~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

I was contemplating whether I should write this post, because this trip to Kuala Lumpur (KL) in December 2024, for me as a Malaysian, was not considered an overseas trip but a domestic one.  However, I still decided to go ahead because after some thought, I believe I should promote tourism in my country to readers of this blog! For this trip, I decided to fly a little differently, to make this trip a little cheaper than usual.  I decided to fly budget from Johor Senai Airport this time instead of from Changi Airport, since I had also planned to go back to my mum's place in Johor the day before.  This is also my first time taking Batik Air (budget airline) and I must say, it was a rather pleasant experience.  Anyway at the airport, there was no lounge for me to rest (or maybe I do not know where it is), so I just waited around the gate.  Due to the heavy rain, there was just a 15 to 20 minutes delay, which I am thankful for.  By the way, this is my first tim...

One of the biggest perks of blogging is I can easily look back at previous posts and compare which are the goals I have successfully achieved and which has fallen behind.  In this second last post of 2024, I will like to reflect upon 2024, and compare with what I had written in this post one year ago to assess my achievements. 1)     Changes To The Way I Manage My US Growth Portfolio The first point proved to be a failure, not because I failed to execute the change, but this whole idea to change the way I manage my US Growth Portfolio proved to be a failure.  In my wish-list, I hope I can try to do a little timing of the market to partially sell some shares when they reach all time high.  Just one month later in February 2024, I posted how this idea became a huge mistake.  Another event to slap myself is to sell half of my US Growth Portfolio in late October to return the investments to my family.  This caused my family to miss out of a low 5 di...

This month marks the end of the 4th quarter of 2024.  Thus being the last post of 2024, it is 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 December has ann...

In the world of personal finance, the journey to achieving one's Financial Independence (FI) number is as unique as one's fingerprint.  Yet, it is easy to find ourselves caught in the web of comparison, measuring our progress against others who seem to have it all figured out.  This is especially the case when we are now near the New Year, where on 1st January, a wave of "amount of Central Provident Fund (CPF) interest collected" post will flood the finance community such as Seedly Personal Finance Community. On other days, in Dividend Investment Telegram Group, we will have members showing the amount of dividends they have collected over the year(s).  Do not get me wrong.  Personally, I do not view these postings negatively.  Once a while, it is natural to feel a twinge of envy or self-doubt, whether I will be able to accomplish something similar, but more often than not, I enjoy participating in all these discussions and chats with all the members in the Tele...