After 2 years of blogging...

Time really flies... It's been more than 2 years since I started blogging and this blog has grown tremendously and I have also grown as a person too. I'm a person who likes to reflect and think a lot so here's this post on my thoughts for the past 2 years. Some of you may have followed my blog since the early days and I thank each and everyone of you for reading, recommending my blog to your friends and family, sharing on social media and showing your support with words of encouragement either through email or comments on my blog. This blog has officially crossed 2 Million page views and I'm deeply humbled by the readers who supported the ideas that I write.

There are ups and downs to blogging. Fortunately, the experience for me has been a more positive than negative one. I've heard of bloggers who get criticised so badly that they decided to give up. Thank God nothing of that sort happened to me. I've been quite lucky that people have mostly been quite kind to me. The past 2 years plus was an amazing journey. Being a blogger exposes me to a whole lot of things, meeting up quite a number of people as a blogger even though I'm still anonymous on my blog.

My blogging experience has expanded far beyond just the online world. Right from the start, I thought blogging was just something that I'll do at home, writing at the comfort of my bedroom and nothing else. I was completely wrong. I had so much more experience through blogging than just typing away on my keyboard.

Through my blog, I had the opportunity to experience things that I would not have been able to experience if I was just a normal salaried employee in Singapore. The best part of it was meeting new people and discussing on how to spread the importance of financial literacy better. I still believe that if we have the knowledge and build good financial habits from young, we will be much better off and avoid all the financial sufferings later. Credit, debt and retirement issues are still causing a lot of problems for many families because of a mismanagement of money.

I've met up with people who are passionate in bringing financial literacy to the next level. People from various government ministries, educators, investors, businessman, financial bloggers, finance professionals, students are part of the groups of people whom I've met so far. I am careful to meet only those people who are sincere in bringing good to the society through finance and not just about making money.

Earlier this year, I had the chance to work and interact with NTU interactive investment club all thanks to my cousin who introduced me to the club and link me up with the people there. I had the opportunity to contribute and I personalpy saw how young people's lives can be impacted in the areas of financial planning. Students as young as 13 were able to understand the importance of financial planning through games and competition.

I've been busy with lots of things in my life. Working as a freelance mortgage consultant was a role that I took up a few months ago which has given me a lot of experience working with various banks and understanding how mortgage loans work. I could help people get the best rates for their housing loans and at the same time earn some extra money also. Besides this, in July this year, I met the love of my life. Yes I've been dating and in love for the past few months. It has been an amazing journey with her, creating our own experience and memories. I want to thank my precious girlfriend for being who she is and supporting me, encouraging me all these while.

As you can see, money is not the most important thing in my life. Experiences are far more important than what money can bring. However, money is the most basic for our livelihood. I always say take care of the money and you can then pursue the more important things in life without having to worry about money.

The end of the year is coming. Its the festive season as we celebrate Christmas, the season of giving, and cross over to the new year 2016. Have your life been good for the year 2015? Even if its not, I hope all of us will look forward to a greater year in 2016. Happy holidays ahead!!

My First Experience Speaking as a Blogger

Last week on Saturday, I presented a topic on accumulating wealth for your future to a small group of people at an event organised by a group of young working adults who have the heart to reach out to young people to increase financial literacy. There were 3 speakers and each of us presented for 30 minutes followed by a forum where the audience could ask us questions.

This picture was taken just before I went up to the hot seat:

Even though I've been writing on financial stuff for the past 2 years, giving a talk on finance is still my first time experience. I would never have thought that one day I would stand up on stage to inspire people on the importance of financial planning.

The main gist of my speech is to change our mindset towards money. I said that if we can get money out of our lives, we would be able to pursue the more important things in life. Many people are just too burdened by money problems where they cannot pursue their real life purpose.

I shared a video which showed that kids will always smile when asked what they want to do for their future while adults feel stress when they think about their future. Kids would say their dream is to help others while adults will aim for money, status and material possessions.

Have money also must have time, have money also must have health, have money also must be happy. These were the thoughts I implanted to the audience last week. If we pursue money and end up sacrificing too much of our time, our health and our happiness for it, then it doesn't make sense at all.

So what's the strategy to have both money and time? The answer: "financial independence or freedom". The way to gain financial independence or freedom is through creating passive income. When we can live on our passive income, we are said to have achieved financial independence. Even when we are not at the financial independence stage yet, having passive income still allows us to have a little more freedom in life. It helps to lessen our burden in life. I shared on my journey in creating passive income and how it is possible to do it.

Lastly, I shared on 3 simple ways to create passive income. I've actually wrote quite a few articles on passive income on my blog before so its really nothing new for readers who've been following my blog.

What are the 3 simple steps?

1. Start saving up to buy assets

We always need to start with saving money. I spoke about auto transferring your money to another bank account. I've listed down the steps to set up an auto fund transfer. You can read it in this post: Readers' Challenge - Cutting Down Your Expenses in 2015 To Save 50% of Your Money

2. Learn how to create passive income

Passive income can come from different sources. I shared 5 of the more common sources where passive income can come from. They are: "properties, stocks, bonds, intellectual property and business".

3. Start as early as possible

Compound interest is powerful. Albert Einstein describes compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world. Learn more about compound interest in this post: The benefits of investing when you're young


Overall, it was a good experience speaking for the first time on finance. Thanks for those who came up to me after my talk and gave me encouraging words. Securities Investment Association of Singapore (SIAS) was there too and they kindly invited me to speak for a youth event which they would be having later part of this year. I guess this won't be the end of my speaking engagement now...

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A Personal Message To My Readers

I have been so busy the past 2 weeks that I didn't manage to write a proper post for this week. As such, I thought of just writing a personal message to all of you here during my lunch break at work.

I am mostly anonymous on my blog but in recent times, I've started to slowly meet up with people out there and reveal my true identity. More and more people have come to know of my blog and while talking to a few friends recently, I mentioned its getting more scary that people all around me are reading the stuff that I write. I have friends and family members coming to tell me that their friends are also reading my blog and I see my own friends sharing my posts on Facebook as well. One of the most surprising thing was I got to know that one of my articles was actually used as reading materials in a local university.

The articles I write caters mainly to young people as what many of you might have realised. I know that finance topics can be quite complicated so I always try to keep things simple. I like simplicity in life.

This year, I will be even more busier with events, writing more articles, more networking sessions and meet ups and speaking engagements. I would never have imagined that I would get involve in all these 2 years ago. A passion, which started the blog, to reach out to young people, had created opportunities for me. I had the chance to meet up with high profile and influential people which was a humbling learning experience for me.

I always say that finding your passion in life is important. It does attract opportunities into your life and it also attract successful people into your life. Money comes after that. Talking about money, just this 2 months alone, my estimated passive and extra income is set to cross over 1.5k now.

Some of you may be experiencing financial difficulties in your family which made you realise the importance of financial planning. Some of you may have gotten yourself into financial problems because of bad financial decisions in the past. But, no matter how big your problem is, always remember to look ahead to a better future. Change the way you think, change your lifestyle, choose wisely the people whom you associate with and you'll be on your way to success.

Chinese New Year is just around the corner. Here's wishing everyone Gong Xi Fa Cai!! Enjoy the reunion, the gatherings and the holidays!!

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Reflections for Year 2014: A Year of Amazing Experience

This is the first time i'm writing my reflection for one full year of blogging. SG Young Investment was started in June 2013. Till now, it has been just 1.5 years. The experience so far was just unbelievable that I thought I've been a blogger for much longer than that.

Never would I have expected that a blog which started out of nowhere could survive till today. I really have no idea what got this blog started. Perhaps its the desire to share on finance and investment. But, I wasn't really investing a lot of money back then in 2012 and in fact was just recovering from losses I had back in 2011. It was only in 2013 that I got back the confidence in investing and made some money. Looking back, it took me almost 2 years to come back again.

My first post was on My investing journey. I read my own writings again and it was just a sharing of my story in the stock market. Reading it made me think back on what I had gone through. In an instant, more than 1 year had passed.


Blogging Highlights of 2014

Took more than 6 months for the blog to reached 100,000 page views which I wrote a post on it on 2nd February 2014: 100,000 page views! This was right after Chinese New Year.

It quickly went pass 1 Million page views on 30th October: SG Young Investment crosses 1 Million

Writing on HDB, Condominium and marriage

I went on to write on topics such as buying a HDB flat, buying a condominium, cost of getting married. Researching and writing on these topics actually helped me to see what I need to plan ahead for. Naturally, because young people are worried about all these costs, these blog posts attracted a lot of views. I hope the posts have helped you plan better as it has helped me too. When we know the numbers and can see ahead, the future doesn't look that scary any more.

Writing on CPF and attending events

Another highlight is the post on the CPF. This was a hot topic among Singaporeans this year. I wrote a simple posts on the CPF minimum sum and CPF life. To say the truth, I have very little knowledge on the CPF prior to writing that post. It was only after hours of reading up that made me understand it better. After that, I was invited to the Forum on CPF and retirement adequacy. This was my first event attending as a blogger. Some other bloggers were there too but I didn't get to meet any of them as I only know that they were there after the event. Later on, I also went for the CPF Focus Group Discussion. It was fulfilling to contribute and interact with the other participants who were there.

Meet up with other bloggers and making new friends

Making new friends was one of the highlights too. From commenting on each other blogs to chatting on Facebook to meeting up face to face. It was great to be able to meet up with like minded people where we could just talk for hours and hours.


My Financial life in review for 2014

For the year of 2014, my active income increased, passive income increased while expenses remained stable. Actually, expenses did increase also but at a lower rate. I've been writing on passive income and this is the result of creating other streams of income. You can see it below from the green bar. This is a distinct difference from 2013 where there is very little passive income.

For the year of 2014, passive/other income has been quite consistent except for the months of Jan, Feb and June. This income comes from adverts such as Google adsense, sponsored articles, direct banner adverts and dividends from stocks. All in all, this income adds up to $3028 for this year.

On average, I've invested about 20k in the stock market this year. I've increased my stocks portfolio to 30k as of today and would probably increase again next year. This still makes up about 50% of my investment capital only.


Promoted and graduated from University

Besides focusing on passive income, I did not forget about my active income as well. This year was a tough year considering I was still studying part time for the first half of the year. But, I was still able to manage everything well and got promoted. Bonus was also better for this year.

Another relief is I finally graduated from the part time degree course which I was taking. This freed up a lot of my time for me to do other things such as meeting friends and writing more. I also took more time to reply the emails from you guys. I just checked and realised I've received more than a thousand emails so far. It's becoming a part time business to manage now.


Meeting new friends

This year is a year of meeting new friends. Through events, I got to network with more professionals. In summary, I got to know a lot more people who are passionate on finance and investments. Its amazing that as I set my path on the world of finance and investment, I start to know all these like minded people as well. Its the law of attraction at work. That is why if we want to attract positive people into our lives, we should also be positive.

As mentioned earlier, I also met some of the other bloggers. As for readers, I recently met the first one just before Christmas. This year, I been contemplating with the thought of forming investment groups for people to learn and interact together to know other people who are into personal finance and investments as well. There are students and young people who want to start managing their money better but do not really know where to start. Forming this group will create a platform for new friendships with like minded people. Let's see how this will develop.

That's all for my year in 2014. Its just 1 day away to the year 2015. I hope you had a good 2014 too. If not, always look on the bright side and 2015 will be a better year.

Happy New Year!! 

Related Posts:
1. New year resolutions and investment strategies for 2014
2. Reflections for 2013

SG Young Investment crosses 1 Million

Yes its official. SG Young Investment has crossed one Million page views just this morning. I hope all of you enjoyed reading my blog as much as I had enjoyed writing for the past one year or so. 

I have learnt a lot through writing on this blog as most of the time I have to research the stuffs that I write. Researching and writing on personal finance topics such as housing, wedding and CPF made me understand these issues more clearly. To say the truth, I had no prior knowledge on the CPF earlier this year. I did not understand what it means to pledge your house for CPF or even know that I can transfer my monies from CPF OA to SA to earn higher interest. I also did not know what is the CPF life. It was only after gathering all the available information and reading the materials from CPF website repeatedly for many times before I understood the whole thing. I'm glad I wrote on the topic of CPF which gave me an understanding of how it plays a part for our retirement. 

There are many exciting things ahead. All these will be announced in due time. Yes, I'm planning some great stuffs for everyone which hopefully can be finalised by the end of this year. I've met a few number of people in my blogging journey and certainly there will be more chance to meet other people along the way. However, I can't meet everyone and will only meet if there's a need to. I've received hundreds of emails and really enjoyed interacting with all of you. Keep it coming. Most of you are quite encouraging and have been rather kind to me. I deeply appreciate it! 

I know there are a lot of students who're reading my blog and even young couples who read my blog. Maybe there could be a gathering for all of you to meet and support one another someday in the future. It is good to start planning your finances at a young age but even if you're not too young, the best time to start is now. If you still have at least 10 years before you retire, it's not too late. 

Nevertheless, we're fast approaching November soon and then it's just 2 months to the end of 2014. What are some goals you've set at the beginning of this year but have not fulfilled yet? There's still time to review it and act on it. 

I shall end this short post here. Cheers to a Million! It's Friday soon. Have a great weekend!

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Related Posts:

1. 100,000 page views!

2. 1 year of blogging and it continues....