Saturday, February 25, 2012

My Passive Income (Month of Feb 12)



Total Passive Income(Cash): $1757
Target: $3000
Achievement: 58.5%
For passive income 1 and 2, there is no changes.
For passive income 3, there is an increase as I have made some transactions in my investment portfolio.
For passive income 4, there is a decrease of $5.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Buy and rent out private property to get passive income?

Recently my wife and I have been exploring the possibilities of buying a private as an investment to increase our passive income. Well it turns out one will need to have strong holding power and huge initial capital to do that.

Holding power is very important as one might not be able to find a suitable tenant for a period of time. And to make thing worst one may just lost his or her job during that time. So one must have enough money as back up.

Initial capital is also very important so as it determines how much one will pay for the month instalment. The lesser the loan quantum, the less one will pay for the monthly installment.

Let me give a scenario of buying a new two bedders condo unit for investment at $750,000, with $200,000 as down payment. By using 2% interest rate for the housing loan with a loan term of 25 years, one will need to pay about $2330 per month .

Let's assume that the maintenance fee is $350 per month, utility bill is $200 per month, property tax is about $100 per month (or $1200 annually), and miscellaneous internal repair (aircon serving, changing tap and light bulb) is about $50 per month. All these will add up to around $700.

So in order to rent out this condo for passive income, one must find a tenant that is willing to pay more than $3030. Anything lower will become a liability to the owner. For someone who wants to get 5% rental yield on the initial down payment of $200,000 , he or she must rent out around $3900 to achieve that. The question is whether is it easy to find such tenant to pay that amount?

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Relaxation


Relaxation is important in our lives as we may get really tiring and stressful due to our job and family responsibilities. There are many ways to relax oneself like shopping, eating in restaurant, going for spa and travelling. These ways of relaxation may be costly at the long run.

As for me, relaxation is just being as close to the nature as possible. I like to go to places where I can see the cloud, the tree and the sea, able to feel the wind blowing and listen to the bird chirping. The best place for all these is the beach and very often I will bring my family to East Coast Park.

Well, do let me know if you have other form of low cost of relaxation.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Bought Panasonic 50" Plasma TV


Since about two years ago, I have been targeting to buy a 50" TV. I have waited for the price to drop drastically and finally I have bought a Full HD 50" plasma TV (Model THP50U30S) @ $1088 from Harvey Norman last week.

Basically it is just a simple TV without any smart features or 3D function. The reason why I go for plasma TV instead of LED TV is because of the colour and brightness. In my opinion, the colour look more natural and less bright in plasma TV as compared to LED TV.

I feel that it is quite a good deal as I was told by the sales person that the price will go up after the promotion period. The price indeed goes back to $1299 when I do a check yesterday.

Have you started your journey towards financial freedom?