I always enjoy consuming content from financial bloggers. Yes, I know I should focus on creating my own content but it’s good to learn from others as well. I have been following SG Budget Babe for the longest time and the amount of growth in her financial journey has been amazing. And I’m not just talking about the numbers like the value of her investment portfolio. The way her mindset has shifted to creating more value for others has been fascinating to observe. And I feel that has contributed to her venturing into different businesses, investments and becoming more successful in building them.
I have been thinking a lot recently about my life lessons, knowledge, mistakes and regrets I hope to pass on to my kids. So they can build a better life for themselves. I’m the minimum standard for their benchmark so I try to improve and show them how they can do better. Think I will start writing and taking notes here so I know what to focus on.
Anyway, back to learning from others. I was reading SG Budget Babe’s post on using POEMS to invest your CPF-OA at lowest fees. I have not been keeping track of the POEMS platform because I remembered it being old and outdated that last time I used it many years ago. So I closed my POEMS account and never went back to check up on it. Besides, there are so many new low cost trading platforms and I had just opened my Tiger Brokers SG trading account. Setting up the daily auto-invest plans for US equities to take advantage of fractional investing has allowed me to build positions that I otherwise would have needed a lot more capital for.
While I know fractional investing for SG equities is not possible at this time, I was searching for a way to set up a similar regular investing plan on a monthly basis to spread out the capital deployment. Daily basis will be difficult without fractional investing for SG equities because it will consume too much capital. Sure, I have POSB Invest Saver and OCBC Blue Chip Investment Plan (BCIP) accounts but their SG equities options are limited. So while I was researching POEMS after reading SG Budget Babe’s post, I was surprised to find out about POEMS’ Share Builders Plan and Unit Trust Regular Savings Plan.
I went ahead to open a POEMS Cash Plus Account and set up the Share Builders Plan for a few SG ETFs, stocks (including HK SDRs) and REITs that I think have long term growth potential. I also set up the Unit Trust Regular Savings Plan for the Amundi and UOB China funds. These regular investing plans are all on monthly basis at $100 each. The idea is to build up my position over time by managing how much I invest every month based on my net income level and whether there’s market dips/crashes. If I can increase net income by earning more via salary/business or cutting expenses, or when the market drops, I get to invest more. If my net income drops because of job loss/downgrade or expenses spike, or when the market rises, I invest the minimum amount.
If you are asking why I’m such a fan of regular investing plans, it’s because they are set and forget for as long as the platform risk of going under is not high. When times are tough, I no longer have the bandwidth and courage to do manual investments for now. Apr 2025 was a good lesson in me freezing in action. I couldn’t commit to a significant manual investing action because I kept thinking the stakes were so high and I couldn’t afford to mess up again. But I didn’t stop my regular investing plans so they kept going and gave me some gains. Not much but better than nothing.
I also don’t like lump-sum investing for now because it’s not a good fit for where I’m at in life. I have young kids, retrenchment risk has gone up and the market is in a bull run. If things take a turn for the worst, I’m going to run into liquidity problems with insufficient cash on hand. I don’t want to be forced to sell my investments at a loss. That’s the other issue I’m considering. Yes, interest rates are going down on the various bank accounts and T-Bills so returns on my cash are falling. In part, that has contributed to me investing more every month to try and generate a higher return from my investments.
It’s a dangerous position to be in because the big assumption here is that I don’t lose my cash inflow and the markets continue to go up. But staying in cash as interest rates drop also doesn’t make much sense when I’m getting squeezed by inflation costs. With income staying flat and expenses rising, the only way out is to earn more income or get a higher return by investing more cash. No good options here with economic uncertainty rising. I need more time to develop new skill sets to have any chance of earning more income. Flexibility and adaptability is going to be key here for me to adjust accordingly.