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Nineth Month of Phase 1 Barista FIRE

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This post is just for personal reference, to record my personal income and expenses in my journey towards Barista FIRE. For the month of September, it was another simple month for me.  Simple life, simple expenses.  However, occasional spending spiked because I have exchanged some funds to MYR when exchange rate was favourable, above SGD 1 : MYR 3.20 in preparation for the annual insurance premiums I need to pay for at the end of the year.  Besides this large one-off expense, the others were just expenses for annual health check-ups and some other miscellaneous spending in preparation for the upcoming trip with my mum and aunt. Besides expenses, I also receive 'bountiful' dividend harvest this month from REITs and other stocks in my portfolio, and that concludes my Q3 dividend harvest.  Looking forward to the final quarter's earnings and dividends, and hoping I can achieve my annual dividend goal for 2026.   All in all, after 9 months of phase 1 Barista ...
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Portfolio Update Q3 2026

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This month marks the end of the 3rd quarter of 2026.  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 has been completely liquidated to pay off my Malaysia mortgage loan.  In March 2026, I started the MY Dividends Portfolio, which currently consist of only banks and consumers.  The purpose of this is to complement my SG Dividends Portfolio, and hopefully generate dividends in MYR to hedge against forex risks when I FIRE.   The most important event that happened this month is definitely the FED meeting and the speech by Kevin Warsh in mid of the month....
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Money Doesn't Buy Happiness. It Buys Choices.

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One of the most common sayings about money is that it cannot buy happiness.  I used to agree with that 100% when I was younger, but as I aged, I think there is a lot of truth in that.  Money alone cannot guarantee meaningful relationships, good health or a fulfilling life.  But after years of building my dividend portfolio, I have also come to realise something else.  Money may not buy happiness, but it buys choices, and sometimes, those choices quietly lead to a happier life. When I first started working as a private tutor, my income depended entirely on the number of lessons I taught.  No lessons meant no income.  It was as simple as that.  Back then, I packed my schedule as much as possible.  Every available slot became another tuition lesson.  As someone who is self-employed, every lesson represented income for that month.  Naturally, I became very protective of my schedule. Then came the inevitable cancellations.  Sometimes a...
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My Dog Diva and My FIRE Journey

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When we talk about personal finance and FIRE, we usually talk about savings, investment returns, dividend income, cash flow, expenses, portfolio size and retirement age.  But sometimes, something indirectly related to finance ends up influencing our financial journey. For me, that something is Diva. Diva is a Singapore Special, a local mongrel, whom I adopted in 2020.  She was already seven years old when she came into my life.  Today, in 2026, she is 13 years old, and thankfully, she is still healthy and going strong.  I have to give credit to her previous owner for raising her so well.  Diva is obedient, well-mannered and remarkably easy to take care of.  Over the past six years, we have settled into a rather unusual but comfortable relationship. We both mind our own business. Minding Our Own Business When I first adopted Diva while living alone in Singapore during the Covid period, I suppose I imagined the usual pet-owner relationship, lots of playi...
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My Investment Plantation: Why I Still Prefer Picking My Own Stocks

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There is something wonderfully simple about investing in an ETF.  Buy it, hold it, collect the dividends, reinvest them and let the market do the rest.  There is no need to spend hours reading annual reports.  No need to decide whether CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT) is more attractive than ParkwayLife REIT (PWLR).  No need to wonder whether Keppel DC REIT (KDCR) is worth buying today or whether another company might be better.  An ETF does much of the work for investors. So why do I continue buying individual stocks even when I know perfectly well that my portfolio could underperform an index ETF?  I continue picking individual stocks because I value something that an ETF cannot give me in quite the same way. Choice. I want to decide what companies I own, how much of each company I own and, especially as a dividend investor, what kind of income my portfolio produces.  However there is a trade-off involved.  The more control I wan...
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