- 2019 passive income : RM27,942
- 2020 passive income : RM29,976
2020 was an unusual year for everyone, it is probably a year that we would never forget for rest of our life.
Putting aside impact of COVID-19 on day to day life, it was also my first full year being a father. Plus being unemployed for 2 months, 2020 was definitely a bumpy ride for me.
I always believe there are only two ways to build one’s wealth, become businessman or being investor. I never want to be a businessman, so building investment portfolio to generate enough passive income has been my target. However before year 2020, this was not prioritized for many reasons. Two months of unemployment definitely made me feel urgency and importance of putting real effort into investing right away. To ensure value use of my unemployment time, I also started this blog. At first, I certainly hope this blog will be one of my sources of passive income one day. As it turned out, blogging has benefited me beyond that. In this era of flooded information available online, sitting down to write articles is a good way force myself to sit down and think through.
I hope when I look back after many years, I would feel fortunate for this period of unemployment and how it changed me in a positive way.
Financially, my passive income of 2020 is more than previous year. Many companies has stopped or reduced dividend distribution this year. Despite that, my passive income is slightly more than previous year, so I’m happy with that.
In 2020, I’ve shifted my cash to higher return instruments, including better saving account, bond fund and money market fund. Also I’ve reduced my cash holding and invested them into stock market. Given that I still have comfortable level of emergency fund, I also invested all of saving from active and passive income into stock market.
For year 2021, I hope my passive income can continue to grow. My long term target is RM100,000 of passive income before age of 40, 8 years to come. I’m not setting a growth figure as target for next year though, I guess after doing what can be done, the rest I will just leave it to time to do its work.
For my son, in addition to investment from his ang pau received during Chinese New Year, I’ve also bought RM2000 worth of shares to him as birthday present. So rather than keeping money in saving account like most of the kids do, his money is fully invested in dividend stocks.
Many people tried to make quick and huge profit from stock market this year, I believe there were indeed people who succeeded. For me, I decided to follow my own path which mainly focuses on dividend investing. With so many stocks have rebounded by end of 2020, some of them were even at share price higher than pre-COVID 19 period, investing in 2021 would be more challenging compared to 2020. However, I believe as long as following the right path, albeit slower, reaching destination is a matter of time.
Hi, congratulation on joining the fatherhood club. I’m surprised to learn that you’re only 32, which is a young age usually not associated with old-style dividend growth investing (this is meant to be a compliment!). It takes a lot of readings, emotional strengths and discipline to follow this path.
I’m sorry to hear about your job situation. But as you’ve mentioned, and based on my own experience too, this is the best time to pick up new skills and interests. You’ve certainly done a great job with your blog! I’ve benefited a lot from reading it.
Although it may not be your intention, I do notice many of your stock picks have enjoyed good capital appreciation. More importantly, unlike speculative stocks, these are companies with good fundamentals that give peace of mind.
This brings me to a question. What is your method for screening potential good dividend stocks? While I’ve spotted most of your stock selection before, I have to admit that Rexit and Atrium have never appeared under my radar.