Oh man, I have got to say that writing this series of annual blog posts is one of the most enjoyable part of maintaining this blog. And yes, net worth tracking is super fun!
Believe me, I have had my fair share of ignorant days. I remember that it was the last day of 2012 and the thirty-year-old me was staring at a net worth of negative $25,755 and wondering where the heck I was going with my life.
It has been EIGHT years since that fateful day.
True, I had “everything” many typical parents would expect back then – a “good job”, a lovely wife and a BTO apartment.
What’s next? A kid or two, plus a family car, perhaps? Upgrade our property (once or twice) along the way, and progress in my career. Watch our kids grow up while we grow old.
Then, we retire and die. (Oops, a little too morbid)
I guess the standard route in life wasn’t doing me any good because that wasn’t what my wife and I want. Apart from that, I was lacking the necessary financial knowledge to improve my situation.
Nowadays, I chuckle to myself when I see fellow bloggers with milestones such as $100k by age 28, or $200k by age 30, or CPF $1M@65 – they have no idea how many million miles they are ahead of the general population (and me).
I guess I’m a low achiever when compared to them, but that’s my path and I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
I won’t be repeating my life story here (haha) but so many snippets are already embedded in hundreds of my blog posts right here. In particular, these are my previous net worth posts –
My Net Worth Is Low 6-Figure And I’m OK With It (2020)
My Net Worth Is Still 6-Figure And I’m OK With It (2019)
My Net Worth Is Only 6-Figure And I’m OK With It (2018)
My Net Worth Is Only 5-Figure And I’m OK With It (2015)
Year after year, my net worth kept increasing at an even faster rate and to be honest, I was blown away on 31st December 2020 when I realized that it totaled –
– ChottoMatte –
Net Worth Calc : Assets (Plus+)
A quick re-cap for the items that I consider as part of my assets. I use You Need A Budget on a daily basis to track my expenses so a large part of the work has already been done.
- Cash
- E-wallets – Paypal, Grab, Crypto.com
- Bank and cash accounts – incl. Singlife
- CPF accounts – yes, CPF is my money
- Investments – SSBs, stocks, ETFs, robo-advisors
- Alternative assets – cryptocurrency
As usual, I had omitted the value of my HDB apartment in previous years, and I would do the same here. I’d add a conservative $200,000 (!) if we want to include it in. At the end of the day, it is what we make of the number that truly matters.
Putting together the $40,000 in 2020 and $20,000 in 2021 that I had transferred to my mum’s CPF Retirement Account, that is a total of $60,000 which I’d continue to park under my CPF account. For simplicity’s sake, I had included an automated monthly outflow to mirror the CPF LIFE payouts.
Net Worth Calc : Liabilities (Minus-)
I finally shortened the list! There is now two instead of three items left, as I have cleared the personal loan (it’s complicated) in 2020.
- Credit cards
- HDB loan – I divided it by two since wife + me
Net Worth Growth
As always, the blue bars are the total amount that I have added for the particular year.
Absolutely gobsmacking! Well I thought that the massive $92,966 increase in 2019 was crazy.
Adding $136,810 in the 2020 pandemic year is nothing short of pure madness. To put it into perspective, $136,810 is 46% of my net worth in 2019.
I’m not going to dwell too much on this. No doubt, Covid-19 hurt my bonuses but I’m thankful to have job security.
What really turned the tide was –
- Aggressive investments when the market plunged (plus the swift recovery of the stock market) and
- The year-end rally of cryptocurrencies
I’m not going into the details because I don’t see myself as a particularly “good” investor worth learning from. If you simply wish to find someone to chat with about cryptocurrencies (I won’t tell you what to buy), you can find me over at Discord.
Reaching the mid 6-figures is a huge step towards the end game. Because this is when a few percentages start to make a big difference!
At $427,279 dollars, even an average returns of 5% annually translates to $21,363.95 or $1,780 monthly. For some, it could be equivalent to their entire take-home pay for a month’s hard work. It is far easier for the rich to get richer – I’m beginning to experience how this is so.
As such, my focus is starting to pivot from net worth growth to the generation of alternative income i.e. income that isn’t generated directly from my full-time employment.
Why is this important? With the alternative income generated, I’m now able to earn the freedom to choose what kind of work to engage in. To me, this is significantly more meaningful and important than net worth itself.
Having the money sitting there is great, but lacking the knowledge to utilize it effectively isn’t something I’m willing to settle for.
Let’s continue to fight on together in 2021 for our goals, my friends! Be relentlessly resourceful!
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Hello! I’m Kevin, Turtle Investor
At the age of 30, I am the Personal Finance Blogger who laid claim to a negative net worth of minus $25,755 – and decided to turn things around.
- Seven years later in 2019, I hit CPF Full Retirement Sum (FRS) of $176,000 without making a single cent of CPF top-up.
- In eight years, I added $453,000 to my net worth (excluding the value of my HDB apartment).
- I made over $12,000 in alternative income in 2020 (and $20,000 in one month) in addition to my full-time job.
More tidbits about myself here if you’re curious. My blueprint for financial independence can help give you a head start in your own FIRE – Financial Independence, Retire Early (optional) – journey.
I am married to a lovely wife and that means dual income with no kids. In my free time, I chase miles so that we can fly in business class. My hobby is making pocket change off this blog and sharing everything I know with you!
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Hi Kevin,
Just curious, do you track your net worth over your annual expenses, Say net worth = X multiples of expenses. If you are familiar with the 4% withdrawal rule, the US FIRE bloggers use 25X as the baseline for their FIRE number.
Hey Carl,
Yeah, we do – so that my wife and I know where we stand financially. I don’t think I have ever dedicated a particular blog post to the safe withdrawal concept though.
There are snippets where I briefly talked about my annual budgets/expenses and what if I had to FIRE immediately with a gun pointed to my head LOL.
2020 was an excellent trial-by-fire (the FIRE pun was accidental haha) and if we really had to (in a post-Covid world), my wife and I know what we need to do in order to uproot ourselves and live luxuriously in our neighbouring countries, bidding goodbye to our 9-5 lifestyle. We have learned to generate enough of sustainable alternative income to do that. Drawing inspiration from Millennial Revolution, I’m hopeful that I don’t actually have to draw down on my portfolio at all. Still deep in the learning and experimental phase right now as 1/12 of 2021 has already gone by.
Luckily for us, we typically get by on very little and find pleasure in non-materialistic areas!
Hi Kevin,
Kristy/Bryce actually do draw down on their portfolio for living expenses and use their writers’ income to reinvest into their portfolio B and for gifts. Personally I am OK to draw down on my portfolio too during retirement as a dividend-heavy asset allocation mix has its own set of issues. Anyway you can think of your multiple income streams as the bonds component in your portfolio since they provide cash flow like bond coupons.
Hi Kevin,
I have always enjoyed following your journey and congrats on your good investment results! The foray into crypto looks to have paid off and the increase is increasingly parabolic.
I think you just need to hustle for a few more years before the passive income reaches something comfortable for you to take bigger risks with your plans.
Let me know if you are open to coffee or a meal in the North-east area!
Hi My15HWW,
Thank you for the support!
I don’t think I’m much of a good writer compared to yourself and many others whom I follow in the SG community. I just enjoy the blogging process and felt that it would be helpful to have a real-life example because many people, including myself, learn from the experience of others .. be it good or bad.
My patience is increasingly being tested to the point of doing a tiny fraction of what I had signed up for, so I’m not too hopeful that I have enough in me (such a “quitter” tsk) to be able to hustle for a “few more years”. I’m too much of an idealist – that’s why my path in life isn’t much of a typical route. Fingers crossed on that front, I guess.
I’ll take a rain check on your offer! Extremely swamped in recent days but I’d definitely love to “lim kopi” in future!
You should be proud of what you’ve done in eight years. You are ahead of many people who earn $250K a year (and spend all of it!) Your caring for family is an awesome example to others too.
Thanks Steve, for dropping by and for the super kind words. I do what I can. The rest is out of my control? It is up to destiny!
Hi kevin,
Congrats on your milestone. Thanks for sharing. I think we are all part of a community of savers, who values the importance of personal finance. But what is your opinion: at what net worth would you feel comfortable to start splurging a little on the things you want?
Hey Tommy, thanks! I don’t exactly have a definite number before I start “splurging” a little bit on ourselves.
To me, it’s all about budgeting. Every month, I set aside an amount I’d save/invest with, and I do likewise for shopping/travel/etc.
Even as I was building up my wealth, I have gone on overseas trips every year. My wife and I dropped $5,500 each on our Maldives trip in 2017 and that excludes flights. What most people don’t know is that we had saved for years for this once-in-a-lifetime event. We knew what we were doing and we were comfortable doing it.
https://www.turtleinvestor.net/gili-lankanfushi-choosing-your-maldives-resort-and-jetty-and-villa/