Today, i shall start my journalling!

Today, i shall attempt to start something which I had held off doing for some time, though i know that it is good for me. 

I will do up my first investment journal entry on a recent stock i bought (just 2 days ago actually.)

Many a times, when I buy a stock, like everyone else, I would expect it to rise for a number of reasons. However, sometime down the road, when the stock price is moving sideways or even downwards, I will start to doubt myself and wonder if this was the right stock to buy in the first place, what if I had bought Y stock instead of X stock, i would have made money, should i sell now etc. But hindsight is always 20/20. 

By keeping a journal, I hope it will allow me to be more committed to my positions and allow me to learn from my mistakes and hopefully able to replicate my wins! Writing the thought process behind buying a particular stock will allow me to understand and more importantly remember the reasons / motivations behind my decisions further down the road as well. And hopefully, I will emerge a better informed investor, by knowing more about my very own investment decisions. 

Before going any further, I just wish to share I am more of a (lazy) fundamental investor. As much as I wish to learn more about Technical Analysis and all their modelling, I have not found the time to do so and it just seemed pretty overwhelming to me, so I will probably never ever learn it. Therefore, my stock analysis might seem pretty primitive to some. But to me simple is good and well... simple enough for me. 😁 Lastly, I am also a long term (>5 years) investors, simply because no one can predict the market in the short term, but in the long run, the trend is usually upward, so the longer the term, the better your odds of making profits. 

And also because of this, it is also unlikely I will buy an obscure undervalued stock and watch it magically reach for the moon (not within a short time frame anyway). No doubt there are plenty of such multi-baggers in small / micro / med cap stocks, but I feel they are simply too high risk for me and I prefer to avoid them.  

Disclaimer: While I enjoy picking stocks, I try as much as possible to avoid buying individual stocks as I am a believer in passive broad market tracking ETFs, so while I pick stocks, they do not form a majority of my portfolio. But sometimes, I gotta admit picking stock is just more exciting than ETFs. 💥

So my considerations when picking a stock actually just comprises a simple SWOT analysis and also a look at their profit margins, P/E, P/B, ROE as compared to their peers to decide if they are fairly priced at the point in time.

Given I am only starting my first stock journal entry, there might be further refinements to the above considerations. But without further ado, lets go to my next entry!

Feeling excited for my next post!

Frugal Singa

Raising a child in Singapore can be expensive, how about delivering a child into this world?

Singapore is an expensive place to live in. We has been dubbed the world's most expensive city to live in for the fifth year running. We are even ahead of New York, London and Los Angeles in the Economist Intelligence Unit's(EIU) Worldwide Cost of Living 2018 survey. Which really surprises me and possibly you, if you have ever stayed in New York for a while, either as a tourist or for work. 

No doubt, Singapore can be an expensive place to live in, just check out the cost of owning a car! But… as a citizen, I actually do not really think we are that expensive a place, at least for locals, to live in. There are certain assumptions in the survey that makes us the most expensive place for the 5^th year running which I will share more about in another post. 

Meanwhile, I like to share a little about the delivery related cost in Singapore, based on our own experience.

Before going into the cost per se, I just like to share while having a little one does indeed incur cost, the joy you get from raising your little one will far outweigh this monetary cost by a mile, or more. There is nothing that can replace the joy you get from seeing your little one grow and become more responsive to your actions and words. No words can describe the joy… So I shall not waste more words trying to… 😀

Our delivery was generally uneventful, which was a great thing! Mama’s water bag started to leak in the middle of the night (2 nights before EDD) and we took a Grab down to NUH. We entered the delivery suite at around 4am and by 430pm, Little Singa (LS) arrived into the world! 

For the delivery related cost, I guess we have little control over what we will / need to consume. We heard of a couple of our friends who tried natural birth and then had to do an emergency cesarean when things were not going right, hence incurring higher cost. All we could do was pray to have a smooth delivery. In the 3-4 months prior to EDD, we did increase our frequency of long walks on weekends morning, hoping it will help provide a smooth delivery. Thankfully, things went as per planned and Little Singa (LS) was delivered naturally, with epidurial.

I know there are some who regard natural delivery without epidurial as a badge of honor. Some say the pain is the rites of passage for a mother, which I personally think is hogwash. We are not some tribal people who need to prove that we are man / mother so we undergo some genital mutilation / tattoo nonsense or deliver without epidurial. If you did not use epidurial and delivered naturally, good for you, you have high pain tolerance. But on the flip side, there is absolutely Zero shame to use epidurial during a delivery.

All mothers out there are amazing, no matter delivering with or without epidurial. Our gynae gave us a piece of sound advice: use epi if you need it, do not use if you feel there is no need. There is no badge of honor for you not using when you need it. The only one to suffer is yourself. While I admit to be pretty frugal (to stingy) sometimes, this was one occasion where I was more than happy to spend the money. I personally find tooth extraction a pretty scary thing already and I feel giving birth is probably 10x scarier! So yea, whatever that can help reduce the pain during this experience, so be it.

I feel it is also important for Papa to be there in the delivery suite to support Mama both physically (though not much the hubby can do physically) and mentally (more so in this area). That, and also to witness the arrival of your little one!

The moment when LS was delivered was simply surreal. Words cannot describe how I felt and I could honestly say there were tears of joy at the point in time. Despite LS being still slimy and all, there was nothing you could love more in the entire universal (sorry mama 😆).

We did all the tests which the hospital required LS to do but there was the Newborn Metabolic Screening Programme which was optional, but we did anyway. I was hesitant to do this Metabolic Screening as it was very rare for the test to be positive (which is a good thing) and which means it will be a waste of money (cost approx. $150 if I did not recall wrongly.) Some parents might say this is small money for a test, but after hearing from all my friends who did the test for their newborn and 100% turned out negative, I was pretty sure the test would return negative (which it did) as well. The test essentially screens for rare but potentially serious disorders such as phenylketonuria (PKU), cystic fibrosis, and congenital hypothyroidism.

To be honest, the NUH bills were itemized but it was quite complicated and there were like interim bills and final bills a couple of week later, so I am actually not too sure of the final exact amount. I will usually look bills carefully and flag out any possible mistakes, but in this case, i think in the feel good moment of it all, we were just happy to pay the bills and bring Little Singa home with us! Besides, I like to think NUH will not overcharge us on purpose. 

All in, we paid about $2000 (cash) + $4000 (Medisave) for the 2 nights stay (One bedder) in NUH for natural birth. Notwithstanding, I note there are friends of ours who spend about $10,000 out of pocket when they deliver natural + e-cesarean. So the amount spent would definitely vary, depending on the procedures and level of complexity. But for a relatively straight forward case of natural birth for private ward class, I think an out of pocket cost of $2000 and $4000 from Medisave is still reasonable, given the quality of the medical care in Singapore.

What are your thoughts? 

Signing off for now!
Frugal Singa

Why are Mooncakes priced to the moon?

We are less than two weeks away from celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival in Singapore (24 September) and many of us would have already made plans to get or already gotten some of our mooncakes. 

Maybe some of us are already used to paying rather high prices for these mooncakes, but i personally cannot quite rationalise buying them for my own consumption. One can expect to pay up to $80 for 4 exotic favored mooncakes. That is almost $20 for each mooncake! Sometimes i feel you are just paying for the fanciful packaging. 

Interestingly, couple of years back, the China government's campaign against corruption cited mooncakes as one of the lavish gifts which was used to curry favor with officials and pave the way for future dealings. Mooncakes was subsequently banned as gifts, together with many other expensive gifts as well. 

Credits: Goodwood Park Hotel

Credits: Yan Ting | The St. Regis Singapore

Credits: Intercontinental

No doubt, there have been much innovation (and hence expenses) in the area of mooncakes flavours as well e.g. more hip ingredients such as Lychee Martini Truffle, Champagne Truffle, Chocolate Truffle, Chia Seeds and all different sorts of ice cream flavours, but i am just not too sure if its worth all the hype (and calories). 

So if you really do like mooncakes and buy them each mid-authum festival, perhaps as gift for the future-in-laws 😜, how can you save yourself from paying top dollars for decent quality mooncakes? 

• Order / buy it early- there are usually early bird discounts available.
• Buy discount vouchers from discount websites like Fave

  

  Credits: myfave.com

• Use your credit cards to get discounts! POSB, Standard Chartered, Citibank and many more, just check out your preferred credit card's website for more details (most banks should have).

Credits: Standard Chartered

• Or you are hardworking enough, make your own mooncakes! I am sure your mooncake recipient would be more than touched to know you made it with your own two hands. 😀

Are there other ways you know to save on buying mooncakes? Happy to hear your comments below!

Frugal Singa