Q3 2026: letting it go
July–September 2026
The portfolio brought in S$28,256 in Q3, comfortably above my S$15,000 quarterly target. That works out to about S$9,419 a month.
It was below Q2’s S$42,852, although that quarter included S$15,000 in annual retirement-insurance payouts. Excluding those, Q2 income was about S$27,852—leaving Q3 slightly ahead.
The bigger change this quarter was in the holdings. I reduced some risks and finally let go of an investment I had given rather a lot of time to improve.
What drove the income?
Fund payouts contributed S$11,241 and FCN coupons S$9,380, up from S$10,944 and S$8,711 respectively in Q2.
REIT-related distributions added S$2,977, Singapore-equity dividends S$1,928, and deposit interest S$2,555. Smaller payments made up the remainder.
All three months cleared S$5,000: July brought in S$8,694, August S$10,283, and September S$9,279.
The income held up, even as I made some fairly substantial changes underneath it.
Letting go of a few positions
By August, the prospect of further US rate hikes was back in the discussion. That influenced my decision to reduce a multi-asset income fund and exit an Asia-Pacific dividend fund in my SRS account.
I also exited a global equity fund, for a different reason. Its performance had disappointed me over the previous two years despite substantial US exposure and a strong run in US equities.
Realising a five-digit loss was painful. Elsa made letting go sound considerably easier than it looks on a redemption statement.
But I’m learning to judge the portfolio as a whole and ask where the money should go next, rather than wait indefinitely for each holding to redeem itself. The portfolio needs to fund my retirement, not vindicate every purchase I have ever made.
Several FCNs also matured or redeemed during the quarter. I continued to reinvest selectively, so this was a measured reduction in exposure rather than a complete retreat from risk. I ended up with a larger cash position and tried to place it in higher-yielding deposit accounts where possible.
The income effect is starting to show
Several of the larger fund reductions happened in August, so Q3 was not a full quarter under the revised allocation.
Some of the effect was already visible in September. One income-fund receipt fell from about S$1,409 in July and August to S$737 in September. Other receipts helped keep the overall monthly total above target.
I therefore expect less income from the positions I reduced, even though the quarterly headline has held up so far. Q4 should give me a clearer sense of the revised mix.
An October postscript: my first US Treasury
Just after quarter-end, I made my first direct US Treasury purchase.
I chose a note maturing in August 2036, with just under ten years remaining. The quoted yield to maturity was 5.16% in US dollars. Its fixed coupon is 4.625%, paid twice yearly; buying below face value accounts for the higher yield to maturity.
Around ten years felt like a reasonable middle ground: long enough to secure an income stream for a meaningful part of retirement, without stretching the commitment to twenty or thirty years. The price and the Singapore-dollar value can still move, but the scheduled US-dollar coupons are fixed.
Q3 finished S$13,256 above target. I’m keeping the target at S$5,000 a month while allowing the investments behind it to change.
Preparing for retirement means deciding what I want to keep. This quarter, it also meant accepting what I was better off letting go.