2022: A Year In Review

Kinda late, but here is my yearly review for the year of 2022. Considering what happened in 2022 for me, I was quite worried to do a review as I was really worried what I would see, which resulted in me procrastinating this post. But it is my strong belief that a review is an important part of improving myself. *Deep breath* Here we go.

On my personal finances 

Total savings achieved after everything else would be 37.4k. 

My spending in 2022 was kinda off whack frankly, and looking at my numbers for 2023, it still looks this way too. I am spending much more than I am normally used to, especially on tech items. It ranges from small ones like a wallet, to electronic repair tools to computer components to a modular laptop (supporting a cause I believed in) and accessories for myself but 2022 was a year of giving. I bought an eInk tablet, iPad accessories, health devices, PC upgrade components (replacing failed components and recycling as much components as I could to reduce eWaste) for family members and even a gaming PC for my bestie.

Because of these expenses, after creating this small spending buffer, it was blown completely out of the water. I should rein in those expenses, but I am not doing that well in that department for now.

I would kinda say that 2022 was like a long awaited quality of life upgrade I guess. Another reason was, in hindsight, felt like it was linked to the huge loss I had in May last year (more in the investment section below).

Here are some pictures of my own loot:

There's probably a few items not inside but these are the ones to get excited about I guess. 

I definitely failed to save 75% of all my windfalls and for any increment from my job. I hope to do it better in 2023 but as of writing, it doesn't seem to be going very well.

My current net profit margin from work has decreased from 63.2% to 48.4%, dropping below the 60% mark, not even at 50%. As of writing, my salary is pretty much at my ceiling for my pay grade and due to being seconded to another department where I will lose pretty much all my shift allowances (I don't even get my full transport allowances), I will still aim to hit a long term target of 65%, but probably looking at pushing my savings rate back to 50% to 60% for starters. 

I would probably need to optimise expenses but I am unsure. Probably trying to hustle would be more useful, given the scenario I am presented at the time of writing. 

My total net worth less CPF (269.7k) remains below my total CPF balances (343.9k, inclusive of CPFIS). My invested cash stands at only 225.7k. This sums up to be 613.6k, still stuck at the 600k mark. 

I have reduced my lottery spending to $39 from $60, which is a good sign. 

This is my updated Financial Independence Excel Dashboard for the year of 2022. 

Despite the decreased savings, the years to financial independence actually decreased to 9 years from 8, even with my assumptions using 5% return rates. 

On my investment portfolio 

Portfolio XIRR this year is about -48.39%, with long term XIRR of -12.41% which severely underperformed VT (-18.55% and 6.03% respectively). This is due to the tech downturn recently, hitting both my portfolio and VT hard. I was hit by the UST/Luna event in May which cost me about a year of savings lost, paired this with loads of balance transfers, ouch. I wrote my thoughts about that event in this post here if you are wondering how I felt then.

The US Feds have raised interest rates quite a bit and I can see from news articles on how much more expensive loans are.

I collected a total of $2341.70 of dividends. 

I am still monitoring my Endowus equities portfolio (cash) to compare my own performance, it will take some years of real life performance before the decision can be made if doing it myself is better or giving my funds to them. I have started another portfolio using a 100% Dimensional solution so I wonder how will all of them look in the long run. As of writing, I saw that there's an ETF called VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat ETF that I heard of years ago, but finally there's performance results out and it seems to be really good. Maybe I should look at putting some funds inside for comparison.

That being said, perhaps during retirement or if one day my mental faculties begin to deteriorate, I would envisioning that passing all my funds to them for management and adopting a withdrawal strategy would work too.

Moving forward, I hope to read up more as well as keep an eye out for opportunities in the markets. That being said, the markets are kinda flat right now without much bargains in sight. HKEx does present some value but my portfolio is kinda heavy in that region so I would prefer to add positions from the US or SG markets.

On my CPF 

Here's the overall XIRR for all of them: 

• Blended OA+CPFIS (Endowus+Bank shares): 3.34% 
• Blended OA+CPFIS+SA: 3.96% 

I added more to the China focused portion of the CPF portfolio to attempt to capitalise on the cheapness of the chinese market (note it says attempted, the portfolio is still underwater now). For some reason, I am unable to pull all CPF performance in Endowus web UI without selecting a goal. It is gonna be painful to manually calculate so this year I am kinda skipping the Endowus cumulative performance as well as my Bank shares investment, the latter which is getting so much smaller because I only add them during market downturns.

Wow talk about underperforming even the CPF SA interest overall. Not sure if there's more pain to come in the markets considering the heavy weightage of equities in my OA CPFIS.

Still, the combined OA+SA+CPFIS is now 275.5k which already exceeded the current Full Retirement Sum of 192k. My SA growth is expected to accelerate from overflowing funds from the MA.

 

My CPF MA have finally achieved the Basic Healthcare Sum by this year, and MA contributions will overflow to the SA which should accelerate the size of the SA.

 

On my Job 

I am acclimatizing to the new environment. Picking up downstream knowledge is providing to be harder. Learning is not structured at all for new hires and I learn better with my hands, having a slower pace makes it harder.

I also experienced a difference in a contract firm versus a firm who owns their products. There's a product recall in the department I am part of along with a slower than expected uptake of the product despite COVID-19 measures easing. The product lines in my department is kinda concentrated as compared to my previous place where we have a diversified customer base. There's also a difference in the perception of how we deal with risks in processes too, so much more risk tolerant here.

As a result, there is now excess manpower as the ramping up of production was not realised and instead went the opposite direction. There's no intention for retrenchment as of present but at the end of 2023 or in the future is anyone's guess.

I volunteered to go for a rotation to another department in interest of looking outside of my role and considering alternatives career options. I guess instead of thinking about it, I am now going for it.

That being said, I actually applied to my previous workplace under another position I was interested in as I wanted to participate in a brownfield project. I did get the offer but I got low balled. It was a 1.8k loss per month as they removed all my allowances including the staff flexi benefits (1.8k is after adding their allowances and flexi). It sucked as the opportunity was good but the mismatch was too huge. It was made worse because I knew there was someone who got accepted with allowances all in.

Unfortunately, I rejected the offer just 1 month before I received notice about my department's product recall. To rub salt into my wound, my previous workplace increased both shift premiums and flexi benefits too. Ouch.

Some thoughts about industry:

• I am noticing an increased trend of contract positions instead permanent ones for the role I currently hold. In fact, during a townhall session at my workplace, it is subtly hinted that they are shifting towards contract staff. New hires for my role are to be contract staff with much lesser staff welfare benefits. There's some neighboring companies testing out to outsource my role. All these are done in an effort to bring down cost on what was considered skilled labour. I guess like Semiconductor manufacturing and Oil&Gas, my industry would be impacted similarly.
• Leases and tax benefits are ending for my industry so it may not be attractive for the companies to stay and instead look for the next place for lower costs of production.
• The department I am in, uses rather aging technology to manufacture products, in fact, the process itself is dated. Compared to the newer industry trends, this is really old. There's some talk about building a new facility but that's easily almost a decade away. Depending on demand of the product and whether they manage to turnaround and resolve the product recall, cost cutting will be a focus. It would be logical to just spend bare minimum CAPEX to keep the facility running while increasing efficiency/reduce costs.
• There might be more similar industries coming in, such as cell-based meats and mRNA vaccines but how lucrative their margins are is a question.
  

Here's the income CAGR chart: 

I am actually hitting almost maximum CPF contributions with my basic monthly salary with allowances added in, but considering the situation, maxing CPF without allowances would be better.

Income CAGR fell which is in line with expectations. I am actually a few % from the ceiling of my role. Looks like this year is a year that I need to secure a promotion or shift to a role with a pay scale higher than mine. In view of the circumstances, I doubt next year's bonus or increment would be palatable, so it is probably important to push a promotion through.

Finding alternative streams of income is more important than ever (as well as savings). Good thing is I am finally getting some encouraging success for something I am working on, but it is not to market yet.

On my personal life 

I completed 2 books, missing my target of 12 books per year. 

The list of books I read are: 

• Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin
• Token Economy: How the Web3 Reinvents the Internet by Shermin Voshmgir

I am still contemplating should I read the entire Drizzt series in one go, and as usual, my reading list keeps piling up. 

Feeling drained from the crypto losses actually hit both my reading targets, savings discipline and even my energy for more socialization (including social media and physical outreach programs that I tried to make myself participate in). For all of my friends reading this, I am sorry that I didn't really like become as active as I would liked to. I just wanted to just be in my comfort zone and recharge.

On a side note, I finished 2 games this year too, as part of my KPI to finish at least 1 game, with an ever increasing list of games to play. 

Games List: 

• Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition and Future Connected
  
• The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, Champion’s Ballad

The side project, as of writing, I managed to get onto some traction to be on the right track. But no, there isn't a working product, so KPI failed there. Hopefully, 2023 would be better (fingers crossed). 

I have also spent like LOADS more in 2022 compared to what I like, but it is really really hard to maintain the discipline. 

I am maintaining my health status in 2022 are as follows: 

• My overall exercise minutes per week 22 minutes. 
• Ring Fit Adventure game does help in gamifying exercise, but some discipline is still required. I have made some additional static exercises on my own occasionally due to some old injuries acting up. 
• I wasn't able to maintain my body massage and callus filing routines. 

I am aiming to maintain my exercise minutes per week at 15 minutes but looking at 30 minutes with a long term target of 90 minutes per week. 

I am giving up on tracking my blog revenue as at least for now, my focus would be adjustment and growing in my new workplace and trying to get my side project to a steady state. 

I am interested in doing some form of writing/production once the side project has stabilised and I when have more bandwidth, but that remains to be seen. It is now further complicated with my rotation too.

Like always, so many ideas but so little time to execute them.

Conclusion

Summary of 2022's main KPI and targets: 

• Read at least 12 Books (failed)
• Finish at least 1 Game (done)
• Maintain my savings rate (failed)
  
• Achieve 100k increase on total net worth (failed, more like 5k)
  
• Maintain my health routines (kinda?)
  
• Get a working product from my side project (failed)

Setting 2023's main KPIs and targets: 

• Read a few books (maybe just fiction?)
  
• Finish at least 1 Game 
• Maintain my savings rate
• Maintain my health routines
• Get a working product from my side project 

Well, that's all for my review of 2022, it remains a hard year for many people as we emerge from the pandemic. 

But let's hope that 2023 is a better year! 

How was 2022 for you?

Related Posts:

• My Review of 2021
  
• My Review of 2020
• My Review of 2019
• My Review of 2018
• My Review of 2017
• My Review of 2016