The Trump tariffs could not come at a worse time.
My finances have just recovered from my mum's hospitalization, during which I proactively took some liquid cash to reimburse my CPF-SA. Furthermore, my teaching gigs have been frozen for one semester. The Trump tariffs may affect my other training businesses and, if they persist, may affect future dividend payouts.
Some close friends say that my career and lifestyle choices are unsustainable without my dividends, which is mainly true. Sometimes, I wish to pursue a freelance career that can pay for all of my expenses, but mathematically, that is impossible without a full-time job.
But if life throws lemons at you, you make lemonade.
You may have noticed some significant changes on this blog.
I will create more video content on YouTube to supplement written blog articles. This blog will become more meta, where I will talk about my journey as a professional and as a freelancer. The videos will contain more substantive material on personal finance as I want to reach a broader audience.
This should have happened a while ago, but I was doing well in investment training then, and there was no need to make too many significant changes in how I generate revenue. Now, given the possibility of being NEET, it is time to add a new dimension to my professional persona. A whole new world has opened to me ever since I started trying to build up my LinkedIn presence and fiddling with video recording and editing tools.
Uploading videos is complicated enough to become a new hobby, and the only price I need to pay is to binge-watch less Netflix and read up more on valuable materials. I use the Feynman Technique to boost my own understanding of my materials as I teach them to others. This has been my secret all along - when I teach investing, I'm ultimately teaching myself to be a better investor as I derive more from my dividends than my earned income.
So this week, I devoured a book for newbies on YouTube video creation, and a new world is being opened to me, including many new forms of revenue generation. As it stands, I already have a small base of students who will appreciate tiny bite-sized 15-minute commentary on local markets. I also have a ready form of monetization from my existing courses. The only thing left is to create 100 videos, making stepwise improvements for every video I launch. If I can unlock AdSense within 100 moves, I can turn this into a new vocation. Otherwise, I can chalk it to the multiple learning experiences I will get in my 50s that are becoming much more turbulent than I expected in my 20s.
There will be plenty of time to discuss the economy in the video format, but I want to put a non-financial angle to the Trump tariffs.
What price are we paying to navigate through this kind of chaos?
My easiest decision was to give up my identity as a gamer. This week, my D&D hobby lost two major leaders, Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, each deciding to move on when the game peaked. I'm unsure how much RPG books will cost with Chinese tariffs over 100%. It's also becoming logistically problematic to get four RPG players onto a game on weekends when I can stream a finance talk and interact with fellow retail investors using YouTube during the same slot. My extroversion demands that, given it's so hard to make new friends in your 50s.
So, will my new hobby work out?
At the moment, I've been doing this for a week, so things will suck for the moment as I ramp up the quality of the videos. A good friend has already asked me to tell you how bad my videos are, and I need to blur out the background in future videos. Negative feedback in this line is gold; anything is better than indifference.
But it will get better. If you wish to support me, just find any blog article with a video and subscribe to my channel.
At the very least, I will do this for the next six months.
Stay tuned tomorrow for my video on local bank stocks.
No comments:
Post a Comment