~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

Dying has been a taboo subject for many, especially for Asians.  Personally for me, I am not too worried of passing on, as I do not have any children who are dependent on me.  I am just very very worried to be in a bed-ridden state for whatever reason.  Besides that, in the event that I passed, my only worry will be my mum, but I believe my brother will take very good care of her, so no worries there as well.  So, why am I writing about this taboo subject?   Due to family medical history, I do not think I will live a very long life (70 is probably a bonus number), however, nothing is absolute and predictable.  Therefore as much as I would like to get as many things done as early as possible to ensure minimal regrets, I will also need to protect myself from longevity risks.  Personally, being able to have a rough prediction of how much time I have left is a very fortunate thing, because that will enable me to prioritize and do as many things as I could with the time I have left.  Howeve

I am not a financial expert, so this post is just purely my personal feeling.  Learning from AK71, I am starting to talk to myself a little bit more as well (without the part on technical and fundamental analysis).  As such this post is just based on my gut feel and not supported by any statistics or numbers.  Just having fun! So since the speech by Jerome Powell on 10th July 2024, the Singapore REITs have registered a huge rebound in the following two days. Based on the Lion-Phillip S-REIT ETF, REITs staged a 6.35% rebound in the following 2 trading days (11th and 12th July 2024).  More encouragingly, the daily trading volume in these 2 days were around 10 times higher than the average daily trading volume in the past year!  This price movement, supported by the high volume, may be an indication that this run up for REITs still have legs!  Fast-forward to this week, the performance of the REITs are largely subdued (except for the US Commercial REITs) and the trading volume has normali

First half of 2024 have passed and previously I did a quick review of my portfolio in the 1st quarter and 2nd quarter in my earlier posts.  I classified my portfolio into 3 components, namely SG REITs, SG Non-REITs and US Growth.  An overview to the performance of my portfolio for the past one year is shown below: Things to note: 1)     SG REITs' performance seemed stable, but that is due to consistent injection of small amounts of capital through dollar cost average (DCA) into the portfolio along the way.  Without the capital injection, I believe the drop will be quite significant, especially when the performance of the Mapletree family of REITs (which were supposedly the blue chip REITs) were way below expectations, and their share price has not really found a bottom. 2)     SG Non-REITs' performance were quite stable for the first half of period under review.  The spike in value on week 42 is due to large capital injection and portfolio rebalancing to include Development

Do note that this is not a buy or sell recommendation.  This is solely my personal reasons for adding the shares into my portfolio.  Do perform your own due diligence! Recently, share prices of the Singapore-listed REITs are back to their near term lows, and for many REITs, their prices are actually very close, or at their 52-week lows.  To many die-hard fans of REITs, including myself, we are always happy to dollar cost averaging down on the REITs to capture the high dividend yield of quality REITs at rock bottom prices.  However in the past one to two years, I think REITs-investors like myself had borne the brunt of the "low getting lower" share prices for the REITs, so much so that many of us are actually running out of war chest, or some may decide to pause and take a look to see where the price supports actually lies, before continuing to invest. Personally, I am not planning to wait as I do not know where the price supports are, or when the share prices of the REITs are

This month marks the end of the 2nd quarter of 2024.  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 consist of mainly big tech names, bank and exchange traded funds (ETFs). Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio.  The advantages of using Interactive Brokers to buy the US shares via DCA are undoubtedly the low fees and ability to buy fractional shares of mega-cap technology shares like Alphabet and Tesla.  The latest FED meeting in June has once again successfully caused more confusion in the market. 

In mid-June, HSBC released another 'bomb' to HSBC Revolution Card users like myself, which includes: 1)     Starting from 15th July 2024, all contactless payments will no longer be eligible for bonus points. 2)     Starting from January 2025, all travel-related payments will no longer be eligible for bonus points. Since getting the HSBC Revolution card in 2022, this has been my primary card to accumulate points for my miles game, with the purpose to exchange for a Singapore Airlines Business Class experience for 2 to bring my mum somewhere for a nice vacation in time to come.  Yes I know, it is always simpler to just buy the tickets to travel, but the cheapskate in me finds that paying for Business Class tickets is quite a "lugi" trade, as I can pay for the same journey at a fraction of the cost travelling via budget as I always had. In my earlier post , I mentioned that my lifestyle have somewhat inflated a little while chasing for miles, and I think I will only play

This piece is inspired by AK71 once again, who has recently released this video saying that he is considering liquidating his entire portfolio.  He is having such thoughts because his portfolio is sufficiently big enough to be placed into safer instruments like T-Bills or Fixed Deposits to eliminate/ minimize any market volatility to the portfolio, and this amount is more than sufficient to last him his lifetime.   So will I do the same thing?  I am not in the situation to comment on that, because my portfolio is way too far away from this ideal situation, and moreover everyone's situation is different.  If I ever own a portfolio the size of his to be able to Fat FIRE, I think I may probably consider doing something similar, but there may be some factors I personally need to evaluate and assess.  Since my portfolio is significantly smaller, I did think of complete liquidation of all my assets before, but with the help of geo-arbitrage.  I am a Malaysian, with Singapore Permanent R

This is going to be a relatively short post, as this is just to share what I have learnt from Central Provident Fund (CPF) staff regarding some updates on the way how self-employed individuals can contribute to their CPF accounts.  Kindly note that the changes only affects self-employed individuals who contribute more than their Medisave liabilities to their CPF.  If you are self-employed and only contribute the required percentage of Net Trade Income (NTI) to your Medisave Account (MA), this change will affect you. Just for context, it is not a must for self-employed persons to contribute their monthly income to CPF Ordinary Account (OA) and Special Account (SA), but it is mandatory for them to fulfil their Medisave liabilities as determined by Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), which is a percentage of the annual NTI generated by the self-employed person, based on their age group, as shown below: I am a self-employed person as of late 2015, and since then till prior to Jun

For a start, please note that not everyone who play the miles game will inflate their lifestyle.  This is just a personal sharing on how I feel my lifestyle has changed when I started the miles journey. All along, I never cared much about miles or cashback earn rates from the various credit cards.  I just applied for credit cards that I think I have use for, of which mostly are cashback cards, for my necessary spending.  I did not pay attention to how much cashback I can earn, or what rewards am I eligible for.  They are mainly just used for paying for my expenses, and ensuring that I pay in full when its due (so there are many missed opportunities all these years).  However, in September 2022, things took a turn.  I applied for the HSBC Revolution credit card for the sign up bonus, which is a SGD 250 cash rebate, and most importantly it has no annual fees, so I do not have to worry about calling in for waivers annually.  After getting the card, and reading blogs by other fin-fluencers

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of May, it was an interesting month.  The old adage of “Sell in May and Go Away” was definitely back to haunt the markets before the month started, especially with the looming threat of stickier than expected CPI numbers.  However, interestingly, the markets were hitting new highs in May.  The Dow Jones Industrial Index crossed the 40,000 mark for the first time this month, bringing confidence to the performance in the market. On the other hand, CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon was cautious and said that US cannot rule out the possibly of a hard landing, and stagflation would be the worst outcome for the US.  This speech brought volatility back into the markets and pushed back any hopes of rate cuts to the 4th quarter of 2024 instead of the 3rd.  Personally, I have mentioned earlier that I am not going to be guessing when the rate cuts is going to happen and I am just going to live wi

This is my first trip travelling out of ASEAN region, where I have to plan every bit of the itinerary myself.  For previous family trips to Sydney and Perth, I am generally tagging along, being a follower.  However this time, it is going to be a duo trip with just my mum and myself, which I am both looking forward to, while at the same time worried about how things will turn out there and then.  Nonetheless, the decision has been made by late last year, and I booked the flights for 2, flying with Scoot to Kansai Airport for our 9 days 8 nights trip.  Feels good that a goal set early this year is materialized! Without further ado, I will share the travel journey below: Day 1 Arrived at Kansai Airport in the afternoon, and we grabbed a quick snack at the famous 551 Horai outlet.  Then after much complications with the Haruka Limited Express, we are finally able to board the Hello Kitty's train direct to Kyoto!   Haruka Limited Express We reached Hearton Hotel Kyoto in the late afte