What I did with my new found wealth (2008)

What to do with my new found wealth? I am used to running a business operation and managing risk when I was a entrepreneur but I have zero experience in managing my new found asset, CASH. This is what I did in 2008.

1. bought myself a piece of land and build my dream house
2. bought my wife a car
3. paid up all loans, big and small and achieve loan free status
4. opened a fixed deposit account
5. bought some bonds for passive income

Portfolio : 2008

In 2008, I had a contractual obligation to work and guarantee the top and bottom line for the buyer. As I have a full time job commitment, I was unable to paid much attention to my portfolio. Thus I placed the bulk of my bet on corporate bonds like DBS 5.75% preference share, Capital Mall notes and JP Morgan Asia Confidence notes. My passive income was about $11K/mth by end 2008 and the following is my investment portfolio in December 2010.  My target was to build up a passive income of 20K/mth before 2012.

2008 is considered one of the darkest period for the financial world but it proved to be my best investment year as I picked up some bargains like DBS 5.75% preference share at par. I also bought myself a semi-d plot of land at rock bottom price and build a house based on my dream house. I also learned my lesson not to invest in high risk structure notes such as JP Morgan Asia confident notes. This notes was based on the market indices of Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand. I never expected the market to crash so badly such that there was a trigger event and I am in danger of losing more than 70% of my initial capital. However, lady luck must be with me and the all four market indices recovered to its initial level on redemption date in 2010. I managed to get 100% of my capital back! 

Lesson no 1: No more high risk, high return investment for me ever again.