Happy 2nd birthday to "Lifelong Freedom in Singapore" Blog.

"Lifelong freedom in Singapore" blog has turned 2 year old! For those bloggers who have been following my blogs and have commented on my posts, I would like to say a big THANK YOU for your support. Hopefully my posts have helped you in term of wealth creation and finance management.

What have I achieved for the past one year?
I am managed to gain $26200 in term of pure passive incomes this year as compared to $20100 last year. That is an increase of $6100 which is quite inline with my last year aim of hoping to achieve an increase of $6000.

There is no realised capital gain for this year as compared to $6300 last year. The reason is because I did not sell any shares this year.

My current total unrealised capital gains or losses have amounted to $3095. But since I am looking more on wealth creation, having unrealised capital gains or losses are not as important as having pure passive income.

What do I hope to achieve for the next year?
Well, I hope to increase the earning from my pure passive incomes by $3000 per year or $250 per month for next year. It may be quite tough, but I will try to achieve it. I also hope that all of you can continue to support my blog and I will be continue to post more articles on my journey towards financial freedom.

Having a child is never easy.

Raising a child takes up a lot of time, money and energy. Parents must spend time and energy with their child to guide his/her every step. Parents have to provide her kid with protection as well as strict guidance so that he/she will not learn the wrong things or habits. Parents will need to engage in their playing activities so as to build up bonding between them.

As a father, I always make it a point to come back home immediately from work so as to spend time with my daughter. As for my wife, since she is a stay-at-home mother, she is able to take care of and discipline our daughter while I am not around.

Having a child is a long term commitment; parents will need to spend a lot of money during his/her growing process. Milk powder, seeing a doctor, enrichment classes, and insurance are not cheap, and these are just part of the cost. Due to that, I find it very hard to have another child as I might not be able to save enough for my retirement fund. I don’t except the money in CPF will be enough, or my daughter is able to support myself and my wife in the future.

Do I need a smart phone and a data plan?

It is quite commonly seen in buses and MRT trains that quite a number of people are carrying a smart phone. Other than just making calls or sending messages, most of them used it for listening to music, watching video, playing games and surfing web. So do I feel “pressure” to own it too?

Smart phone indeed has many functions with tons of application available. But the question is whether I have the time to use all these features and applications. It does not make any sense to me if I buy a smart phone just to use 5% to 10% of the functions. And also a mid range smart phone is not very cheap if I buy it without signing up for any mobile plans. Dropping it on the floor will definitely cause a pain in my heart.

Surfing internet is one thing that I might want (not need) to do when I am outside home or office. However that will require me to sign up for a data plan (free WIFI connection is not available everywhere). Based on my own scenario, a basic mobile plan which includes data usage will cost two times of what I paid for my current mobile plan. Again, it does not make any sense to me again just to pay more for the service that I seldom use.

In conclusion, I will not buy a smart phone at the moment unless the phone costs less than $100 (with or without signing basic mobile plan). I also will not sign up for any mobile plan with data usage as it is simply too expensive currently. Lastly to all my blog readers, don’t be “too pressure” to follow the trends, think logically and don’t waste money on things or services that you do not need.

How much debt do I have? (Sep 11)

In Jun 11, I had recalculated my total debt which is totally from the mortgage loan of my flat to be $22K. The calculation is based on using the outstanding housing loan amount minus away my total family CPF OA amount.

Today I have recalculated my total debt again, and the total debt has reduced by $3k to $19k. In my post on "What I hope to achieve in 20 years?", I mentioned that I wanted to reduce my total debt to $0 within the next five years, Based on my conservative estimation, I think it is achievable by the end of next years.