An experiment living a life of being 'financial indepenence'.

Ever since the unleash of circuit breaker measures, things have been running wild. All of sudden, we become trapped at home. LOL. I started working from home since early April, my usual jobs are mostly field works and with this circuit breaker period all operation has been temporary lessen. So I stayed at home for most of the time, checking emails now and then, but I ended up more busy than before!!!

Huh! What's going on? More paper works? Actually, it is still same as before.

As I have mentioned before in my blog, my goal to pursue financial freedom is not about getting freaky rich, but it is to free myself from the rat race so that I can freely pursue my passions and interests. And my interests involved writing, reading and exploring the world, all these can be done at home without the need to step out of my house. 

So now I'm a reclusive hermit with all my books and scrolls. Anytime someone disturbed me from my studies, I would watch them with an eye of a annoyed cat. Meow..... what do you want?

As usual, some of my friends thought I am a weirdo. More than half of them are already screaming with boredom and nothing to do at home. And yet here I am, got so much things to study but no time sob sob. 

Over the years, I had built up much collection of books and articles in my small little library. Hundreds of them! Some of articles were actually written by me, lol. Ahem but for my eyes only. These are my friends now, keeping me focus and very very very busy. How could anyone be so busy with just books!!!! Well, I can keep reading them but still find something new, a new inspiration or a new revelation.  There seem no end to it. Ah.... life of a hermit.

In fact, this has open a new exploration for me. How would it be to live a life of financial independence without the need to run in the rat race. For the past 3 weeks, I woke up at 8 am without fail, after my breakfast I begun my works immediately, half works half studies. As the time goes, I spend more and more time studying and reading even to the point of forgetting my meals. I find myself even more busy then before, the thirst for knowledge seem endless. Every exploration begun with a single thought, answer comes from books or online wiki. I even written a 15 pages article about.....ops secret. It appeared that the life of being financial independence is going to be far more committed than before.

Ok. Apart from endless reading. I have been monitoring the stocks market as well. As expected, the economy packages released by the government has stabilized the market. The STI index ever since then has been hovering around 2500 points. Movement were relatively small. 

During these period, I had taken some opportunity and purchased some counters to balance my portfolio. With the current situation, I do not think the market will see any rally or even uptrend for a long time. The crisis this time has been much damaging, it would take an estimate 2-3 years to recover from it. My purchases were for long term and so I am not expected to see any real profits in short term, in fact I might even see some paper losses should the market continued to become weaken. As usual, I am not in a hurry. All these investments have been made with a vision in a distance of the next 3 years, as long as the companies continued to pay me annually even with reduced dividends, I am ok with it as I do not fully depend on one source of income.

Until then, I wait. 

Now, where is that book about the Roman Emperors I read last night? Look at all those books piling up around my table, under which pile is it at? Ah well.....

 

Monthly Financial Updates

This monthly sustainability report does not include any of the salaried income. The basis for this monthly financial review is to gauge the sustainability status of my financial independence based on the total amount of passive income received.

A rather turbulent month. The coronavirus has now affected the world on global level impacting the flow of day-to-day life of the people. Singapore for the first time is facing a long term recession ahead. As such, I can foresee the lowering of dividends payout from all the companies in order to stay sustainable. 

Dividend collected for the month of March was $1.587.82, much lower than projected. I changed my table to reflect only the passive income received, the monthly expenses generally was consistent throughout the months. To make things simpler, I decided to focus on keeping track of the overall passive income of each month. 

I had activated half of my war chest and acquired some stocks in my watch list in this market crash down. Most significantly was the increase in the allocation of blue chips counters as I believed these should remain sustainable in the face of the crisis and have better chance to recover as the world recover from the impact of the crisis. 

   

This was the month that saw the STI index crashed down all the way to 2,200 points, a market crash that most of the dividend investors would have been waiting for years. But none would have expected it to come at such speed, and damages it inflicted to the world. While the crisis of 2008 and 2016 had pulled down the stock markets level, it had not resulted in mass death of the people. As I entered the market to buy up some stocks at a lower price brought down by the impact of the crisis, I remained consciously aware that ten of thousands and thousands of people are still suffering around the world. The crisis of 2020 shall always be remembered in my memory that it had come and remind mankind once again of the limits of mortality.

So guys, while the crisis had offer the opportunities we all had been waiting for. Let us also be reminded that this crisis had involved causalities upon human race, lets join our hearts to pray and offer our condolences to those who had lost theirs love ones in this crisis.