Jul 6, 2021

Cory Diary : A Peek into Net Worth Growth Rate

A glimpse on Net Worth Growth Rate Table. Like to be upfront that this is not representative of general population. Gives a rough background on one with Graduate education, relatively good job, not new to equity value investment, supporting wife, two toddlers, from a generation of sandwich class, hardly pub, owned apartment, give sufficient parental allowance and a value saver.


Net Worth grows from a low base but it can be compounded quickly to sizeable amount in a decade. So do not think starting from a low base is impossible to reach.

In year 2008, investment relative to saving is not much. So GFC impact is relatively minimal. Interestingly 2015 growth is worst than 2008 as more cash is ploughed into investment that do not yield good result that year. The jump in 2019 is amazing because the portfolio size is already large by then. For the year 2021, if the recovery continues 2nd Half, it could be a good double digit growths.

Net Worth returns do not equate equity returns. Not surprisingly, Net Worth returns are lower due to home property, savings/cash , emergency fund or lower returns asset. Net Worth surely amplifies if we fully invest our assets however this comes with Risk. The key question is how to manage this Risk and why is it needed, as allocation of investment goes higher will we be putting our family well-being into jeopardy.

At the end of the day, from the rate it compounds, we probably won't be able to expense it down to zero if we maintain reasonable lifestyle till we passed. So in essence there is no point taking too much risk just to have the opportunity to achieve too high rate of returns. A lot of wealth do not passed three generations probably as the saying goes What we need is to manage it in a way there is sufficient growth at reasonable comfortable pace and not to compete with others who may have take higher risk based on their own circumstances. Ensuring our future generations are strong enough to compete and not spoon-fed should be the way.

The challenge with higher Net worth after years of compounding is how to maintain the pace and capturing low hanging fruits. Chances are salary and investment will grow it larger as personal expense and emergency funds in absolute term may not grow as fast. Of-course there will be situation such as once we reach retirement, medical expense or "Trip to Mars ticket" etc where there could be drawdown instead if the outflow is large enough. Regardless, no matter how much we earn, if spending habits requires more, growth won't happen.



Cory
2021-0706

PS. Market moves ahead again. Looks like my table needs to be updated. :)

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.

Jul 4, 2021

Cory Diary : Life Insurance Policy - Updated

When we first graduated, many of us in our time will be asked to buy Insurance Policy. Not sure about now but possibly except that with Covid maybe harder to sell. Getting information to know about our insurance policy is much easier now than before through login using singpass.

Is great they have worked to integrate the login process with singpass. And that we could see all the policies with the insurance company. Here's a glimpse on a Life Insurance Policy. If the insurance company promise as planned, is a good diversification for the descendent .... . Why I say so.


Projected Death Benefit at age 50 : 173k
Surrender Value : 66k  ( Yield : 4% )

The surrender yield get lower as one aged. At 69 will be 3.35% Projected again.

Basically from the looks of it, will lose slightly more than 100k if we are to surrender it. Again all this is non-guaranteed since they are all projections.

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Interestingly the policy also provide projection if we hold on to the policy till age 55.

Projected Death Benefit at age 55 : 189k ( Increase of 12k )
Surrender Value : 87k  ( Increase of 21k , Yield : 3.93% )

The surrender value increases much more than the death benefit but the yield gets lower.

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Decided to continue with my exploration after consultation with the agent because I feel is important. She provides me the guaranteed and non-guaranteed ratio on each age group.

The non-guaranteed portion is about 31% of the projected value. To get the compounded returns, this can be easily done using the monthly payment with the the final return ( Upon Death ) at 50 , 55 or 65.

So plugging in my monthly contribution of the Life Insurance Policy ( excluding rider ), the XIRR or compounded returns is near to 8.7%. This is quite a surprise even though there are non-guaranteed component is in there. In total it is even better than S&P500 Performance. If we surrender the Policy, returns drops to 2%.

Wow. Please Check on Me by login in to count your Life Insurance Policy.

Cory
2021-0704

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.

Jul 3, 2021

Cory Diary : Asset Allocation - Mid Year '21

US Market is up last night. So I could see a few more Ks into my equity valuation today. Tesla reported strong volume increase shipment however news of a fire on a new tesla model broke out too. So coincidence. A check on my mobile app shows PE 680 with a Market Cap of 654B. 52 Wk high is 900 and current stock price is 678.90. Therefore 32% down from peak. People who has stayed the course since 2 years hits 10 baggers even with this correction and so is Elon Musk wealth.

For most people who is not running a business and drawing monthly salary to grow wealth, will need to active manage asset to reach financial goals. This is not saying bosses no need. However for average people, we need to find ways to utilize our asset and invest safely as they are hard earn money. Again not saying Elon money is not hard earned. Not investing basically put our retirement at risk. And the first step is to know our asset and the strategy we go about it on each stage of our wealth.

There has been some updates on asset allocation recently. Net worth has increased since last update so we need to view it with that in context. ( link )

1. Property Asset has recent transactions which ascertain the valuation
2. Consolidation of free cash to investment account
3. Emergency cash in Fixed Deposits but reduced.
4. Gov Securities reserved mainly for housing installments backup
5. Bonds reduced further



With above changes, cash saving allocation has reduced to 5.1%. Over time if there is no major change to living capital needs in percentage wise, it should get smaller with time. There is not much to do in CPF/Pension, Property Net value and Insurance allocation wise.

Total up equity, bonds and gov securities, they cover about 50% of asset in which more than half of which are gains or non-salary returns. The important part is not the gains but the future cash flow that it can generates for retirement. 


The Problem

The current investment account size can drives for a few years of expected dividends increase or allow one to increase in growth stocks that could earn multiples. Is it worth the cost to park so much here as War Chest for major correction use ? Let say dividend share each year 5% return. For 3 years will be 15% returns. Will there be a major correction within or right after 3 years ? Needless to say it has to be more than 20% correction to worth the while. Maybe even 25% minimum for one to take the risk as well.

People tend to be blind-sided on Equity Investment portfolio returns and forgot about idle cash impacting overall returns which is not measured. Moving idle cash to investment account therefore is a logical move and then assign some measure to it. Will need to think through this. What should the typical opportunity fund size be ? Maybe one should deploy the fund in stages whenever there is opportunity in the market and not due to major correction.


Cory
2021-0703

PS. 51 on countdown to 55

Articles in this Blog is personal take and educational purposes only. Reader should seek their own professional help when making financial decision and be responsible for their decision.