator) and I believe it’s large enough such that I won’t be able to substantially influence the end results by doing a huge last minute buy/sell transaction (to change the base) to do window dressing.


Lastly,

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to ALL!

[corydorus]

After I downloaded a iphone app to track my daily expenses, after monitoring for 2 months, I was shocked to find my expenses exceed my basic income. My excuse for that is for the family expenses,this might be only temporary.. but I ensure I do not get into any credit card debt.It is really essential to track one's expenditure, as even if you achieved high yields and high capital returns, you might ended up spending them.
My aim for 2012 is to limit my expenditure and be frugal.

My overall cash portfolio in stock is down 23%..annual yield is about 6%. Portofio value is only about 47K$...

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

Hi Guru, i am sure i have miss something. With portfolio down 23% how come you can have yield 6% ?

Cory

[mrEngineer]

Just curious - how do you guys measure CAGR for Net Investible Assets? What does Net Investible Assets consist of?

For myself, I just finished my year-end portfolio review. XIRR for 2011 = -5%, Portfolio is +3.2% above cost as at year-end. Average yield for 2011 = 6.0%, portfolio value is about $250,500.

My savings rate for 2011 hovered around 45% to 50% of net salary.

Hope to be able to increase savings rate, income level and also invested cash amount (if margin of safety is present in 2012).

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

Hi MW,

I am still trying to figure out how to use XIRR function when my cashflow changes from positive to negative and back several times which would render multiple IRRs. I tried using the guess function but the solutions just seems weird to me.

What I did was somewhat similar to yeokiwi but i modified slightly using RATE function in excel to calculate CAGR of my asset. I will have beginning and ending asset values as PV and FV respectively, net income (not including share returns - capital gain and dividends) average out by the period of time to be used as payments and the payment period accordingly. The reason why I used this simplified method as my cashflows are extremely uneven and switches from positive to negative significantly (for e.g. inclusion of overseas travel expenses will cause a deep negative for that particular month), so I would need to average out my income to make an estimate of my asset growth rate.

Another thing, I do not assume net investible assets or separately account for my performance for investments. I will combined all net assets including the untouchable fund to see how I am growing my net worth. This is because it will be more accurate to use the total asset growth rate and not the investible asset growth rate to perform planning forecast for my retirement

Anyone's feedback is welcome!

[RBM]

For me? SGX Stocks down - 5.6%. SGX Portfolio Yield 3.75%, weighed down by a warrant holding and some low yielding stocks (e.g. Q&M Dental, Lee Kim Tah, BreadTalk) in my portfolio. My target yield is > 4% p.a.

Interesting that my best three 2011 performers, in terms of % increase (i.e. including dividend contribution), are all very different (a warrant, a preference share and a Mall-Property company counter where the controlling family is buying more stock) ....... in order .............
1. Golden Agri Warrants
2. Hyflux Preference Shares
3. Lee Kim Tah .............. not far ahead of Kingsmen Creatives.

My three worst performers, in terms of % decrease (worst first) ........... all equities but in different sectors .........
1. BBR
2. Zagro
3. Cheung Woh Technology

As regards my planned way forward........ I plan on exiting my Golden Agri Warrants in the coming weeks and my Hyflux Preference Shares following the first 2012 dividend payment. I'll keep all three "2011 dogs" - I bought them for the long term and I still very much believe in the managements concerned. I hope other forummers did (much) better than I in 2011. Happy new year.

[kazukirai]

Hi Buddies,

My portfolio (w/o dividends) is up about 8.7% for the year. Mainly because I was plenty in cash to begin with and began taking profits on some holdings like Hour Glass, Adampak and Spindex earlier in the year. I then switched into defensives like Singtel. Yield was about 5.7%.

I made some mistakes buying into SATS and Singpost too early. These economy dependent stocks tanked with bad news from the Eurozone. Another mistake is hanging on to Haw Par thinking the economy was going to recover further and might revalue Haw Par closer to its NAV. Big mistake as learnt from d.o.g. and others that Haw Par's NAV is unlikely to get revalued towards NAV thanks to Wee family's control. Better to see it more as a proxy for UOB, UOL and UIC.

Am looking forward to 2012! Things may get worse before they get better but based on CAPE of the STI, the market has only been cheaper during the last 8 years (unfortunately I only have data that goes back that far) during the late '08 to early '09 period. I'm expecting earnings to tank over the next one or two quarters. Prices should follow and then we can look forward to happy times.

Hope all buddies, be it in investing or in personal matters, have a great year ahead!

[yeokiwi]

Another thing, I do not assume net investible assets or separately account for my performance for investments. I will combined all net assets including the untouchable fund to see how I am growing my net worth. This is because it will be more accurate to use the total asset growth rate and not the investible asset growth rate to perform planning forecast for my retirement

Anyone's feedback is welcome!

Same.
My net investible asset is basically my current asset inclusive of fixed deposit + whatever cash in my saving and current accounts.
But, assets like the residential property, CPF etc are not included.

Theoretically, my portfolio did etch out a return(around 3.5 - 4%) since it had covered most of my expenses.

[guru1237]

After I downloaded a iphone app to track my daily expenses, after monitoring for 2 months, I was shocked to find my expenses exceed my basic income. My excuse for that is for the family expenses,this might be only temporary.. but I ensure I do not get into any credit card debt.It is really essential to track one's expenditure, as even if you achieved high yields and high capital returns, you might ended up spending them.
My aim for 2012 is to limit my expenditure and be frugal.

My overall cash portfolio in stock is down 23%..annual yield is about 6%. Portofio value is only about 47K$...

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

Hi Guru, i am sure i have miss something. With portfolio down 23% how come you can have yield 6% ?

Cory

Hi Cory,

I meant to say that my investment portfolio (mainly reits) are down 23% in value for 2011. I achieved 6% dividend yield for 2011...hope it makes sense..I had published my stock holdings in the blog below

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


cheers

---

When I was single, I didn’t do much budgeting as my expenses were low and I was often on business trips and hardly had the luxury of time to spend my own money. For me, those were the best years to accumulate savings. Almost all my savings were invested into stocks and I usually have less than $1,000 cash in my bank accounts.

After marriage, I had debts (housing) and lots of household expenses to manage. That was when I was doing very detailed record keeping of our expenses and cashflow. I did that for a couple of years and when I judged that we were disciplined in our spending, I stopped keeping records of our expenses as it was just too time consuming. Instead, I focused on the monthly cashflow (eg. How much left in each individual bank account) and assets (stocks, cash, …). As long as we were not spending more than we earn, I won’t be spending any time to analyse our expenses.

Today, my spreadsheets have evolved massively into multiple interlinked worksheets that keeps track of our total assets and it’s populated with macros, formulas, charts,…etc. so that I can easily get a snapshot of our financial health / worth at any time. Haha.. sometimes, I even forget what some of the figures were for and how I derived them (nowadays, I try to insert comments/notes in case I forget again).

For investments, I have separate spreadsheets which I update more regularly (includes financials from quarterly reports) , plus my usual formulas to give me a quick snapshot for my investment/trading decisions.


As for this years’ Report Card,

Total Assets : -4.55%
SGX Stocks : -5.81% = -14.64% (Unrealised Losses) + 5.08% (Dividends) + 3.75% (Realised Profits)

I’m too lazy to do XIRR / NAV. For stocks, I used Cost as the base (denominator) and I believe it’s large enough such that I won’t be able to substantially influence the end results by doing a huge last minute buy/sell transaction (to change the base) to do window dressing.


Lastly,

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to ALL!

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

[KopiKat]

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!