Saturday, May 29, 2010

My Passive Income Chart (Sep 09 to May 10)

It has been 8 months already ever since I started my journey towards financial freedom. I started with a passive income of $600 on Sep 09 and managed to reach $1905 on May 10. I have plotted a chart to check on my progress as shown above.

In my New Year resolution, I have set two milestones for my journey towards financial freedom. The first one is to achieve a total passive income of $2000 by end of June 10 and the second one is to achieve a total passive income of $2400 by end of Dec 10. I don't think I am able to achieve my first target of $2000 end on June 10. But I think it is still ok since I have already achieve $1905 on May 10.

Friday, May 28, 2010

My Passive Income (Month of May 10)


Here is the summary for month of May 10:
CPF(OA): $187 (from interest and dividends)
Cash: $1718 (from dividends and other passive incomes)
Total: $1905
Target: $3000
Achievement: 63.5%

There are no changes in my passive income 1 and 2.

For passive income 3, there is an increase as I have bought the following dividend shares: SingTel and Starhub

For passive income 4, there is decrease of $77. However since it is still in the building stage, I will be expecting it to go up and down. In my post "Forget about achieving Financial Freedom if you do not have perseverance or refuse to learn.", I have mentioned that it will take time and effort to build up passive income.

I am in the midst of building my passive income 5, currently there is no income from it yet.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Retirement planning: Increase your social circle

We will start to slowly deteriorate ourselves mentally, emotionally and physically when we do not have regular contact with other human beings. This is particular true when we are getting older. Having a supportive social circle enables us to communicate with one another, help each other in time of difficulties and care for one another. This will lead us to less stressful and healthier life.

Please note you should not set any age limitation for people you want to know or make friend with. By doing so you are restricting yourself the opportunities to know more people. It is important to know people of different age groups so that you can expose yourself with different ideas and interests.

Whether your current social circle is big or small, it will be important to keep expanding it while you are planning your retirement.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Retirement planning: Build up family relationships and bonding

In our lives, we tend to have difficulties like losing our job, having financial problem or having serious illnesses. It will be hard for us to face or cope with these difficulties alone and the best support we can get is from our own family. A family is like a shield that prevents you from being hurt too much from your difficulties. And the only way to make the shield stronger is to build up your family relationships and bonding.

Doing different activities with your family is one way to build up the bonding. It is not necessary to spend a lot of money by going for a family trip in order to build family bond. Some inexpensive activities like spend some times with your children to teach them a skill, or cook a meal or go cycling together with your family are some ways to build up the bonding.

You should not wait till your retirement to start to build family bond as it will be too late. Family bond must be constantly built up as to make it stronger and these will take a lot of time. If you are ignoring your family till your retirement age, you are likely to become a stranger to them and it will very hard to build bond with them.

So if you are finding yourself not spending enough time with your family, now is a time to find out why you are not doing so. Are your work commitment taking away times with your family? Or are you not interested in spending time with your family? Whatever the reasons, you should take some actions and start building up your family relationship.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Retirement Planning: Finding and developing your interest

Having an interest can help you to become a more interesting person which gives you something fascinating to talk about with others. It also allows you to meet new people with similar interests and keeps you occupied so that you will not feel bored. Learning new interest is good as it can keep your mind alert and active too. So make sure you include “finding and developing your interest” in your retirement plan.

If you do not have an interest currently, finding one might be hard. It really takes time to “trial and error” to determine the things you like to do and don’t like to do. So spend some time now to find out your interest and don’t wait till your retirement age to do it.

Developing your interest must be done as soon as possible. You should not postpone it till your retirement age. The reason is very simple; it is easy to develop your interest when you are still young. And if you keep practising it, you should be very good at your interest when you have reached your retirement age. It might be too late to start anything when you are old. And even though you try to work hard on it, eventually you might give up due to the physical constraint and slow learning ability when you are old.

Have you started your journey towards financial freedom?