SRS portfolio in 2024. What did I do?

SRS was a topic I used to blog about pretty often.

I have not been blogging about it as much since I have not been making contributions in recent years.

Reason is because I no longer pay income tax.

See:
Income Tax payable?

If we are still paying income tax, contributing to our SRS account makes sense to enjoy some tax relief.

Of course, we want to put our SRS money to work or we would get a very miserable interest rate.

For many years, I used the SRS money to buy plain vanilla endowment policies.

They were savings plan with some insurance thrown in.

In fact, I still have one or two of those with NTUC Income using SRS money.

In recent months, I also used the money to buy T-bills with yields being so much higher than a couple of years ago.

Dividends paid by my investments in stocks using SRS money are used for this purpose.

Yes, I also use SRS money to buy stocks of businesses which I think make good investments for income.

I have blogged about this before and shared what kind of stocks I would buy with SRS money.

Basically, the businesses must be good income generators with strong balance sheets; nothing which is likely to do rights issues.

The very practical reason is because we must have the excess funds in our SRS account to take part in rights issues.

This can be difficult to ensure.

I shared my SRS portfolio of stocks before but that is outdated by now.

See:
Win and win again with SRS.

I had SATS in the portfolio.

Of course, regular readers would know that I sold it shortly after it announced the decision to buy WFS.

SATS just didn't have sufficient resources to do what they suggested.

They had to raise funds from shareholders.

It was something unexpected.

So, I took the opportunity to sell when there was a bounce in the stock price.

In place of SATS, there are ComfortDelgro and OCBC in my SRS investment portfolio now.

This is what the portfolio looks like now:

Based on the purchase prices, it is not difficult to guess that DBS and ST Engineering have been in the portfolio for some time now.

So, like what I did?

Paid less income tax and put the money to work to generate more tax free passive income?

We can certainly win and win again with SRS.

If AK can do it, so can you!

Reference:
How AK used his SRS money?

DBS, T-bill and CPF. Dragon shatters shield!

Hope everybody is having a great start to the Year of the Dragon!

I am enjoying myself.

Maybe, I am enjoying myself a bit too much.

Too much Chinese New Year goodies.

Sore throat!

Ouch!

My investments are mostly doing well and I am contented.

DBS is making me smile a lot more than usual, of course.

The latest 6 months T-bill had a cut-off yield of 3.66% p.a.

My application using $675K of CPF OA money is probably filled since I placed a competitive bid of 3.5% p.a. like I said I would.

This means I would get paid some $2.5K more than what the CPF OA would have paid me.

Anyway, this is the latest from Budget 2024:

1. Members who are 55 years old and older will longer have a CPF SA from 2025.

2. Money in CPF SA will be transferred to the CPF OA once the newly created RA gets filled to the FRS.

So, CPF SA shielding strategy is down the drain.

Remember, back in 2021, I blogged about how it would probably be a matter of time before CPFB did something about the loophole.

It has finally happened.

See:
No more "shielding" of CPF SA."

It was never intended for the CPF to work that way.

It was a loophole that benefitted the financially more able while the financially less able would never be able to exploit it.

The CPF system is meant to help the masses and not the rich.

I have said this often enough and this latest move is further confirmation.

Those who are financially more able would have to find other ways to put excess funds to work.

We should pull our own weight and not rely on the government too much.

I like the idea that help is targeted and people who need it more should have more help.

Well, that's all for now.

If AK can talk to himself, so can you!

Reference:
A river called "CPF" and the horses.