~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

Recently in a Telegram group, I come across a debate between Kyith from Investment Moats and a reader, where the reader claims that as long as his portfolio is made up dividend stocks with good dividend growth through the years, he can just live off the dividends with the total capital left intact, while Kyith on the other hand, supports the idea of Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR).  The reader claims that he would not want to sell any part of his portfolio, and just having to live off the dividends makes dividend investing superior to the withdrawal method, while Kyith explains that the reader's perspectives show a lack of understanding of how the SWR method actually works. After reading the long string of exchanges in the telegram group, I decided to pen this post.  Personally, I am definitely a supporter of the dividend investing group, and I also believe, and strives towards just living off dividend income upon FIRE.  From a dividend income investor perspective, the idealistic scenar

In the latest CPI report by Singapore Department of Statistics, core inflation rose by 3.6% year-on-year, and 0.5% month-on-month.  For a more visually appealing statistics to see what affect individuals most, we can refer to the diagram below released by Singapore Department of Statistics: For singles like me, I would like to think my expenses are relatively low, because I do not own a car, I do not take grabs or taxis in Singapore, only travel via bus, MRT and walking.  My main expenses lies with dining, utilities, mortgage, household items replacement and healthcare.  However, with the recent increase in GST, it is clearly making everything a tad more pricey.  The price of many food items have risen by approximately 10-20%, and even bus and MRT fares, have risen by 10%.  In a bid to deal with inflation, I checked with ChatGBT to find out how a Malaysian (SPR) like me staying in Singapore can find alternatives and ways to deal with inflation. The following is what ChatBGT has answere

This month marks the end of the 1st quarter of 2024.  Thus it's definitely a good time for me to record the performance of my portfolio to track how it has been. To recap, I started my SG Dividends Portfolio in late 2017, and I began tracking the dividends and all reinvestment done starting 2018.  To date, my SG Dividends Portfolio consist of banks, REITs and defense technology.  On the other hand, I only started the US Growth Portfolio in late December 2021.  Currently, my US Growth Portfolio consist of mainly big tech names, bank and exchange traded funds (ETFs). Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio.  The advantages of using Interactive Brokers to buy the US shares via DCA are undoubtedly the low fees and ability to buy fractional shares of mega-cap technology shares like Alphabet and Tesla.  The latest FED meeting in early March helped to calm the markets as Jerome Powell reiterated that

Back in September 2023, I wrote a post pondering whether it is time for me to start including physical gold and silver into my portfolio after watching the Channel News Asia documentary on the Singapore Reserves.  At that time, I think I should follow the footsteps of the smart monies, especially the Singapore reserves, to allocate a small percentage of my portfolio into physical gold and silver.  Initially, I was looking at adding 50 grams of gold into my portfolio per year, but later in January 2024 , I changed my mind and decided to lower the allocation to buy 1 troy ounce (31.1 grams) of gold into my portfolio per year instead.   In Singapore, there are many online and physical stores where physical gold can be purchased.  Personally I prefer to collect physical gold over paper gold.  There are many platforms where physical gold can be purchased, through United Overseas Bank (UOB), or through private dealers like Silver Bullion Singapore, GoldSilver Central and BullionStar.  For m