When you’re in your 40s, it’s a time of change for many. You’re likely married (maybe with kids) and have obligations to meet, not only for yourself but for your family.

With an increasingly uncertain job market, many people might also be thinking about a career change or trying a new field of work.

But it’s also a good time to think about whether we’re positioned correctly in our portfolios and whether we’re taking on the right amount of risk for our timelines.

Given life expectancy is only increasing, and the retirement age is only going to go up, the upshot is that we will nearly certainly have to work longer than our parents’ generation before being able to retire.

In that sense, someone in their mid-40s now might not retire until their late 60s or early 70s, meaning we have an investment runway of at least 20 years, if not longer.

That’s a sufficient amount of time to allow us to take on more risk in our cash portfolio (granted you use your CPF as a de facto bond allocation).

Because for individuals, the last thing we want to do is look back at 65 or 70 years old and wish we had taken on more investment risk to generate more returns as we feel don’t have enough capital at retirement.

With that in mind, I looked at three potential portfolio options for someone who’s 45 in Singapore in one of my latest Instagram posts.

Remember, this is just an educational hypothetical and is not meant to be construed as personalised financial advice but I hope it does make readers think about how they want to invest in their 40s and beyond.

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With “premium” credit cards being marketed more heavily to us, it is worth assessing whether paying a mandatory annual fee for one makes sense.

Typically, on a purely miles-earning basis, it doesn’t. However, there might be some exceptions to this.

One such exception is if you can get a credit card that gives you a higher “general” earn rate of 1.5 miles per dollar to 1.7 miles per dollar (mpd).

Why? That’s because if you use it to “buy” miles via a service like CardUp – by paying a small fee to earn miles your rent/mortgage or income tax, for example – then it can bring your “cost per mile” down substantially.

For example, if you use the DBS Vantage (1.5mpd) or OCBC VOYAGE (1.6mpd), you can earn more miles for your rent/tax versus an entry-level card like the DBS Altitude (1.3mpd) or UOB PRVI (1.4mpd).

Whether that makes sense for you, based on the annual fee, requires a quick calculation.

But if you do get a premium-level credit card that has a mandatory annual fee, then using it for miles-buying services is one way to maximise its miles-earning value.

Shares of Singapore’s largest bank, DBS Group, surged past $58 for the first time earlier this week.

It was no surprise that DBS’s rally helped see the Straits Times Index (STI) clock a new all-time high of over 4,700 points.

Tim’s Take: It just seems to keep getting bigger and bigger. I’m talking about DBS, of course.

In the world of Singapore banks, it’s clearly “top dog” but a lot of investors are (rightly) asking how long this current rally can last.

For income-focused investors, who like the dividends, the more pertinent question is probably “can they continue paying dividends at these levels?” and that’s key because so many Singapore investors are in bank stocks for the regular income.

On that front, it does look good for DBS (as I outlined in one of my latest Instagram posts here) given the expected 2026 dividend yield is over 5.5%, even if you bought shares at current prices.

For the banks here, falling interest rates obviously will lead to lower earnings from net interest income (NII). But the ones who can mitigate that the most are the ones the best wealth management franchises…and that’s DBS followed by OCBC.

It’s one big reason why UOB has been punished by investors even more than the other – besides its obvious property debt issues in Greater China.

At the end of the day, yields right now look compelling because the “spread” versus something risk-free – like a Singapore T-bill or Singapore Savings Bond (SSB) – is still wide at around 400 basis points, based on the latest 6-month Singapore T-bill yield of 1.40%.

In that sense, unless dividends fall in the next year or so, many income investors will likely continue to find the yields on offer from Singapore bank stocks somewhat attractive.