8 months without work!

Time flies. It has been a total of 8 months since I have had a job. I really miss those times when I have salary crediting to my account at the end of the month. However, I certainly do not miss the long working hours or the shift work that I have had to do last time.

With the current bull market, I am glad that my networth has somewhat kept constant even with the high taxes that I have to bear this year. I hope that this continues (not the high taxes part) and that my net worth will keep climbing when I start work in August (fingers crossed).

a) Coursera
During my free time, I have been taking coursera courses, but I have since stopped after the 3rd course. I have somewhat concluded that I am not really the studying type so I have put this on hold for now.

b) Insurance
I have recently bought term and am currently waiting for the approval. If it goes through, I would the proceed cancel my ILPs and to be more proactive in investing the rest.

c) Dividend investing
I have been trying to tweak my portfolio to get a good yield. I am currently at 6.9%. I am hoping to push it up to 8% by the end of the year. I am currently convincing myself that I would need to set aside more funds for this. I am holding on to more cash rather than buying income generating assets. This is probably because of the property leverage strategy that I am currently on.

d) Rental
My tenant has moved out and surprisingly, when I took over the place from him, its even better than when I rented it out. I am hoping to find a new tenant soon. Otherwise my plan on using leverage to grow my money would fail. I want to rent it out before I head out to Australia for my work. When I have a tenant in place, I think I would feel more comfortable putting more money into my dividend investing strategy.

e) Reading
I have been reading quite a lot lately. When I am in the orchard area, I will head down to Kinokuniya to catch up on magazines and books. After lunch/tea with friends, I would also go to the library or the book shops to see what books are available and to try to complete some chapters whilst waiting for my gf to finish work. There are just so many books to read and so little time. However, I can get quite tired of standing and reading at the same time as I am quite stingy to purchase books.