Monthly Financial Update- May 2020

I decided to put up my monthly financial update (expenditure and passive income) in this blog.

Updating my monthly financial regularly here helps me to streamline my expenditure and of course reminds me how to be frugal.

Saving 70-80% of my income is my monthly target and I invest almost all of the savings. I keep about 6 months of my salary as emergency fund and it is kept safe in my bank account as fixed deposit (CD).

I would show my passive income which is generated mainly from my Singapore and Malaysia REITs holdings, banks stocks and rental income.

Nominal income still flow in from my Amazon books, Google Adsense but they are negligible.

Passive Income

I love passive income! Due to Covid-19 pandemic, a lot of Singaporean REITs especially retail REITs have cut their DPU ( distribution per unit) significantly ( exchange rate SGD1: MYR 3, HKD 1: MYR 0.55)

The REITs income usually would be paid out every quarterly and some semi-annually.

May 2020 monthly passive income was pretty good and I am delighted because one my Singapore Reits was still able to give decent DPU. One of my properties has been vacant for years and currently we only rent out two properties.

Monthly expenditure ( Exclude housing loan, insurance and kids school fee)

I pay my wife and my own medical/life insurance every quarterly. My kid school fee is paid upfront . The housing loan is excluded in the expenditure because eventually I have to settle it before retirement.

I regret buying my current home in Penang because I just spend too much paying the bank monthly.

This month expenditure pattern was slightly different from previous months due to a few reasons,

1. I did not pay any income tax installment ( CP500), therefore the saving rate was high.
2. I spent a lot in food delivery for my kids and mum since they were staying at home and my wife was working half day thus we couldn’t prepare lunch for them.
3. There was no entertainment spending because of MCO ( Movement control order) in Malaysia thus we saved MYR60 for our monthly cinema outing.
4. Petrol/Gas spending was pretty low because petrol price in Malaysia was at historical low.
5. I gave away MYR1600 to buy rice and food for 50 families in a nearby neighborhood since there are a lot of poor families there who lost their jobs.
6. The last vacation we took was 5 months ago.
7. We have given one of our tenants rental rebate for 3 months during this pandemic.

I still need to cut down my expenditure

My utility bill was high because I pay for my mum’s house utility bills as well. Since my kids spent most of the time at home, the electricity bill was higher than the usual month. I couldn’t cut my Netflix because my kids love some of the Netflix shows so much.

The only bill I am hoping to cut down is my phone bill ( Maxis post paid) which costs me MYR 241.74. I have a family-line package which include myself, wife and my mum with 15GB shared data per month.

My wife is a hero

My wife helps me along the way in our FIRE journey. She works part-time and contributes significantly to our household expenditure as well.

Delicious dinners are usually prepared by her alone if I come home late evening. She cooks nice pancakes for our breakfast too and saves me at least MYR100 monthly if we were to go to Mcdonald’s instead!