~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

One of the longest-running debates in the investing world is whether retirees should live entirely on dividends or adopt the Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR), where a small percentage of the investment portfolio is sold every year to fund retirement expenses. From a mathematical perspective, the Safe Withdrawal Rate is difficult to argue against.  For decades, researchers have studied historical market returns across different countries and time periods.  The conclusion has remained surprisingly consistent.  A diversified portfolio invested primarily in equities has historically been able to support annual withdrawals of around 4% over long retirement periods while maintaining a high probability that the portfolio continues growing over time. I understand the mathematics.  I accept the research.  In fact, I believe the Safe Withdrawal Rate is a perfectly valid retirement strategy.  Yet if I am being completely honest, I still find myself naturally gravitating t...

**This is a special edition post for Singapore's National Day, and a personal reflective post on what Singapore's National Day meant for me. Every year, when Singapore's National Day comes around, I find myself thinking about Singapore.  Not just Singapore as a country, but Singapore as a part of my life.  And perhaps more importantly, I think about my parents, and the decisions they made for me when I was too young to understand what those decisions would eventually mean. Looking back now, I realise that much of the life I have today started with a decision my parents made when I was just a young child.  They decided to send me to Singapore to study, even though at that time, I wished to attend the same primary school in Johor together with my friends in kindergarten. I started going to school in Singapore from Primary 1.  For the next ten years, from Primary 1 all the way to Secondary 4, I travelled between Johor Bahru and Singapore every school day.  That m...

This post is just for personal reference, to record my personal income and expenses in my journey towards Barista FIRE. For the month of July, it was quite a "happening" month for me.  I have planned a short get-away to KL in the mid of this month.  However, just 1 week before my trip, something happened and I have to make an emergency day trip to KL via coach.  This is also my first time taking overnight coach directly from Kovan to KL Lalaport.  The ride is surprisingly quite comfortable, and seriously affordable.  I may consider coach ride in future too.   One week later, my planned trip happened and I flew to KL via scoot.  This trip was just for me to relax and chill, and enjoy some good food.  Below are some of the nice food I ate there.   Fish Porridge Spicy Dumplings  Traditional Breakfast Set Curry Chee Cheong Fun Dry Bak Kut Teh Because of this trip which lasted 5 days, my expenses in Singapore is slightly lower.  Exp...

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of July, it remained a volatile month.  The US-Israel-Iran war in the Middle East seems never-ending and the issues keep popping up once in a while with no resolve in sight.  After brent oil prices retreated to USD 70s earlier this month, now it's back to USD 80s level.  Once again, fear of inflation returned, and 10-year yield spike up once again, reigniting rumors of interest rate hikes by the FED.  How it will turn out eventually remains to be seen, but at the same time, Trump is back with the tariffs.  However, this time the markets were calm regarding tariff news, probably due to the many "TACO" events in the past.   Closer to home, rotation of the funds brought the STI to all time highs for most of the month, but in the last two trading days, fear of AI correction subsided, and funds probably moved out of the Singapore market back to Korea and U...

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...

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....