~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

In early 2026, the headlines in Singapore and abroad feel like a broken record.  Whether it was tech giants "right-sizing" or traditional industries grappling with high costs, retrenchment has moved from a distant possibility to a local reality.  This is exacerbated with rising oil prices and this creates immense operating pressure for many businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs).  Even in the Prime Minister's May Day speech, Mr Lawrence Wong noted that AI will change jobs, and inevitable make some jobs disappear.   As such, even in Singapore associated with stability, job security no longer feels like a given, especially for a non-citizen like myself.  Yet, in the midst of this uncertainty, I find myself in a position I did not fully appreciate until now.  I am not fearless, but I am far less afraid. The 8-Year Pivot This year marks my transition into Phase 1 of my Barista FIRE journey.  It was not an overnight achievement, ...

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...