Financial Freedom Journey

Rule #1: Live within your means or below your means.

My Starhub cable bill just came at a total amount of S$41.73. This is a reminder to remove my free HD setup that I have been enjoying for the past 12 months. Removing this would save me $15 a month.

Earning $1 a Day Through Adsense

This will be one of my additional goals for the year.

I will aim to earn $1 a day through Adsense. This would give me a passive income of $30 per month. This would require me to learn how to direct alot more traffic to my site. In order to do that, I guess I would have to write interesting posts that would attract people to read the blog.

(Update on 31 Oct 2009: This goal has been achieved. For Sep 09 and Oct 09, I have managed to earn more than $30 per month)

Updated Passive Income for 2008

Updated the current sources of my passive income. Maybank deposit is now giving me $13 per month instead of $12 per month which I estimated.

1. 11,000 x Ascott REITs (DPU = 4.52 per half) = $82.87 per month
2. 15,000 x First REITs (DPU = 1.91 per qtr) = $95.50 per month
3. Maybank iSavvy Deposit = $13 per month

Total passive income per month now stands at = $191.37

I will also wait for the distribution from First REITs and Ascott in end August to buy some more passive income generating stocks or REITs.

To buy Ascott REIT?

Should I buy into a 1 x lot of Ascott REIT at the current price of $1.00?

It has a DPU that is around 9%. This would help me roughly hit my desired passive income of $200 per month for this year.

Or are there better options around. Thinking of diversifying as I do not want to be too heavily invested in only 2 different REITs

Searching for that additional S$10 per month

Dear Reader,

I am looking for that additional S$10 per month passive income to hit my $200 per month goal for year 2008.

With current liquid cash of slightly over $20000, that leaves me with a roughly $1500 to $2000 (after setting aside 6 months of emergency funds) to invest to get that additional S$10 per month.

Any advice?

Current Sources of Passive Income

These are the sources of my current passive income:

1. 11,000 x Ascott REITs (DPU = 4.52 per half) = $82.87 per month
2. 15,000 x First REITs (DPU = 1.91 per qtr) = $95.50 per month
3. Maybank iSavvy Deposit = $12 per month

Total passive income per month = $190.37

It is quite amazing. I am nearly on target to achieving my $200 per month passive income for this year. $200 per month passive income however is only 4 percent of my current earned income.

My goal for the remaining months in 2008 will be to look for buying opportunities to enter into REITs or stocks with regular dividend payouts.

An additional goal would be to explore the use of Google's Adsense as an additional source of passive income.

Current Monthly Expenditure

This is a rough gauge of my current monthly expenditure. I will be including the housing installments even though they are paid by CPF as I hope that my passive income will be able to pay off the housing installments (if any) at the age of 40.

My current monthly expenditure in (S$)

1. Housing installments = 1096.00 (wife is sharing the burden)
2. Car Monthly Installment = 518.00
3. AIA Investment Link Plan = 350.00
4. Asia Life Policy = 154.20
5. Aviva Insurance = 51.72
6. Conservancy Fees = 49.00
7. Telephone & Internet = 33.96
8. Cable TV= 25.68
9. Mobile Phone Bills= 30.89
10. Electric, Water, Gas= 100.00 (estimated)
11. Car Insurance = 110.00
12. Parking= 150.00
13. Road Tax= 60.00
14. Petrol= 300.00
15. Food= 300.00
16. Tithes, Parents = 600.00

Total = $3929.45 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How on earth did my family accumulate so much monthly expenditure? And this is being optimistic.. there are months in which I spend much more on food, entertainement, miscellaneous stuff, etc....

Okay, maybe its because I included the housing installment which is actually covered by CPF now.

How can I decrease my monthly expenditure to S$2800 and below?