Cash drain from preschool and rental deposits
The US elections results are coming in and I can’t wait to see who’s the winner. I haven’t done much with our investments except to buy in on the dips when they happen. This helped to maintain our cash position at 30% and investments value at 35%. The investment portfolio is rather evenly split between 50% local stocks & ETFs and 50% overseas stocks & ETFs. Asset allocation is balanced with funds on standby to buy in on volatility in the markets. Unless there’s another big market fall, I probably won’t invest too much cash that will cause a significant reduction in its proportion of our portfolio.
After all, we foresee our expenses going up in the next few years and we will need the cash for spending. We are enrolling our son into a preschool (childcare) next year when he turns 1.5 year old and we just paid the enrolment deposit. His start date is in 6 months’ time and we are going with the 5 half days (mornings) in a week to get him used to it. We are also in the process of leasing a bigger apartment in the same area as the preschool and will be paying the rental deposit. Our move in date should be in 3 months’ time. These deposits do add up and is no small sum of money i.e. a cash drain.
At the end of the 2 years lease, if we like living in that area and it works for us, we plan to buy a bigger apartment there. This is going to cost us even more and we need to build up our cash for it. Which means we have to save up more and not invest as much. We don’t mind renting in the meantime because it buys us time and information value. We will gain more insight into the sustainability of our jobs and the direction our lives are headed as a family. We are also looking to increase our portfolio allocation to overseas stocks & ETFs the more our jobs and lives are anchored in Singapore. But we will keep investing in local stocks & ETFs since the market has one of the worst underperformance. Just to reduce the risk of too much concentration and reliance of our livelihood on Singapore.
