~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This is not an account about skill, foresight, or macro-brilliance. This is a short account of how I ended up owning a small amount of physical gold and silver, largely through chance, modest curiosity, and a bit of luck, and what that experience taught me about diversification. How It Began I bought my first piece of physical gold in February 2024.  I was hoping to slowly dollar cost average into gold, buying one ounce yearly  to accumulate my position in precious metal, as a form of diversification.  There was no strong thesis behind it.  I was not trying to bet against fiat currencies or make a bold macro call.  It felt more like owning something tangible outside the financial system, even if the position itself was small.  I remember I was mocked by someone online, someone whom I did not know personally, for buying that piece of gold near all time high at that time. However as time passes, prices of gold climbed to further highs and it became out of...

One of the biggest perks of blogging is I can easily look back at previous posts and compare which are the goals I have successfully achieved and which has fallen behind.  In this first post of 2026, I will like to reflect upon 2025, and compare with what I had written in this  post  one year ago to assess my achievements. 1)     Liquidating My US Growth Portfolio This has been a huge debate with myself this year, whether I should continue investing in US Growth stocks, or liquidate the portfolio to pay off my Malaysia mortgage loan.  In the end, I chose the latter, and enjoy the peace of mind and positive cashflow with my finances in Malaysia.  I know I may miss out the huge upside (and facts has shown that), but I am not regretting what I am missing out, instead I am cherishing and looking forward to a slower pace of life next year, with lesser financial stress from the mortgage debts that I have. Will I restart and rebuild this US Growth P...

In recent months, the global economy has been rattled by a resurgence of trade tensions, most notably between the United States and China.  This modern-day tariff war, escalating into a full-blown geopolitical standoff, has created uncertainty in markets across the globe.  Amid this turmoil, gold prices have surged to new all-time highs, day after day. while silver has conspicuously lagged behind.  This divergence has puzzled many investors and prompted serious questions about whether now is the right time to continue to invest in these precious metals, especially when we start hearing more uncles and aunties beginning to talk about investing in gold (shoe-shine boy theory). Gold’s Meteoric Rise: A Flight to Safety Gold, together with the long term US Treasury bonds, have historically been viewed as a “safe haven” asset, one that holds or increases its value during periods of economic and geopolitical instability.  The first time I blogged about gold was back in...

Back in March 2024, I wrote in a post that I bought an 1 oz gold bullion bar from BullionStar, and got a free 1 oz Canadian Silver Maple Leaf bullion coin.  I also decided to include gold in my investment portfolio for the long term, which meant that I will buy 1 oz of gold yearly starting from 2024.  My intention for doing this is because with all the Quantitative Easing in both the east and the west, fiat may be losing their value in the long run and that makes gold investment more appealing than before (sorry, I am too timid for crypto).   Today, I am revisiting this topic as a record for myself, because year to date, the price of gold has continuously hit new all time high, and I probably need to do some logical thinking on what is going to be my next move.  To me, gold is more of a preservation tool rather than earnings tool, because I know that gold does not distribute any dividends, does not generate any earnings.  Its value is simply derived from d...

Recently in Malaysia, one middle age man was lured into a gold investment scheme, where he was promised an incredulous 10% return every hour!  Without a doubt, it turns out to be a scam and he lost MYR 570K (you can watch the news here ).  This is a huge sum of money for the average person on the street, and losing it is definitely impactful to one's livelihood, especially if one is near retirement years.  So why did such scams succeed?  Short answer: greed. As the saying goes, when something is too good to be true, it probably is.  So why are there still pockets of individuals falling into such scams, especially when the returns sound so ridiculously high, which is probably a red flag?  This could probably due to the recent rocketing prices of commodities like gold, bitcoin and cocoa.  For gold, the price has risen by about 12.7% (in SGD terms), and cocoa prices has rocketed by 34.2% in the past one month! Personally, I did buy physical gold at the st...

Back in September 2023, I wrote a post pondering whether it is time for me to start including physical gold and silver into my portfolio after watching the Channel News Asia documentary on the Singapore Reserves.  At that time, I think I should follow the footsteps of the smart monies, especially the Singapore reserves, to allocate a small percentage of my portfolio into physical gold and silver.  Initially, I was looking at adding 50 grams of gold into my portfolio per year, but later in January 2024 , I changed my mind and decided to lower the allocation to buy 1 troy ounce (31.1 grams) of gold into my portfolio per year instead.   In Singapore, there are many online and physical stores where physical gold can be purchased.  Personally I prefer to collect physical gold over paper gold.  There are many platforms where physical gold can be purchased, through United Overseas Bank (UOB), or through private dealers like Silver Bullion Singapore, GoldSilver Ce...

In a blink of an eye, we are already in 2024.  2023 has been a year of surprises, ups and downs.  As a lousy predictor of events, many of my predictions for 2023 did not come true.  The recession that was announced by analysts and economists since 2022 did not materialize even till today.  Will it happen in 2024?  It is anyone's guess.  I am no longer concerned by such events that are beyond my control, and I just want to concentrate on the things that I can manage.  The purpose of this post will be for me to record my hopes and wishes for the year ahead, and some of the things that I will do to my portfolio, and also certain plans for my friends and family. 1)     Changes To The Way I Manage My US Growth Portfolio It is rather embarrassing to talk about this at this point in time because it took me so long to realize this issue and take action.  Being a passive investor, my aim in investing is to continuously accumulate shares in s...

Recently, I watched the documentary by Channel News Asia on Singapore Reserves: The Untold Story Part 1 and Part 2 .  As I watched in awe how the Singapore government handle and managed their reserves through 3 different agencies, namely Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Temasek Holdings and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC), I noticed that very much like managing personal finances, diversification and asset allocation is also an important aspect.  In summary, Temasek deals with shorter term and riskier investments like equities in various industries, GIC deals with longer term, safer investments like overseas blue chips, bonds and real estate, and MAS deals with foreign reserves.  In the foreign reserves, what caught my attention is the vast amount of glittery shiny golden metal that Singapore has in their stockpile. With Singapore being looked upon as a 'A1 student' in managing its reserves, at least in my opinion, it makes me wonder if I should...