~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

When other investors first look at my dividend portfolio, one question seems to come up more often than any other.  Why is Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), and not Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), my largest holding?  After all, DBS is widely regarded as Singapore's premier bank.  It consistently delivers strong earnings, generous dividends and has rewarded shareholders exceptionally well over the years.  It would seem natural for DBS to occupy the largest position in a dividend portfolio. Yet today, OCBC accounts for approximately 21% of my portfolio, taking up the top allocation while DBS makes up around 14% in second place.  The answer has very little to do with predicting which bank would perform better.  Instead, it reflects my own investing journey, one that began with a simple misconception shared by many new investors. My Investing Journey Began with Share Price, Not Valuation When I started building my dividend portfolio in end of...

One of the questions I see many financial bloggers and "fin-fluencers" talk about frequently on social media is "How much money is enough to retire"?  Some people swear by the 4% rule, which is a good gauge for a start, or even 3% rule for more conservative investors.  Others say you need SGD 2 million or even SGD 3 million before you can sleep peacefully at night. As for me, I have never been fixated on a particular net worth.  My goal has always been much simpler.  Build a portfolio that generates enough reliable dividend income to fund my everyday life (anything that generates an annual dividend that is 1.2 to 1.5 times annual expenses is a great safety net according to my previous writeup .)  If my portfolio eventually reaches SGD 1 million, then perhaps that becomes my finish line, not because SGD 1 million is a magical number, but because I believe it represents a portfolio that is resilient enough to weather life's inevitable financial storms. As I look t...

One thing I have learned from investing is that nobody knows where the next crisis will come from. Every crisis feels different while it is happening.  The headlines are different, the causes are different, the fear is different.  Yet when I look back at history, I notice that the lessons are often surprisingly similar.  Markets panic, asset prices collapse, people become fearful, and eventually, life moves on.  As investors, we do not get rewarded for accurately predicting every crisis.  We get rewarded for surviving long enough to benefit from the recovery. That is why I find it useful to study past crises, not because I think the next crisis will look exactly the same, but because understanding how previous generations navigated difficult times can help me better prepare my portfolio, my finances, and my lifestyle for whatever comes next. When I look back over the last few decades, four major crises stand out: the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2000 Dot-...

When I was younger, I never viewed Central Provident Fund (CPF) very positively.  Like many Singaporeans and PRs, I saw it mainly as restricted money.  It was money deducted every month from salary, locked away for decades, and inaccessible during the years when financial pressure felt the heaviest.  At that stage of life, CPF did not feel empowering.  It felt limiting.   However somewhere in my late 30s and early 40s, my thinking about money changed quite significantly.  I stopped viewing investing mainly through the lens of maximizing returns.  Instead, I started thinking much more about stability, future vulnerability and long-term survival, basically, managing an entire portfolio as a whole.  Aging changes financial psychology very deeply.  Once parents grow older, healthcare risks become more visible, and retirement starts feeling real rather than theoretical, stability suddenly becomes extremely valuable.  That was when I slo...