~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

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...

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 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....

**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...

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 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...