~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

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...

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, ...

Over the years, my Singapore dividend portfolio has slowly evolved into something more structured and intentional.  It is no longer just a random collection of high-yield stocks bought simply because they looked cheap or offered attractive dividends.  Instead, my portfolio today resembles a Qing Dynasty imperial harem ( 后宫 ) hierarchy.  Yes, this link is made because I am an absolute fan of the drama 后宫甄嬛传, even till today. This may sound ridiculous, but surprisingly, this framework actually helps me think clearly about: Conviction levels and portfolio weight Portfolio importance and risk management Dividend reliability and cash flow sustainability Capital allocation priorities (who gets my fresh cash) Promotion and demotion of holdings over time Not every stock deserves to become the Empress ( 皇后 ).  Not every stock deserves permanent favor. Some generate stable heirs (dividends), some stabilize the empire during difficult macro times, some are ...

This post is just for personal reference, to record my personal income and expenses in my journey towards Barista FIRE. For the month of May, nothing special happened.  It was just a normal month, with normal expenses.  I am glad I made time to return to Johor, to treat my mum and aunts to a simple Mother's Day lunch at My KOL cafe, which is quite famous for their curry.  Indeed, it was a great meal, and I personally loved every bit of the curry.  My mum and aunts also gave favorable feedback for this meal.   My KOL Cafe Curry Chicken Kway Teow Back to reality, expenses this month has been normal, with some surplus where I will need to save up for year end insurance payments.  There one additional cost of SGD 200.00 this month, due to the administrative fees for my mortgage repricing.  Starting next month, I get to save about SGD 200.00 per month for my mortgage instalments, so this is definitely good news.  How to spend this SGD 200.00 is still u...

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of May, it was a relatively good month despite the news and volatility.  The old adage of “Sell in May and Go Away” seemed to be missing this year, especially when the US and Singapore markets have rebounded strongly back towards the high even when the US-Israel-Iran tensions have not technically ended.  US Treasury yields are hitting new highs, with the 10-year yields crossing above 4.5%, oil prices are still persistently high, and even the Singapore 1-month SORA is climbing up.  However the good earning results from major companies are supporting the financial markets (and under-performers are punished, like ComfortDelgro). Even with widespread retrenchment news, both globally and in Singapore, the stock markets are still inching up.  How long will this last before correction sets in, or recession hits, is anyone's guess. Personally, the return of inflation is w...

Recently I was watching this video by The Fifth Person , where Victor talked about how modern crises nowadays seem shorter compared to the past, and it got me thinking about how different market crashes feel today compared to something like the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized he actually has a point.  Modern market crashes really do feel different now.  They feel sharper, more emotional, more intense, but at the same time, recoveries also seem to happen much faster compared to the past. Back during the 2008 GFC, the suffering dragged on for years.  According to Google, it took 5 years and 5 months for the S&P 500 to return to pre-crisis levels.  It was not just a temporary panic.  It felt like the entire global financial system itself was slowly collapsing from the inside.  Lehman Brothers collapsed, banks failed, housing prices kept falling, unemployment kept rising.  People genuinely feared th...

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...