Redeeming KrisFlyer Flights + Stopover : A Step-By-Step Guide To Your US$100 Business Class Flight

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Jun 17, 2018 | Saving & Spending |

Introduction The basics? After registering for a KrisFlyer account and religiously using credit cards to earn those precious points, remember to transfer them to your KrisFlyer account before they expire. Some actually don’t expire, which is great. While I haven’t redeemed my Suites Class flights yet, a pair of Business Class would be a nice appetizer. After accumulating miles and deciding on where to spend them, the rest should be easy, right? Maximizing miles? That’s the tough part, but I’m going to make it easy for you with an example. I’ll illustrate what I know as the stopover travel...

Transport Tycoon Ain’t Easy : Real-Life Edition

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Jun 13, 2018 | Personal Finance |

When I was younger, I spent many hours playing Transport Tycoon building bus and train stations, growing the size of towns and cities and adding airports etc eventually. Train stations are almost always the first things that I built. In real life, connecting train stations, especially high-speed ones, are especially challenging and costly. Apparently, it seems like the High-Speed Rail (HSR) link between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore has been postponed (not scrapped, yet). Making the right and tough decisions take true grit – even if they may be unpopular decisions. To Dr. M, it may be the best option he has,...

[Not-So-Frugal Series] Leaving On A Jet Plane

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Jun 12, 2018 | Saving & Spending |

Remember Project Singapore Airlines Suites? Since I have got too many miles to spare (167,819 miles as of May 2018), it’s time to live the high life. YOLO? Yes, the infamous stopover travel hack. Total damage of 27,500 miles and SGD$190.50 per pax incurred. Not too bad actually, considering it is for two business class flights. OO (Passenger Security Service Charge) = $8.00 OP (Aviation Levy) = $6.10 SG (Passenger Service Charge) = $19.90 TW (Airport Service Fee – Intl) = $22.50 Stopover x 1 = $134.00 Will write more about it next time...

Turtle Talk – What Have I Been Up To?

Posted by The Turtle Investor | May 6, 2018 | Lifesytle |

Lesser updates recently as life has taken over, but you don’t really care anyway, right? 😉 I left for a short retreat with my wife to a remote island to recharge and get in touch with nature. It was a good break – think more, do less. Pool-villa all to ourselves, listening to the waves lapping against the shore, all day long. No TV, no air-conditioning, and limited WIFI. Here is the original photo minus the watercolor-ish feel. There may be detractors, and yes there always will be, but investing with robo-advisor is something I deeply believe in. This...

AutoWealth Review – Information For Advanced Users (And Something On StashAway)

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Apr 8, 2018 | Investing |

This is a follow-up post to my earlier post on AutoWealth : My AutoWealth Experience : The Best Robo-Advisor For Index Investors? The interest and response to my earlier review on AutoWealth robo-advisor far exceeded my expectations, which was why I’ve decided to add on a little bit of information to what I’ve shared earlier. SAXO View-Only Client As explained in my previous post, ETFs in my portfolio are kept and held in my own SAXO account as part of my account opening with AutoWealth. AutoWealth simply executes the trades for me. Because it is pretty much a standalone...

My Net Worth Is “Only” 6-Figure And I’m OK With It

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Mar 18, 2018 | Personal Finance |

Some time back, I published my first net worth blog post – My Net Worth Is Only 5-Figure And I’m OK With It – and it was a fun exercise. The grand total I came up with back then was S$12,142.20 🙂 Nothing fantastic, but it was a tangible number I was comfortable with. I first started tracking my expenses since March 2013 and have enough data to plot a fairly accurate net worth chart from then till now. Blue bars for assets, red bars for liabilities and the dots for net worth. Assets Just a quick re-cap on what I...

With Understanding Comes Conviction

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Mar 4, 2018 | Investing |

Kyith put out a good post on conviction which coincidentally was something that has been on the back of my mind for the past few weeks. What Is Conviction? Conviction (noun) – a firmly held belief or opinion In investment, the conviction that I have is my compass. Kyith put out four points in his blog post on gaining conviction, and yes – it could be a double edged sword. Where does mine come from? To me, conviction comes from understanding. Research and homework, an insanely huge amount of it, to get my doubts addressed. To me, the other three points are...

Market Crashes & Robo Advisors – What Would I Do?

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Feb 7, 2018 | Investing |

It seems almost customary for bloggers to do a blog post every time the market is in distress. The “flash dip” over the past two days spooked some investors. The grapevine was that some folks initiated withdrawals from robo-advisors, which caused them enough concern to make Facebook posts and videos. I don’t know how true that is. To me, it is a sad reflection of their thought process, or lack of it, when they decided to invest. Crash Strategy For Robos : Less Than 25% Drop I think it is the first time I’ve written on this. Hypothetically, if the...

Turtle Talk – Feb 2018

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Feb 3, 2018 | Investing |

I just came back from the new polyclinic that is within walking distance from my apartment. Yes, the one I mentioned two years ago. Nice to have such a perk, like finally. They rushed the polyclinic for opening, though. The rest of the property ain’t functional until later this year. In other news, Punggol Digital District made the news last month which is again, fantastic for properties in the area. For now, I’m sitting tight on my first pot of gold until a really good project comes along. I’m HODL-ing! Polyclinic : 5-mins (walking) distance Mega-childcare (1000-pax) : 5-mins...

CPF Money That Keeps Growing (2018)

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Jan 14, 2018 | Personal Finance |

This blog post involves CPF talk. To spare you the agony, if you are not keen on the topic, do not read any further! I have no interest in arguing, convincing, or justifying anyone or anything here. P/S : I do not advocate topping up of CPF. No no no. I have never done so in my life. *** Once again, I am back to keep a running update of this series of CPF posts which I’ve started in 2015. I’m definitely considered as being less than optimal when it comes to maximizing my income (I’m an idealist) so there...

Practical Guide To Pseudo Crypto-Currency Index Investing

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Jan 7, 2018 | Investing |

Disclaimer : This post contains affiliate links that share a commission with me. There is no additional cost to you. Most of us who dabbled in crypto-currency made money. I did, too. If you have put in your own money into crypto-currencies prior to 2018 and didn’t make money, you’re doing something really, really wrong. I’m not going to talk about how much I’ve made yada-yada yada-yada. This is way too early for this sort of talk. What I would like to talk about it is this. Performing some sort of index investing within the crypto-currency universe. See how the crypto...

Goodbye 2017, Hello 2018 – What A Year!

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Dec 30, 2017 | Investing |

Looking back at 2017, it has been an incredible year in so many ways. Lots of development that are very much related to index investing too! Let’s touch on some topics then, shall we? The Rise Of Robo-Advisors This is no doubt the year of Robo-Advisors for Singapore, and they made a huge splash. For retail investors, there is AutoWealth, Smartly and StashAway (in alphabetical order) to choose from. Time will time whether they would be able to sustain themselves and mount serious challenge. Even in the space of a few months, I’m beginning to form my own impressions...

ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund – Dividend 2018

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Dec 26, 2017 | Shares & Derivatives |

Annual public service announcement! Dividends for ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund is coming up. SGX is one of the best source of dividends information and I’ll re-post it here, for your convenience especially if you’re holding it. For your information, the dividends for ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund [A35] is/was : 2015 – S$0.0305 2016 – S$0.0265 2017 – S$0.0214 2018 – S$0.0261 (2.23% yield based on 26-Dec-2017 closing price of S$1.171) As I’ve written for last year’s post .. “a diversified bond basket can actually benefit from rising interest rates. Investors might think otherwise because of the mechanics of...

One Small Step Towards Financial Security – HDB Loan

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Dec 20, 2017 | Personal Finance |

It is once again the time of the year when I review the good, the bad and the ugly of the year. Pleasantly surprised when I did the maths on my outstanding HDB loan vs my CPF-OA account. The government gave me a nice gift of $3000 in my CPF-OA and $2000 in my CPF-MA for my outstanding contributions towards defending our nation. You might remember my stand on HDB loan if you have read my previous posts. I’m not a big fan of voluntary top-ups and OA-to-SA transfers for reasons of my own. I bought my HDB apartment...

Wife’s Tiny Portfolio Update – December 2017

Posted by The Turtle Investor | Dec 16, 2017 | Shares & Derivatives |

I thought it’ll be fun to do a quick post on the tiny portfolio that I’ve created for my wife since a reader asked. (Hi Jaslyn!) For the year 2017, the time-weighted returns (including dividends) as of today is 19.42% when compared to STI at 20.99%. The current portfolio value is $4,320 with profit & dividends of +$724.4 (+18.93%). For the year, I was able to give my wife dividends for all four quarters. Both CapitaLand Mall Trust and Frasers Centrepoint Trust go with a standard four-quarter distribution schedule with payout dates falling in Feb, May, Aug and Nov....

Author: The Turtle Investor