~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This post is just for personal reference, to record my personal income and expenses in my journey towards Barista FIRE. For the month of June, nothing special happened.  It was just a normal month, with normal expenses.  The only event that will impact my finances partially is the end of lease for my tenant in Johor, and he will be moving to KL for other work opportunities.  This meant that my unit will be empty again, and I will rely on my agent to help me seek another tenant as soon as possible so that healthy cashflow returns for my finances in Malaysia.   In addition, I would like to praise my home country, Malaysia, as quite a few improvements have been implemented recently which made my life easier.  One of them is I am now able to renew my driving license via online app.  So this saves me time and eliminates the need for me to travel back to Johor UTC to queue and renew.  This month will be the Johor State Elections.  I should return...

This month marks the end of the 2nd 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, but I have since liquidated my entire US Growth Portfolio in September 2025 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.   Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio....

When I was younger, I used to think traveling was a waste of money, not because I hated traveling.  It was simply how I grew up.  I came from a single-income family in Malaysia.  My father was the sole breadwinner.  My mother was a full-time homemaker taking care of my brother and myself, and also caring for my father’s elderly parents.  Money always had to be used carefully. There was no concept of luxury holidays in my childhood.  No yearly overseas trips.  No airport excitement during school holidays.  No “family vacation” culture like what many middle-class families experience today. On top of financial limitations, my paternal grandmother was afraid of taking flights due to motion sickness.  Therefore, my family never travelled overseas together throughout my childhood and teenage years.  To me, traveling simply did not feel like a normal part of life. Growing up in that environment shaped how I viewed money very strongly.  ...

**Disclaimer:  This post is written with the help of AI, because as a total technology-noob, I do not have the insights to AI development.  As such, much information in this post is gathered with the help of AI. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The AI gold rush has created a strange divide in the investing world. On one side are the American monsters.  Alphabet, NVIDIA, Micron Technology, Microsoft.  These are some of the companies that are leading the AI arms race.  Their revenues are exploding.  Their valuations are astronomical.  Their capital expenditure plans are now measured in hundreds of billions.  Goldman estimates hyperscaler AI capex could hit US$755 billion in 2026 alone, up sharply year-on-year, with much of operating cash flow now redirected toward infrastructure rather than shareholder payouts. On the other side sit traditional dividend investors.  People like myself, buying banks, utilities, ...