~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

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...

This is my fourth trip travelling out of ASEAN region, where I have to plan every bit of the itinerary myself (the first was back in May 2024 where me and my mum travelled together to  Japan , the second was back in November 2024 where me and my mum travelled together to  Hangzhou and Suzhou in China, and the third was back in November 2025 where me and my mum travelled together to ZhangJiaJie and Guangzhou in China).  With these prior experiences, I am less concerned and worried about what to plan for our itinerary this time round, as I would have roughly known what my mum would like to experience, and hence what to include and what to exclude in the planning.  This is the first time we are travelling during peak season to see cherry blossoms, thus it will be a trip highly dependent on luck to see if we get lucky to view full bloom.  In addition, this is also the first time we get to experience Singapore Airlines Business Class travel for single trip, which i...

There are some journeys in life that feel extra special, not just because of the destination, but because of the experience along the way.  This upcoming trip to South Korea with my mum is exactly that.  Not only are we looking forward to the beautiful scenery (praying hard for cherry blossom views), food, and moments together, but this trip also marks our very first time (and quite possibly our last one) flying Singapore Airlines Business Class. What makes it even more meaningful is that this was not something I casually booked.  It took careful planning, miles accumulation , and a bit of strategy.  I got to say I am not a great miles player, as my miles accumulation journey was far from optimized, and thus resulted quite a bit in lifestyle inflation.  Thus I decided to end the accumulation phase earlier, and in the end, I only managed to accumulate and hence redeem enough miles for a one-way Business Class flight from Singapore to Seoul for both of us.  ...

The past couple of weeks had been a sobering reminder that the path to financial independence is rarely a straight line.  When the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran escalated at the end of February, markets reacted immediately.  Energy prices surged, volatility returned, and the calm and optimism that had slowly built up in the markets earlier this year in January was suddenly replaced by uncertainty.  For someone like me who has been planning for Barista FIRE, moments like this force a pause for reflection, fearing the negative sequence of returns. Higher energy prices do not only impact price of oil and oil related industries.  They eventually seep into everything.  Transportation costs rise, logistics becomes more expensive, and businesses pass those costs down to consumers.  In other words, inflation has a way of resurfacing quietly but persistently.  When inflation creeps back into the system, the biggest challenge for someone pursuing FIR...

This post is just for personal reference, to record my personal income and expenses in my journey towards Barista FIRE. For the month of March, I believe this is a better reflection of my average monthly expenses from the quarterly spending, due to the maintenance fees and sinking funds that are paid only once per quarter.  Spending this month is more than income, but from a quarterly perspective, it is still positive overall.  Seems like I am in the right direction after all. This month's miscellaneous spending is a little high due to preparations for my upcoming trip with my mum.  Definitely excited about the trip, and hopefully it will create more wonderful memories for us.  Barista FIRE, here I come...!