2015: Year in review

Today is the last day of 2015 and 笨mummy is feeling mixed emotion about it. 

Firstly, two of her co-workers of her team are leaving the company on 31 Dec, which is their last day at work. She wishes them all the best in their next job and she enjoyed their company very much for the past 3 years working with them. Coming to end of 2015, also mean that 笨mummy is closer to her own last day at work, which is the first week of Jan 2016. Of course, 天下没有不散的宴席, it is expected to see people entering and leaving your life in certain parts of it. 

Looking back on 2015, it has been a good year for 笨mummy: 

Career advancement

She got a job promotion in Apr 2015 that came with a juicy increment 6%. And in Dec 2015, she managed to secure a new job that is going to commerce in mid Jan 2016 that also come with an increment of 6% and a "nicer" job title. 

笨mummy is grateful that career luck has been kind to her since she started working in 2001. She is always able to find great mentors in her managers, bosses as well as colleagues that help to shape and mold her to be a better person in life. She is thankful to them for trusting her and allowing her to grow and accepting the mistakes that she made along the way. 

Tried new things / experience

笨mummy went on her first business trip to the United State of America and this is her first trip after working for 14 years. It was interesting and daunting in a way, as 笨mummy had never been to America before this trip, and she had also never travel on her own to another country. 

The experience was great, and 笨mummy realized that it is not as scary as she thought being in a foreign country on your own with the help of wifi, google map, auto-roaming, and a common spoken language - English. 

This year, finally after 3 years, 笨mummy finally made her first trip out of Singapore with hubby. It is a great feeling to finally being able to travel and experience the world outside Singapore. A little time away from work and the little one was great!! 

Support from hubby

笨mummy's hubby has been a great support to her in many ways. He accepted her for who she is and also accepting the flaws in her. 

Hello 2016!! 

笨mummy is looking forward to her new job in Mid of Jan 2016 and of course, a new working environment, new colleagues, and so much more. 

Update for Dec 15

Last of the dividend received for the year 2015. Time to take a beak and enjoy the coming long weekend. 

Dividend for month of Dec 15: 

Ascendas Hospitality Trust - S$212.80

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Dec’ 15	$ 212.80
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 8,978.59

Update for Nov 15

笨mummy went for a short four days trip to Tokyo, Japan in Nov. Though it was a short trip, it is still great fun to spend time in another country, experiencing cool autumn weather that Singapore does not have. 

She was also kept busy at work as one of her colleagues has tendered and leaving end of Dec 15. She was involved a few job interviews conducted by her manager for the replacement of this colleague. It is fun to be sitting in a job interview as the interviewer and the interviewee. 

As always, Nov is another "harvest" month where most of the stocks, that 笨mummy has, are issuing dividends. In total, 笨mummy received S$1.8K of dividends (with a new member starting its first contribution - FCL Treasury Bond) and she has surpassed her total dividend received in Year 14. 

One more month to go with one dividend payout expected from Ascendas Hospitality Trust of $212. 笨mummy is happy that she managed to get more dividends this year and aim for more for year 16. 

Dividend for month of Nov 15: 

DBS Pref Share - $236.93

FCL Treasury Bond  - S$184.00

Suntec REIT - S$252.20

Mapletree GCC - S$34.99

Ascendas REIT - S$880.11

Ascendas India Trust - S$274.00

Total: S$1,862.03

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Nov’ 15	$ 1,862.03
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 8,765.79

Bucket list

笨mummy has been thinking a lot recently about life after coming back from a recent trip from Japan. She reached Singapore on 12 Nov 15 midnight, a day before Friday the 13^th (i.e. 13 Nov 15). Yes, that fateful day where Paris was attacked. She has been asking the question as to whether she living her life fully and doing what she loves. Nobody can predict when onr would leave this world as anything can happen, an accident, a heart attack, etc, life is so fragile at times.

She decided to list down the bucket list of things that she wanted to do / accomplish before her time is up as a reminder that she should live her live to the fullness and not regret when she, one day, looks back at her own life.

A. Visit and see more parts of the world

Oh yes, this sounds like a big goal. As a child, 笨mummy never get the chance to travel, not even to Malaysia, as her parents are busy and careful with money. But she never once envy people who travel as travel is never part of her life as you never experience it and you would not miss it.

As she started earning money, visiting places with friends, exploring the internet, it seems there are so much out there in this world that she wants to take a look. For example, experiencing farm stay, touching snow, autumn leaves, visiting theme parks, etc.

She will try her best to visit and experience something new and different once a year if possible.

B. Spend more time with her child

The feeling of guilt is always there when笨mummy has to work and her little one is left with the grandparents. Though笨mummy is rest assured that the grandparents are great caretaker of the little one and adore him as much as her, she still wants to be there for her little one to accompany him when he hits milestones, learns and experience new things, and exploring this exciting world around him.

Parents’ time with the child is very limited and the child will eventually grow up and experience the world on his own without the parents. 笨mummy always cherish the time with her little one on weekend and focuses her full attention to him, that means no handphone / computer usage when the child is around (she would only use them when he is taking afternoon nap or when he is out with daddy at the playground). She tried her best to bring him along to social functions as long as the places allow children of his age.  

She hopes that she keeps this up and constantly reminding herself to cherish the time with the little one, and do not reject the little one’s requests for hugs and / or playtime.

C. Being more patient with her parents

As a mummy now, 笨mummy can understand the care and love that parents have for their child, especially her own parents who care for her. As her parents are getting older, they need more care and concern from her.

Sometimes笨mummy would lose her temper at her parents (though she regrets doing so after she calm down) especially at times when she is busy. 笨mummy hopes that she can be more patient with her parents and not lose her temper at them. She also wish that she can spend more time with them.

D. Stop having excuse and start moving

笨mummy had spent a few months learning basic Japanese few years back, and she does not have time to keep up with the learning and now they are all “returned” to the teacher. It is a language that笨mummy wants so much to learn, but the lack of time to practice make it very hard to retain what she learnt. However from her recent trip, she met a lady from China, living in Japan, who know how to speak four languages – Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean. She is totally amused by the lady’s determination to learn that many languages.

As long as someone has the determination to succeed in something, he would always make time for it. So笨mummy has decided to stop giving herself excuses and start moving to complete the following:

·        Learning Japanese and pass Japanese Language Proficiency Test

·        Learning clay art

·        Complete her Wilton cake decoration level 3 and 4 courses

Let’s get working on them, 笨mummy!! 

Update for Oct 15

Dividend for month of Oct 15: 

Genting Pref Share - $256.95
Hyflux Pref Share  - S$90.25
Total: S$347.20

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Oct’ 15	$ 347.20
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 6,903.76

Net FlashPay top up promotion - $3 per month up for grab from Nov to Jan 16

笨mummy saw a promotion in Today newspaper on the NETS Flashpay that rewards a 10% rebates on top up to any NETS Flashpay on the DBS/UOB/OCBC bank cards (debit card / credit card), cap at $3 per month for 01 November 2015 to 31 January 2016.

笨mummy has a OCBC Frank Credit card that comes with NETS Flashpay and she is going to top up $30 via the Add-Value Machine at the MRT Station at the end of each month.

Details on the promotion can be found here - https://promo.nets.com.sg/netsflashpay.html

Shopping malls reward programs review

Even since Capitalmall introduced its reward program – Capita Star that allows one to earn points from spending in their malls, other shopping malls are catching up and introducing their own reward program to attract shoppers.

Frasers Rewards

Frasers Centrepoint Malls has its Fraser Rewards (link) that awards shoppers with 10 point for $10 normal spending or 2 points for a $10 supermarket spending in their malls.

Normal	Supermarket
Spend $10 = 10 Points	Spend $10 = 2 Points

As for the redemption, it is mentioned on the website that every 500 points earn 0.5% rebate, which it is hard to understand what is meant by 0.5% rebate and how does it work.  For members whom purchases spending is $8,000 or more, can be upgrade to Frasers Rewards Elite the following redemption year and enjoy DOUBLE rebates.

This is a reward program that 笨mummy has no experience on as she does not stay or work near any of Frasers Malls.

Suntec Rewards

Suntec Mall recently introduced its reward program – (link). A minimum of $20 spending in a single receipt is required. And the points awarded vary depending on the type of spending.

General	F&B	Supermarket
Spend $1 = 5 Points	Spend $1 = 3 Points	Spend $1 = 1 Points

Shoppers can redeem a $5 e-voucher with 5,000 points. It is launched in late Oct 2015. Fairly simple program – Shop/dine, scan and earn points.

Like Frasers, they also have special privileges for members that hit certain spending tier – 6,000 for Gold & 40,000 for Ultimate, in the way of more bonus points on birthdays and member discounts. 

JemX Rewards

JEM (Jurong East Mall) has its own reward program – JemX Rewards (link). It is a fairly straight forward program. $1 spending regardless of category would get 1 point. Minimum spending of $20 accumulated in 2 receipts for earning points.

CapitaStar

CapitaStar (link) allows shoppers to earn the CapitaStar points for purchases made in the shopping malls under Capitalmalls. Every $1 spent would get 5 points for normal purchase and for supermarket purchases, every $1 spent can only entitled to 1 point. A minimum of $20 for a receipt to be entitled to earning points.

A summary for the various programs discussed above and comparison on a $$ value level:

	Min per receipt	General	F&B	Supermarket	Redemption
Suntec Rewards	$20	$1 = 5 pts	$1 = 3 pts	$1 = 1 point	5,000 pts = $5 e-Voucher
Frasers Rewards*	$10	$1 = 1 pt		$1 = 0.2 pt	Every 500 pts =0.5% rebate
CapitaStar*	$20	$1 = 5 pts		$1 = 1 pt	5,000 pts = $5 Voucher
CapitaStar * (Passion card )	$20	$1 = 7.5 pts		$1 = 1.5 pt	5,000 pts = $5 Voucher
JemX Rewards	$20 in 2 receipts	$1 =1 pt			800 pts = $5 e-Voucher

*Capping:

Suntec reward – cap at$5000 spending.

Frasers Rewards - cap at 500 per day

CapitaStar - cap at 5,000 per day

CapitaStar (with Passion card) - cap at 7,500 per day

For every $20 spent:

Spending Type	Suntec Rewards	Frasers Rewards	CapitaStar	CapitaStar (Passion card)	JemX Rewards
General	$  0.100	Unable to assess	$      0.100	$       0.150	$        0.125
F&B	$  0.060		$      0.100	$       0.150	$        0.125
Supermarket	$  0.020		$      0.020	$       0.030	$        0.125

Looking at the points converting to dollar value, it seems that for supermarket spending, Jem has the best offer, and for all other type of purchases, CapitaStar (passion card) is the winner and for those without out passion card, Jem is still a better bet.

The little efforts that added up

Here are a summary of the small steps that 笨mummy takes to reap those little perks from her spending and saving that she often shares with her friends and colleagues. 

(1) Transport spending

(a) MRT expenses

This was previously blogged by 笨mummy before -Travel Smart reward (formerly know as Insinc)

Sign up and link up your Ezlink card. And you are on your way to earn a bit of money from your daily commuting if you are taking a train to work daily. 笨mummy earned $28 from this program in 2015.

Link to earlier point on Insinc- Insinc point update

(b) Taxi spending

A occasional taxi taker, 笨mummy, has signed up for the cabreward program introduced by Comfort to promote customer loyalty. She can earn points for taking cab and then redeem these points for comfort taxi voucher. It takes about a minimum 1,000 points to redeem a $5 voucher and that meant a spending of $1000 on cabs with payment ie. S$19 per week. Considering that 笨mummy needs to take her son to her mum's place every sun and the cab fare is estimated S$15 per trip. And adding some ad-hoc promotion for bonus points, reaching the minimum redemption points of 1,000 should not be any issue. 

Yes, this is previously shared in an earlier blog post - Points system for taking cab.

She also regularly checked the comfort website for update on their promotions that allows her to earn from taking cabs. Like the recent promotion with Dash, she can earn 5% rebate on taxi spending and 2x reward points, and 5 x points for birthday month.

(2) Spending on daily necessities

(a) Qoo10 for your diaper needs

There are some expenses that 笨mummy cannot avoid for her little one, such as milk powder,  diapers, wet wipe, etc. For diapers, she is not fussy and is willing to get from Qoo10, especially when they offered free delivery to her house (if above a certain amount) and the price is much cheaper than those from the super markets.

(b) Shopback and Redmart

She has been introduced to Shopback and Redmart and getting her milk powder supply online. As the price for the brand of milk powder is more or less standardised whether you get from a supermarket or other sources like Watson in Singapore unless there is a on-going promotion. By using Redmart and Shopback, she could get a 9% as a cash rebate and she can also tag along some cheap and bulky stuff, like toilet papers, tissue, detergent, etc, to the basket so that she can get a free delivery (total purchase of $50 to entitle for free shipping on Redmart) and avoid the need to carry the bulk stuff. 

Here is a link to Redmart and shopback via 笨mummy's referral link (Redmart), referral link (Shopback). for those interested to try out, so that she can earn some credit from referral and cut down some of her marketing costs. 


(c) Shopping malls rewards 
Nowadays, the shopping malls are like a duplicate of the other malls having similar shops and F&B outlets. But to 笨mummy, not all malls are ranked equally as some allow one to earn points (which can be converted to shopping vouchers).

She write a blog entry in the coming week to share the different malls reward programs and also a comparison table on these program .

(d) Credit cards rebates / rewards
One point that 笨mummy has always stress is the use of credit cards rather than cash or net. She is sticking to OCBC card as she needs to the spending to hit the criteria for the 0.5% spending interest to be awarded. As long as a purchase can be clocked with a credit card, she would use the card regardless of the amount, unless paying by NETS or cash is cheaper due to additional charge imposed on credit card payment.

This was mentioned before in a previous blog post - Why pay by credit card?

(3) Purchase of SGX shares

笨mummy has switched her primary trading platform to Lim and Tan Securities to take advantage of the award of linkpoint for the commission paid - for every $1 commission, 5 link point would be awarded which is 3.33 cents if converted to cash.

For low value purchase (anything with total purchase value below $8K), 笨mummy is using the Standard Chartered Bank Platform instead as it has no minimum commission.

(4) Incremental deposit promotion
笨mummy loves the incremental deposit promotions introduced by the various banks from time to time. She would move her cash from one bank to another just to take advantage of the special interest rate during the promotion and with the introduction of FAST, it is so fast just to move $50,000 from one bank to another.

She would find time to make a blog entry to discuss her strategy.

That's all 笨mummy has to share for now. If anyone has any tip, do share with her. Saving is caring. :)

Staying healthy and earning money for it

Want to stay healthy and earn money at the same time? Kiddo to the Health Promotion Board for coming up with the 2 mobile apps that allow users to earn points while keeping active and healthy at the same time.

笨mummy just found out about these 2 programmer  - HealthHub SG and the Healthy 365 recently from a colleague of hers.

• The first app - HealthHub SG award users with healthpoints for reading and sharing articles on HealthHub and the healthpoints accumulated can be used to redeem rewards such as NTUC linkpoint. They also award user 50 points for signing up and another 100 points for updating the user profile. 
• The second app - Healthy 365 is an app that is use to track the user's daily step counts. Users can then sign up for the national steps challenge that is commencing on 7 Nov 2015 and end on 8 May 2016. For every 10,000 steps taken, user is awarded with 60 points (maximum 60 points issue a day) and these points can be then use to redeem for vouchers. 

For more information on the two apps, visit the following sites:
HealthHub - > http://www.healthhub.sg/
Healthy 365 -> http://www.healthhub.sg/apps/25/healthy365

笨mummy did not get any benefit for sharing the two apps, but she feel that good things must share with friends as sharing is caring. :)

Update for Sep15

Sep is a quiet month as 笨mummy had went for a shopping spree in Jul and now she is broke. She is saving up slowly and waiting for go for another shopping spree. 

Dividend for month of Sep15: 

ST Eng - S$300
HPH Trust - S$28.68
Total: 328.68

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Sep’ 15	$ 328.68
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 6,556.56

Update for Aug 15

August was a roller coaster month with most of the share prices plunging. Having a mini shopping spree last month, 笨mummy can only do selective purchase due to limited cash while monitoring the prices of some of her bucket list shares. 

August is also a dividend. month and here are what that got credited in:

Dividend for month of Aug15: 

Keppel Corp - S$120
M1 - S$700
Capitalmall bond - S$76.37
Suntec REIT - S$250
Comfortdelgro -S$40
CDL H Trust - S$375.2
Ascott REIT - S$115.41
NERA Tel - S$125
Total: 1,801.98

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Aug’ 15	$ 1,801.98
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 6,227.88

Update for Jul 15

It was a crazy month for SATS, the prize went even higher after XD. 笨mummy regret selling so early at the price of S$3.45 and not wait till after the XD to earn both the dividends and the capital gain. Some of the shares price also went low and 笨mummy has made some purchases of 4K of M1,  1K of Keppel Corporation and 3K of Ascott Trust in Jul. 


Here are the dividends that came in this month:
Dividend for month of Jul 15: 

Capitalmall bond  – S$94.22

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Jul’ 15	$ 94.22
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 4,425.90

Update for Jun 15

笨mummy sold 5K of SATS at S$3.45 in Jun to replenish her bank account after the buying spree last month. On hindsight, she did regret selling so early at the price of S$3.45 as the share price went to S$3.58 near to the end of Jun 15.

Here are the dividends that came in this month: 

Dividend for month of Jun 15: 
Ascendas H Trust – S$127.62

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in Jun’ 15	$ 127.62
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 4,331.68

Update for May 15

笨mummy bank accounts are screaming murder as she has almost empty her available fund this month. Here are what she bought:

-        Applied for 10K of Frasers Centrepoint Limited Retail Bond via IPO

-        2K units of M1 at $3.40 and another 1K @ $3.19. This total her holding to 9K of M1

-        2K of ST Eng at $3.50

Here are the dividends that came in this month: 

Dividend for month of May 15: 
Keppel Corp - S$360

Comfortdelgro – S$45

ST Eng – S$440

NeraTel – S$100

DBS Pref Share – S$233.07

Mapletree GCC – S$33.98

Suntec REIT – S$223.00

Ascendas India Trust – S$246.00

Ascendas REIT - S$803
M1 - S$714.00

Dividend received in Year 14	$ 8,241.99
Dividend received in May’ 15	$ 2,484.05
Dividend received in Year 15 to date	$ 4,204.06