I am half way there... 5 more years to go! My goals for 2025/2026

Today is 15 August 2025... I am starting to put this on record before the actual anniversary day, 22 August 2025.

I want to have more room to write about my 2024/2025 journey and there is so much to share. I started my trading and investing journey almost 5 years ago during the turbulence times of Covid-19. Not only has this journey change my way of living but it has also allowed me to take a step back from my daily life to constantly reflect about the life I want and how I should live it. Recently, I stumbled upon a YouTube video, Financial Freedom is Easy, after you learnt this which is about business marketing and the creator mentioned about Time Freedom vs Financial Freedom for his "lifestyle business". He mentioned that financial freedom is what everyone is aiming for but actually it is time freedom that they are looking for. I pondered about this for a moment and his words does hold some truth. You see, most of us live through the Singapore Dream where we go to school, get a good education, find a job, work, get married, work, buy a house, work, have kids, more work, then before we can realized, we have lived half of our life away working and embroiled into the hard knocks of life... of course in between this dream, we spent time with our love ones, we hung out with our friends, we watched our parents and kids grow older each day, and yes, we slept our time away too. So much time spent on chasing life instead of spending good quality time with our loves ones. At the end of our life time, I can be certain that it will be our loved ones who will be standing by our death beds. So... do value your time more than your money.

However, this post is not about me ranting about what life has to offer but more of a reminder for me to take score of my own trading and investing journey and hopefully through my postings to inspire anyone who is keen to start their own investment journey. As usual, here are some of my to-do checklists from the year ago to take account of how far I have come:

2024/2025

1) Build another 30K investment into US stocks (15K) for growth and Singapore stocks (15K) for dividend. I really want to owe some Singapore banks shares. For US stocks, I will cover technology stocks in the AI realm and consumer discretionary stocks on the daily essentials and services.

I added $37.5K to my US account and $7K to my Singapore account. A total of $44.5K. - PASSED!

2) Regularly invest a small portion (looking at another 3 - 5K) into cryptocurrency. I have a portfolio of BTC and ETH but they are just a tiny portion (less than 5%) of my overall investments.

I only invested $1.2K to crypto in the last period, a far cry of $1.8K from the projected goal. Given that cryptocurrency has surged to near all time high. This is a missed opportunity. - MISSED

3) Continue topping up my CPF and SRS, ensuring to achieve maximum tax relief and at the same time building on retirement. I have an account with roboadvisor, Endowus which takes care of my CPF OA and SRS investment, so far, the annualized return is about 5% so I will continue to fund this account regularly.

I have till the end of the year to fulfil the full SRS sum which is $15.3K. I have so far contributed $8100 and still short of $7200. With 4 more months to year end, that's about $1800 per month to catch up. Last year, I did not fulfill the SRS top up, as a result, I have to pay 5X more of income tax this year. SRS allows for dollar to dollar tax relief and it is a great way to set aside for retirement but not many people bought into the idea of having your money lock up till retirement. - LAST YEAR MISSED, THIS YEAR ONGOING 52% PASSED!

4) With the business side of things taking shape, I am also hoping to accumulate some savings and deploying them when the next financial crisis hits. I will take this time to slowly accumulate more savings. Ideally, it is recommended that savings for emergency funds should be up to 6 months of your current earning so this is going to be a long process as all of my investible funds are allocated as soon as my paycheck comes in. Probably doing more private hire and allow me to achieve this goal faster. Surely wouldn't mind adding another 20K to deployable funds.

I set aside $60K for emergency funds this year, this is about 7 to 8 months of salary put aside for anything and everything possible. This has been something that I have always wanted to do but unable to do so due to monthly cash flow. However with the sales of the shop unit at One Commonwealth, I was able to deploy some cash savings. Truly, this is one of the most liberating things to do for financial management. Knowing that I have funds set aside to ride through any bad tides have helped me to feel a stronger sense of security. I strongly encourage everyone to do this too. - PASSED

5) With this blog being about financial health, I would also like to take a side step into achieving better physical health for the year. Money is not the most important however one can make a better decision if money is out of the way. While money can't buy health, love, memories, relationship, trust, knowledge, passion... it can make these journey less torturing. So this year, I am hoping to build better health by exercising more regularly and be conscious so what goes into my body, as they say: "You are what you eat".

I failed badly in this aspect. Other than my "regular and yet irregular" basketball sessions, I have not been exercising much. Given my sporting background, this is an absolute FAIL. - MISSED.

3 misses and 2 passes, I guess I failed to meet my objectives for 2024/2025. 40 out of 100.

Goals for 2025/2026

1) I intend to add another $17K to my investment account with more US stocks, focusing on AI growth.

2) I intend to add another 20 - 30% more to my monthly regular savings plan (RSP) CPF OA investment through Endowus starting next month. This will boost another $3.6K every year for my retirement. Currently, my RSP plan is set for $1K every month.

3) I intend to add another $3 - 5K to my crypto investment, same plan as last year.

4) I am also looking at China A shares, I have a strong belief in the Chinese market and feel that their top companies are only starting to take shape in comparison to the US counterparts where the stock market is already a part of an Americans' life, e.g. the 401K. The younger generation are more exposed to investment and finance and are starting to invest earlier as compared to their previous generation. I have some Chinese holdings in Hong Kong listed shares but will be keen to explore Chinese ETF if any opportunity arises.

5) Need to build more capital for investment. Will be looking at more side hustles to gain constant cash flow. I don't have an idea yet but I know it needs to be done.

About The Contributor

Ben is not financially trained. He is not a certified financial planner and he does not sell any insurance or investment plans. He is not financially motivated by any entities to produce this blog. He hopes to inspire his friends through his postings to know more about money management and not have anyone fall between the social cracks. Nope, he is not a millionaire though he aims to be financially free before 50 years old.