The year end resolution- Exploration

 Another year ending. Year 2021 has been eventful, marked with several changes and adjustments. 

My financial blueprint has more or less met its goals and targets. Firstly, my CPF combined amount has finally attained the retirement cap. Ironically, this was not achieved through my salary income, I did not do any voluntary cash top up, and there was not enough amount in my OA account to transfer to SA as I have to service my housing loans. Some 30% of of the SA amount was actually gains resulted from my 15 years of investments. When the government liberated the CPF special accounts (SA) to be used for investment, I dumped almost the entire volumes in my early 20s in several investment platform and forgotten about it. By the time I reached 42 years old, I decided to pull everything back into the CPF account. If I had not done so in my 20s, likely would need another 5 years to attain the cap purely through salary income. 

The housing loan has been neutralized to a comfortable amount where the existing CPF can now pay on its own without digging into my cash holdings. A long journey indeed. At least for now, I can sleep better without seeing a frightening high housing premium wiping off my monthly CPF. LOL.

Passive income has seen some huge drop last year by 30% for dividend income and one of the mechanism the DBS multiplier scheme no longer generate high interests return as before. Year 2021 proved to be a roller coaster year with the pandemic still causing havoc across the world with new waves of mutated virus. Most companies remained prudent to stay sustainable in tough time. Dividend income for year 2021 has recovered some 10%, not too bad in view of the seemingly unending chaos caused by the pandemic. For dividend income platform, it is unlikely there will be any changes to my existing approach.     

I started exploring a new platform in cryptocurrency. it has been gaining a lot of media attention lately and several trading platforms appeared in the market. To be honest, I have always been skeptical for this platform as I was more focused in dividend and the traditional rental income. As I studied and learnt about it, more and more cryptocurrency investment platforms emerged into the market offering better tools and methods. Just recently, I got my own first account in a platform in cryptocurrency and gotten some...well.....free cheap coins from it. A new journey begins, year 2022 likely will be a year of exploration into this new platform to use it as a alternative investment path. 

Apart from these financial journey, I started taking up short courses to get myself busy. Mostly enrichment courses and others to get connected with some of my childhood dreams. There has been several childhood wishes in my list, and I decided it is time to start fulfilling them one by one. I am getting older and less healthy, I felt I do not have much time left in my life, I decided that I do not want to leave too many regrets in my life. So, It is to start experience different thing.

So what did I learn? Well. I had some childhood dream about studying in NAFA (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts). Yes, I am into Arts. But I wasn't privileged in my life to pursue a profession in Arts. But I can at least do it as a part of hobbies. So I went NAFA studied watercolour painting for about 4 months and graduated in December. It has been a good experience. I also went learnt Zither music course, unexpected isn't it. LOL. I managed to learn to play around 4 songs.   

So whats next?

Hmmm, gonna continue to stay healthy and explore more around me. Who knows, some hidden paths waiting somewhere out there for me to discover. Life after all is a path of discovery. Why wait until dying on bed then start wondering whats happening outside the window.