Rolf’s 2021 Review (H2F3), Looking Forward to 2022!

For me, 2021 has been a hopeful year after the unprecedented 2020 Covid outbreak. While life has not really go back to normal due to the restrictions in travel, social gatherings, exhibitions etc, guess we just need to adapt and continue to stay hopeful that next year will be a better than this.

As the year come to a close, I will review 2021 using H2F3 criteria I devised in 2015.

Refer here for what does H2F3 (Health, Hobbies, Family, Finance and Friends) means.

Refer here for my last H2F3 update in 2021 Oct.

Refer here for 2020 review.

HEALTH

All my family members ended the year healthy. No one in my family or any direct family contracted Covid. All except one good friend is in bad health though. I am praying for him every day! I too have some health hoohaa event early this year but it subsided and health was restored. My weight remains constant, but noticeable less muscular, due to gym being out of bounds for most of the year. That said, I do exercise regularly with walking, swimming, playing table tennis and occasional light-weight work out. So tummy is still decently flat although there are rooms for improvement.

FINANCE

Career

Nothing too exciting take place in work except that my two direct bosses resigned this year. I am kind of use to it as they are my 13^th and 14^th bosses in the company for the past nine years. Instead of oil and gas, I am focusing on a lot of offshore renewables projects nowadays. Really hope that in 2022, there will be some kind of breakthrough in my career. I am working hard on it.

Investment portfolio

My investment portfolio contains stocks, cash, bonds, precious metals but excludes CPF linked fund, property and other assets. My overall investment portfolio drops 4.6%. This takes into account realised profits and dividends collected for the year. I am not overly worried because even Cathie Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF is deeply in the red, down by more than 20% as we speak.

Net worth

My net worth consists of the sum of my investment portfolio, net property value and CPF. My net worth in 2021 increases an estimate of 33% year over year. This mainly due to the more than 15% appreciation of our landed property purchased early this year, but offset by the losses in investment portfolio aforesaid.

Above is the chart showing my net worth increase in the last 9 years, normalise to 100% in 2013.

Income Vs household expenses

My net household income is calculated to include salary, gross rental or any types of income, subtract income taxes and rental expenses. My net household income in 2021 reduced slightly by 4.5% compared to 2020 due to lower rental income as we sold off our HDB early this year, and did not collect any rental until 3Q this year for our landed house that was rented out. Income taxes were also are higher this year with slight lower salary bonus.

Most of my household expenses as a ratio to income remained pretty much same, compare to last year with the exception of savings and property expenses. Savings as a ratio to “take home” household income reduced from 42% last year to 25% this year. A big part of the shaved-savings went to property expenses increasing from 8% to 27%.

The higher property expenses recorded was because we rented a condo to stay, hence having to pay both rental and mortgage expenses. However, the higher expenses is also for higher net rental income anticipated in the next one year or so. Therefore, the increased in property expenses is seen more like an investment for me.

Due to my bigger than usual family size, it is inevitable that household plus children expenses are my largest averaged expenses combined at 36%. I also consider me and wife quite “self-less” (*smiles*.) because our average charity expenses of 3% is actually higher than our 2% vacation expenses. We also have considerably low personal expenses of 9%, with bulk of our expenses mainly in tangible investments (shares & property) or intangible investments on our children.

Portfolio

As the year closes, I am 57% shares, 30% cash and 13% precious metals (8% gold and 5% silver) for my portfolio. Last year I was 70% shares, 15% cash and 15% precious metals (8% gold and 7% silver).

During the early announcement of omicron, I did sold off a big part of my shares to take profits contributing to the larger cash amount. Since then, I have been adding more tech stocks at lower price and selling off REITs and others.

As of today, my Tech and Green (EV & Smart Farm) are close to 70% compared to 50% last year.  The rest of the 30% are mainly in REITs, bank, transport, health etc. I owned 30 stocks currently i.e. SGX: 5 ; HKSE: 8 and US: 17.

I am a firm believer of Tech & Green stocks. I seriously think it is a very good chance to grab so many cheap Tech stocks since the Omicron-cum-inflation crash and the painful China-common prosperity crash.

With my war-chest still decently strong, I am definitely waiting for better opportunity to unleash more cash into Tech & EV stocks in the new year. I am also targeting to have a tad of cryptocurrency in my portfolio next year, having cashed out profits in crypto last year.

Hopefully when the new year starts, I have time to write an article to detail my shares strategy for 2022.

FAMILY, FRIENDS & HOBBIES

This year marks record low family outings and yet another year without vacation. Family dine out and even mall visits were kept to absolute low. This is because me and wife received our vaccinated status really late. Furthermore our family size is bigger than five, making dinners outside very troublesome.

Henceforth, family time is mostly “home time” this year, when we are rooted under roof for most of the time. The shouts and cries of the kids can be easily overshadowed by the joy and laughter of seeing them playing together. Eventually the noise will be greatly missed one day when all of them enter into adulthood.

We sort of replaced vacation, malls & meal out, with plenty of table tennis, friends-to-our-house gatherings, swimming and parks. The kids have also chosen a lot of “Roblox” gaming for themselves and friends. I kind of hate it, but guess it is part of their growing up and we selectively allow it.

The best thing that happened in 2021 for me is my hiking buddies. We hiked and “chit chat” our way out of the hustle and bustle of life and the most memorable trip of all is our Ubin cycling trip. We also catch up for very early breakfast and often talked about last night US stock market. It is so enjoyable because we are really good friends with same frequency of thinking.

This year, I did try to play Table Tennis at least 2-3x a week with my friends and/or training with my kids. Training with my kids has been great because it gives me time to be with them. I also tell them to repeat that: “Table tennis gives them good physical health, good perseverance, good focus, good friends and good fun.” i.e. (2P, 3F) Hopefully they can appreciate it more when they grow up.

As for me, I have several different whatsapp group of friends for table tennis. In totality, I have opportunity to play table tennis almost daily throughout the week with my different groups of friends. And it is not just the table tennis perspiring ourselves out, but also the laughter during and after the games.

One thing worth mentioning is also my meet up with a long time blog-reader friend BroFC this year. “Bro, we did have a good time eating and drinking together. Thanks for the invite!”

Last but not least, I am happy that I still manage to blog despite my extremely hectic schedule.

SUMMARY

Health

Overall, my health and fitness is good ending the year.  Likewise for my family members.

Finance

Overall net worth increased by more than 30% due to property appreciation, despite 5% reduction in investment portfolio. Expenses remain mostly unchanged except for more monies spent on property but offset by the higher rental return and further cushioned by the potential future increased in value. Ending the year, my portfolio comprises of 57% shares, 30% cash and 13% precious metals, of which approximately 70% of the shares are in Tech and EV stocks.

Family, Friends & Hobbies

Family together, plenty of table tennis and nature walks with family and good friends. Guess that is all I need in 2021.

To close the year, I wish everyone a Happy New Year ahead. Let us continue to stay optimistic that 2022 will be better than 2021.