~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This post is written based on personal opinion and circumstances, and it is definitely not applicable nor suitable for everyone.  It is just to record my personal thoughts and actions moving forward, and it is definitely not any form of financial advise. The Central Provident Fund (CPF) is Singapore’s most well-structured social security system.  Besides providing Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (PR) a reliable way to save for retirement, CPF also offers attractive benefits like guaranteed returns of between 2.5% to as high as 6% (depending on the account and age band of individual) and tax relief.  Personally, I love how the CPF system works, but being a self-employed person since 2015, I did not benefit from employer's contribution of 17% to my CPF account in the past 9 years.  However, as I believe the CPF system is a reliable and a technically risk-free system that works like a guaranteed-bond, I religiously contribute 37% of my annual net trade income to al...

This is a reflective post following my previous post on whether to liquidate my portfolio to pay down my mortgage loan.  As per my conclusion in the previous post, I decided not to go ahead with that move.  One of the main reason is because it will lead to over-concentration of my overall portfolio into one single asset class- property.  If a large part of my asset is parked in brick-and-mortar property, it may cause me to end up being asset rich (after I fully paid up my mortgage) and cash poor.  I think this may a scenario that is important for me to avoid if I want to remain flexible in my financial decisions moving forward, as having some degree of liquidity is crucial for all investors.  This is especially the case if one is retired without any form of active income. To avoid becoming asset-rich but cash-poor in retirement years, one can take the following steps to ensure a balanced financial situation.  1)      Diversify Your Investme...

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of November, it was a down-trending month for my portfolio.  Since the sale of half of the US Growth Portfolio to return the monies back to family,  I have not been doing much with the US Growth Portfolio.  Within my US Growth Portfolio, the pressure is on the performance of Google.  This is especially the case after the Department of Justice has reportedly asked the federal judge to force Google to sell its Chrome browser as part of the landmark antitrust case.  The news caused the share price of Google to plunge by more than 5% in a day.  However, this negative performance is mitigated by the splendid performance of JP Morgan and Palantir, both of which has shot up in value to an all time high.  As such, the overall value of the portfolio has climbed up slightly for the month. Closer to home, my SG Dividend Portfolio is telling a similar story....

This is my second trip travelling out of ASEAN region, where I have to plan every bit of the itinerary myself (the first was back in May 2024 where me and my mum travelled together to Japan ).  With the experience from the Japan trip, I am less concerned and worried about what to plan for our itinerary this time round, as I would have roughly known what mu mum would like to experience, and hence what to include and what to exclude in the planning.   However, this trip has a new worrying factor, and that is the use of Alipay!  As an individual who is not very tech-savvy, so much so that I do not even use Google Pay in Singapore, Alipay is one that I really need to learn how to use (frankly speaking, after using it this trip, it was super easy to use, seamless, but because it is so good, it made me worried if I overspent).  Nonetheless, the decision has been made in July when I saw that Scoot and Jetstar were running some promotions, and I booked the flights for 2...