Sunday, April 1, 2018

Reflections on turning 30 years old

I have officially joined the 30 league today. To me, turning 30 years old is a milestone in life. The 3 in front of the age psychologically makes one look older too. I started this blog back when I was 25 years old and named it SG Young Investment. I grew with this blog and it has been 5 years now. Can't believe how time flies just like that.

This blog is a personal blog where I document my journey towards financial freedom. It is also a blog where I write on my thoughts on finance stuff. I have learnt a lot just by blogging for the past 5 years. Yes indeed as I write on various topics, I learnt the most myself too. Over the years, my motivation changes as I grew older and experiencing life's happiness and sorrows as well. This post will be some thoughts I have for turning 30 years old today.

1. Money is not everything in Life

A big realisation in my life is that money is not everything. Over the past 5 years, I made more money and my net worth grew because of the plans and goals I set for myself. I was able to generate multiple streams of income and spend more on the good things in life too.

However, after all these, honestly I don't feel much happier just because I had $100K more in my bank account. Don't get me wrong. It is still important to save up for our future especially if we want a good life for our love ones. But, honestly, money is not everything in life.


2. Life can hit you hard when you least expect it to happen

Life is not always smooth sailing. In fact, the past few days before my birthday, I felt an intense sadness reflecting on what had happened in the past and worrying about the future. I realised that I have totally no control over what would happen at all because of some unfortunate experiences in the past 1 year.

Personally, I have witnessed the sickness and death of 4 close relatives in just 1 year alone. One of which was a close cousin who was younger than me where he died in an accident. It hit me really hard that life does not give second chances. We can have all the plans we want but how it turns out later is unpredictable. I struggled a lot because I have been a person who believed in planning for the future a lot. It made me think what's the point of planning anymore.

Fortunately, my parents are still healthy but after seeing unfortunate things happen to people around me, I begin to worry for them also.


3. Keep walking is the only way in life, relationships and hope brings peace to our hearts

Yes there are worries and hurts in life that will bring us down. However, time does heal wounds as long as we continue walking. In fact, this is the only way in life. We either continue walking or we stop walking. But, I don't think to stop walking is a choice at all in life.

In times of trouble, we will know who are the people who really care for us. Relationships are tested and those that can withstand the test of times will become stronger. Even in the midst of all the worries, hope will bring peace to our hearts. I learnt not to give up hope no matter what happens. Whatever may happen in the future, I tell myself not to give up hope as well.

In the financial blogging world, we bloggers know each other in real life as well. It is these relationships that makes blogging much more alive and real. We are all still passionate about financial education which is a common goal we have. We also have families and some of them have spouse and children whom they work hard for.

I asked myself what is my motivation in life after 30. Deep down in my heart, my motivation comes from providing a good life for the people I love especially to my fiancee who will be my future wife. There is still a long road ahead to experience the good things life have to offer. My parents are getting older too and its time for them to enjoy life in their golden years.

Its a coincidence this year that my birthday falls on the same day as Easter Sunday. It reminds me to focus on what God has given me and to give thanks for the small things in life. Happy Easter everyone! :)

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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Visualisation of HDB resale prices in Singapore

Have you wondered where is the best place to buy a HDB resale flat in Singapore considering your budget or the remaining lease left in different towns in Singapore? I've been exploring data analysis through visualisation and did up a dashboard of the various resale prices in different towns in Singapore. This is done using the data on data.gov.sg.

It is often hard to find all the information we need as its all over the place even when we have Google search. With visualisation, we can see the data at one glance. The visualisation software I am using for this post is called Microsoft Power BI which I've been learning and using for my work as well.

The average HDB resale prices below are based on the sale transactions from 2015 to 2018 February.

Average HDB resale prices by town

Let's first look at an overview of the average HDB resale prices by town. Using a treemap, we can straight away see that Bukit Timah town has the highest average HDB resale price and Yishun has the lowest:

It may be too small to view on my blog so you can click on the image to have a better view. I've set the diverging colour to be green for the lowest prices, amber for mid range prices and red for the highest prices.

Average HDB resale prices by town treemap


To illustrate the resale prices more clearly, you can refer to the bar chart below:

Average HDB resale prices by town bar chart
Do take note again that the prices above are based on the resale sale transaction prices from 2015 to 2018 February for all room types so if a town has more 2 room or 3 room flats as compared to 4 room or larger flats, then the average price will be lower.

Average HDB remaining lease by town

When buying a HDB, we may also consider how old is the estate as the remaining lease does have an impact on the prices of the HDB as well. From the bar chart below, we would be able to see that the newest towns with still quite a lot of lease remaining is Punggol and Sengkang while the oldest towns seems to be Marine Parade and Geylang. This is probably due to the fact that Marine Parade and Geylang doesn't really have much new flats being built there so the town's average remaining lease is much lower as compared to other towns.

However, Geylang town had some good new BTOs being launched there just a few months ago in Eunos and Ubi which could change this in the future.

Average HDB remaining lease by town


Average HDB resale price by remaining lease

To confirm if remaining lease has an impact on HDB resale prices, I also did a visualisation to sort the HDB resale prices by its remaining lease.

Yes, it does seem the general trend is that the lower the lease remaining, the resale price of HDB is lower as well.

Average HDB resale price by remaining lease

More exploring of HDB resale prices 

I decided to go on further to see the real price of HDBs by flat type in some towns. Let's start off with Punggol which is on the far north east of Singapore. Do you think the flats are still cheap there? Not really actually. Let's take a look:

The average price for a 4 room flat in Punggol is about $442K

In Bishan, executive flats are going for an average price of about $893K

From previous analysis, we see that Yishun has the lowest HDB resale price among all other towns. Let's take a deeper look at Yishun.

Yes it seems like Yishun is still affordable with 4 room resale prices at around $359K.


That's all for the visualisation of HDB resale prices in Singapore. I hope this post let's you have a glimpse of the HDB flat prices in Singapore. If you find that the housing prices are too expensive, you would be happy to know that there are several grants for HDB resale purchases. You can refer to my previous post here on the various grants for HDB resale purchases.

Do take note the proximity housing grant has been enhanced as announced in budget 2018. You can refer to the info-graphics from HDB below for the changes:



*All data used in this post are HDB resale prices from 2015 to 2018 adapted from data.gov.sg.

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Thursday, March 15, 2018

Why Young Adults Should Not Focus On Investing At The Start Of Their Career

Two young adults, Kimberly and Johnathan starts out in their careers at the age of 25. Kimberly saves $20,000 a year and invests her money to earn only 4% investment returns while Jonathan saves $15,000 and invests his money to earn 7% investment return. Who will have higher net worth after 15 years?

Surprisingly, it turns out that Kimberly would have higher net worth in 15 years at age 40 even though she achieved lower investment returns. How is this possible?

Let's take a look how this pans out in a chart as seen below:

As we can see, because Kimberly saves an extra $5000 a year, she is ahead of Jonathan even though she only earns an investment return of 4% vs 7% which Jonathan earns. This shows that investment returns doesn't matter as much at the start of our lives or career. We should focus on saving more and earning more in order to save more.


The different income levels in Singapore

Much have been said about paper qualification and not to paper chase in the society. However, reality still hits us hard on the different income levels in Singapore especially those of the graduates and the non graduates. A recent article on the straits times said that fresh university graduates earned a higher starting pay last year, with some getting as much as $4,000 to $5,000 a month in areas such as business and computing. As compared to a non graduate, the startinf pay is only about $2200.

MOM releases statistics on the different graduate starting salaries of those from ITE, Polytechnic and Universities. The latest I found is for the year 2016. Let's take a look at some of the different salaries for the different groups of graduates.


ITE graduates



CourseMedian Gross Monthly Starting Salary ($)
Higher Nitec (Engineering)$1,700
Higher Nitec (Business & Services)$1,652.50
Higher Nitec (Info & Communications Technology)$1,650
Nitec (Engineering)$1,545
Nitec (Business & Services)$1,690


Polytechnic Graduates


CourseMedian Gross Monthly Starting Salary ($)
BUILT ENVIRONMENT, ENGINEERING & MARITIME$2,200
INFORMATION & DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES$2,100
APPLIED SCIENCES$2,000
HEALTH SCIENCES$2,400
BUSINESS, MANAGEMENT, DESIGN & OTHERS$2,000


University Graduates (NUS, NTU & SMU)



Course (4 year degree programme)Median Gross Monthly Starting Salary ($)
Bachelor of Accountancy$3,000.00
Bachelor of Accountancy & Bachelor of Business$3,500.00
Bachelor of Arts (Chinese) (Honours)$3,300.00
Bachelor of Arts (Economics) (Honours)$3,300.00
Bachelor of Arts (Education) / Bachelor of Arts with Diploma in Education$3,525.00
Bachelor of Arts (History) (Honours)$3,000.00
Bachelor of Arts (Honours)$3,500.00
Bachelor of Arts (Linguistics and Multilingual Studies) (Honours)$3,365.00
Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) (Honours)$3,200.00
Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) (Honours)$3,500.00
Bachelor of Business Administration (Accountancy) (Honours)$3,075.00
Bachelor of Business Administration (Honours); Bachelor of Business Management$3,500.00
Bachelor of Communication Studies (Honours)$3,000.00
Bachelor of Computing (Honours)$4,000.00
Bachelor of Dental Surgery$4,050.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Aerospace Engineering)$3,675.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Biomedical Engineering); Bachelor of Engineering (Bioengineering)$3,200.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering)$3,400.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Chemical Engineering)$3,450.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Civil Engineering)$3,400.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science)$3,500.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering)$3,710.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical Engineering); Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical & Electronic Engineering)$3,400.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental Engineering)$3,300.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Industrial And Systems Engineering)$3,500.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Information Engineering and Media)$3,350.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Materials Engineering)$3,300.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Materials Science & Engineering)$3,540.00
Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering)$3,390.00
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Arts, Design & Media)$2,700.00
Bachelor of Science (Physics / Applied Physics)$3,450.00
Bachelor of Science (Biological Sciences) (Honours)$3,175.00
Bachelor of Science (Chemistry & Biological Chemistry) (Honours)$3,149.00
Bachelor of Science (Economics)$3,700.00
Bachelor of Science (Education) / Bachelor of Science with Diploma in Education$3,525.00
Bachelor of Science (Honours)$3,300.00
Bachelor of Science (Information Systems Management)$3,600.00
Bachelor of Science (Maritime Studies)$3,398.00
Bachelor of Science (Mathematical Sciences)$3,500.00
Bachelor of Science (Mathematics & Economics)$3,300.00
Bachelor of Science (Nursing) (Honours)$3,500.00
Bachelor of Science (Project & Facilities Management)$3,000.00
Bachelor of Science (Real Estate)$3,200.00
Bachelor of Social Sciences (Honours); Bachelor of Social Sciences$3,300.00
Bachelor of Sports Science and Management$3,200.00

There are certainly differences with starting salaries for different groups of graduates. It seems like the median income for ITE graduates is about $1600, for polytechnic graduates is about $2200 while for university graduates is about $3400. This is quite a lot of difference for those who are starting out in their career.

Higher income will allow us to save more without compromising on the quality of life we still enjoy. Of course, there are people who are still not able to save even with higher income but that is another issue on its own.

For young people, it is important to invest in our own education to get a better head start in life in terms of the income we earn. Many young people look to investment in stocks thinking it is the answer to a better life but more often than not, it is not the case at all. As seen by the examples of Kimberly and Jonathan earlier on, just saving $5000 more every year will allow us to do better in life even with a much lower investment return for 15 years.

When will investment returns matter more?

Having said that investment returns does not matter as much during our early days, it does not mean we should totally ignore investing in itself. Investment returns will matter more when we have accumulated a substantial sum of money through savings.

Let's look at Kimberly and Jonathan again and extend their life by another 10 years to 50 years old:


This time, Jonathan has surpassed Kimberly as he continues to invest and earns 7% investment returns. But do take note he only surpassed after about 17 years which is really a long time. If Johnathan saves more at the start, he would have been much better off earlier.

Another thing to note is that investment returns are unpredictable. We can never be sure how much investment returns we can make but we can control more on how much money we can save. Increasing your savings rate can have a more massive direct impact on your net worth over the first 15 years.

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