Side Hustle: Building a Side Income

To achieve Financial Independence, one's income must exceed his/her expenses. One way to supplement your day-job income is to build a side income. The usual approach is to build a passive income comprising of dividends, coupons and interests earned from financial instruments.

Another way is to build a side hustle. This provides an additional income but it typically requires your time to accomplish. Your intrinsic motivation to grow your side hustle and income will also be a determining factor in sustaining your venture(s). For example, if you are able to monetise your passion or hobbies, you might be able to sustain the venture a lot longer than if you were just mindlessly looking around at different ventures.

I will be examining these side hustles that I am interested in while penning my thoughts in this blog. 

• Create, develop and maintain my blog with creative content. Monetise my blog and expand to affiliate marketing where possible.
• Create a home-based food business. 

Share with me your thoughts and comments on building a side income!

SG FI Dad, out.

Planning For The Cost of Pre-School Education

The education system in Singapore is well-known or notorious for being highly competitive with examples of parents being kiasu and sending their children for enrichment programs. As I took some time to ponder over this, it hit me that the cost of sending my kid to child care/kindergarten in the near future will probably be one of the bigger expenses required since her birth.

What better way to determine how much is required in a couple of year's time than some number crunching. heh

Wow. Definitely not cheap.

For this scenario, I considered placing my child in half-day ($550/month) vs full-day sessions ($720/month) in 'Anchor Operators'. The cost calculated above is solely the school fees and does not include the miscellaneous fees of school uniforms etc. It also does not account for any other subsidies that our family may qualify for. These subsidy programs may change and it is difficult to predict what subsidy programs might be available in 3 years time. I also used a conservative estimate of inflation pegged at 1%. May or may not be the actual case.

One way to to tackle this expense of child-care services is to use the Child Development Account and pay for such expenses. What is clear to me now is that when I send my child for pre-school education, I would need anywhere from ~$27,000 to $36,000.

Hopefully, this post serves as a guide for parents who are planning for their child's education journey. Share with me your thoughts and comments on Singapore's education system and the cost of education here!

SG FI Dad, out.

SG FI Dad 2020 1H Review

Wow, half a year has gone by so quickly. I'll admit it. 2020 did not go the way I had envisioned it. All I had in mind was ensuring that my wife and (already born) child were given the care and attention they needed to be healthy and happy. But like what I have been saying in my few posts, life is full of curve balls. COVID-19, a black swan event, hit hard. Like really hard. The number of cases continue to rise and the impact on the economy and livelihood is far and wide. 

I am grateful that I continue to be gainfully employed. More importantly, I am immensely thankful that both my wife and child are healthy and continue to grow and recuperate. Nothing more I can ask for honestly. When I became a dad, there's this indescribable feeling  and need to step up.

In addition, there has been a mindset switch on the importance of finances and planning. Really, the impetus for tracking 'passive' income is to understand the performance of our investments and savings. This will help us see if we are heading in the right direction or require other instruments in our portfolio to mitigate the shortfall.

We will continue our quest to increase our dividend income, we will also explore other means of diversifying our income streams. Nonetheless, our mental model is that dividends please continue to come in.

As of now, our dividends received YTD is $398.04. The projected amount of dividends that we will receive for 2020 is $700 which suggests that we are currently still on track. Will check in again at the end of the year to see if we managed to hit this projection.

Share with me your thoughts and comments on having a dividend income stream!

SG FI Dad, out.

How I Made $202 by Exercising in 6 Months

If you told me 10 years ago that I can be paid to do sports or exercise, I would jump at the opportunity without any hesitation. Back then, 18 year old me would probably be thinking what a chance it would be if I can make a career out of sports or be a semi-pro athlete. 

Fast forward to present me, I am employed with a young child and there are even more necessities and expenses to pay for. One tiny way I use to mitigate for the costs of diapers and milk formula, is utilising the AIA Vitality App. 

In essence, the AIA Vitality App rewards its users for completing certain health-related assessments and exercising. By exercising about 3-4 times per week, I am able to hit the exercise goal which grants me a $5 voucher and when my team completes their personal goals, I am granted an additional $5 voucher. That's $10 per week, to stay healthy.

The Vitality program currently cost $8/month. Given that I am able to redeem $40 worth of vouchers each month, it's easily a win for me. This is on top of other perks like discount on insurance policies and their merchant partners.

At the same time, NTUC Income has their Orange Health App which has similar mechanics but their range of rewards are slightly different. In a year, the amount of rewards that an individual can redeem is capped at $40. Currently, I use this app to redeem for CapitaMall Vouchers. I use this vouchers to offset some of my bullion and numismatic purchases (more on that next time).

In total, AIA: (6 months x 4 weeks x $10) - (6 months x $8)= $192

            Orange Health: $10 for 1H 2020

            Tada! $202 just from exercising.

Essentially, I see this as a win-win situation. Anyone with qualifying policies under either insurance providers or if there are apps with other providers which provides similar rewards, you should sign up.

More importantly, the grind towards financial independence will be for nothing if one overlooks his/her health and is unable to enjoy the fruits of your labour. I am grateful that even with my child, my wife and I still carve out some time for ourselves to exercise. Its equally crucial to take care of ourselves and our well-being so that we can better provide for those who are dependent on us.

Share with me your thoughts and comments on such rewards programs and if you grind/exercise for them! I'll go in-depth into each of these apps sometime in the future.

SG FI Dad, out.