~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This month marked the end of a position that had quietly sat in my portfolio for about 7 years - Hong Leong Finance (HLF).  This was not a reactive sale, nor an emotional one.  In fact, it was something I had been observing, tolerating, and reassessing for quite a while. Back in 2022, I wrote about why I chose to accumulate HLF  within my portfolio.  The reasoning was simple and aligned with my dividend investing philosophy at that time- stable income, reasonable yield, and a business model that, while not exciting, was dependable.  I was never expecting explosive growth.  In fact, I explicitly acknowledged that the share price would likely remain range-bound, and it did exactly that. In the recent few years, while bank stocks were hitting new highs again and again, HLF stayed within its familiar price range.  This, by itself, was not a problem, as it was within expectations.  A range-bound stock with stable dividends could still serve a purpose...

This post is just for personal reference, to record my personal income and expenses in my journey towards Barista FIRE. For the month of April, I am pleased to have fulfilled my wish of bringing my mum on a holiday via Business Class , to South Korea , where we have not been before.  It was a memorable vacation, where we experienced many first times.  First business class experience, first trip to South Korea, first time seeing blooming cherry blossoms all over the place and even along the streets, just to mention a few.  Overall it was great and I am already thinking about the next adventure. Back to reality, expenses this month has been low, partly because the costs of the trip had been accounted for in earlier months, so expenses this month was rather low, allowing me to keep way within budget with surplus.   In addition, I have also successfully repriced my mortgage loan for my Singapore property, and refinanced my Malaysia property, to lower interest rates....

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of April, it remained a volatile month.  The US-Israel-Iran war in the Middle East sent conflicting and confusing signals to the rest of the world day after day, but in the end, the oil tankers were still unable to cross the Straits of Hormuz at to date.  Despite the harsh reality, the stock markets painted a very different picture.  S&P 500, NASDAQ and DJI all reached a new all time high this month, and closer to home, STI also recovered to around 5,000 points level before retreating to 4,900 levels near the end of the month with more companies going XD.  This disparity between the markets' expectations and reality is just another piece of evidence that investors should just remain invested and not respond too nimbly at every piece of news headlines of the day.   Nothing much this month except that CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT) is sel...

This is my fourth 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 , the second was back in November 2024 where me and my mum travelled together to  Hangzhou and Suzhou in China, and the third was back in November 2025 where me and my mum travelled together to ZhangJiaJie and Guangzhou in China).  With these prior experiences, I am less concerned and worried about what to plan for our itinerary this time round, as I would have roughly known what my mum would like to experience, and hence what to include and what to exclude in the planning.  This is the first time we are travelling during peak season to see cherry blossoms, thus it will be a trip highly dependent on luck to see if we get lucky to view full bloom.  In addition, this is also the first time we get to experience Singapore Airlines Business Class travel for single trip, which i...