Dating and Mating strategies for single women !

First off, happy Valentine's day to everyone.

A lady classmate asked me to do an article which summarises how I view the current dating climate in Singapore. I promised that I will do something to the best of my ability but first off - May God have mercy on her soul !

Some of the ideas I have today are based on how little I know about social science and evolutionary psychology. To temper my propensity to troll, I would have to consider whether this article would be practical if I were to instead give this advice to my daughter. So far, I think it passes that test.

So here are some of my pointers:

a) There aren't a lot of eligible of men to go by.

Men may fail to be marriage material quite easily. A small proportion are not interested in women at all. A larger number are stuck in jail. Even more struggle to support themselves because the world economy is slowly but surely destroying the middle class. Even the category of men who have decent jobs may not marry because technology has provided many alternatives through game consoles and social media.

So the first point is that this is not a good time for an eligible Bachelorette. 

b) Men in the 70th income bracket should be good enough.

I think women are not out to spend men's money. Their men's income is a signal of their own self-worth. It would be hard to justify their boyfriend's salary to their relatives, parents and colleagues, if it is significantly below their own. This is a significant defect in Asian society. Women are not fully liberated yet but they are starting to outperform men in schools and the workplace.  

As my classmate will be a lady lawyer in the future, she would expect a fairly high salary on her own. My concern is that she may reject many men who make less money than she does.

My advice is not to look for a guy who can match her income, but to find someone who can hold his own at 70th percentile on the income scale which is about $80,000 a year. I also think that men at above $80,000 a year can look after themselves and should not have a psychological hangup if their lawyer wives make several times more than they do ( Just go for better holidays lor ! ). 

c) Go for the men who can give you a stable marriage

Personality science has given some pointers on how to choose men for the most stable marriages.

The most important trait if you cannot assess a man's career potential is his conscientiousness. Conscientious men are neat and orderly. They are ambitious, have a set of goals for themselves and can plan for the future. You can see hints on how conscientious a guy is from his icon arrangement on his home PC but you need a certain level of conscientiousness to get into higher education and the highest-paid professional jobs.

The second trait is agreeableness. Whenever possible, go for a guy who is friendly and warm. I know some women find jerks and trolls irresistable, but you should try to avoid men who put you down.

But the economy makes this a difficult bargain - the most financially successful men are conscientious and disagreeable, so good luck sorting this one out as most divorces occur over money issues !

d) Play for keeps while you are young

Despite what feminists say, men remain stubbornly visual creatures. You will need to do something to ensure that you look presentable, but more importantly, as looks depreciate over time, you need to aggressively play for keeps in your twenties and early thirties.

Biologically, it does not make any sense for women to delay marriage if the right guy comes along ( That is, itself, a rare event these days ). Shows like Sex and the City send out the wrong message to women that there is a Mr.Big waiting for time when they hit their 40s. Mr Big will probably go after his hot secretary who is 15 years younger than him.

Worse, there is a train of thought started by Apple that a woman can freeze her eggs to be used the future so that she can work. I would agree that the technology can work, but do ensure that you freeze your appearance as well unless you are only looking for a donor and not anything else.

A Milennial's biggest mistake is thinking that there is a period of their lives in their 20s that they can dedicate for self-reflection and intellectual masturbation. They are wrong - they need to get their career's right, save for retirement and start a family if they can find the right person.

Leave the intellectual masturbation to uncles in their 40s who study in SMU and run financial blogs.

Your time will come later.

e) Choose the venue for your battles

I can't emphasize this more but choosing a venue to find a conscientious and agreeable man can itself be a science rather than an art. I never understood why some folks in my generation think that they can settle down with someone they meet in a discotheque or a bar. These places are not exactly the kind of place you will find guys who are conscientious. And sadly, neither are organized dating events, many guys are there because they lack the conscientiousness in the first place !

In that sense, the ladies in my class have come to the right place. Places of higher learning has plenty of conscientious guys who are out there charting a better future for themselves. I would also like to add that religious organizations are also full of guys who are high on the agreeable scale. 

f) Prepare to fail. And maybe win big as a result of that.

My heart goes out to my lady classmates. I worked with them  and confirm that they are no more neurotic and disagreeable than other women I worked with.

I think female lawyers may face some discrimination in the dating world. Asian men are intimidated by their intelligence and one or two neurotic women may inadvertedly tar the entire profession. So it is entire possible that some professional women may not find the right person in their lifetime which is not their fault.

Maybe that is is why they may have won the game of love. Their married peers have diapers to change and husbands who refuse to share in the house work. They can make their own money and travel several times a year.

At the end of the day, professional women in Singapore have a tough juggling act. Eligible men are getting distracted by technology and find it impractical to start families with so many viable alternatives. Society still have a traditional view on marriage and gender roles in the household while women's incomes and career potential speed ahead as the economy becomes more globalized.

That is why, in the end, with better education and economic prospects, professional women are stuck in the role of being daughters of a better age.

It is so much tougher to be  wives and mothers in this better age as a consequence of this.

Huzzah !!! Time for guys to spend NOTHING on Singaporean women !!!

I would like to build on Budget Babe's very interesting rant on The Real Singapore.

In this very exciting article Budget Babe extends the idea that it is not prudent to for Singaporean men to spend too much money to impress women.

As a financial blogger of the Income Investing school of thought, I want to take Budget babe's ideas further and insist that guys pay NOTHING when dating Singapore women.

Ok... That's not very honest of me... I'm proposing that guys pay nothing out of their salaries on Singapore women because dating can be free if you employ your investing income to pay for all dates, FOREVER !

The current market is pretty conducive to dividends investors, an investor can build a portfolio that has three components :

• Large Blue-chips like Venture can give about 5-6% yields.
• REITs like AIMS REIT which can give up to 7-8% yields.
• Business Trusts one of which can be Rickmers Maritime which can give from 9-11% yields with corresponding risks.

Suppose by selecting equal asset allocations in each category you can create a portfolio which yields 6%-8%. Let's call it your Valentine's Day Portfolio.

Now let's move on to calculate the cost of a simple weekly dinner date :

a) Dinner for two -  $70
b) Movie for two  - $30
b) Transport          - $50
c) Gift                   - $30

A month of dates with different women would cost $720 a month or $8,640 a year.

A portfolio like the one above would cover all dating expenses would need to be $145,000 if you yield 6%

If you are fairly good investor who can stomach bigger risks you only need $108,000 if you yield 8%.

Of course saving enough money to generate this portfolio is not part of this article, there are plenty of bloggers who can show you how to accumulate $100,000 before you hit 30 years old, most fresh graduates who are diligent can do this before 33 years old.

This particular model of employing investments to impress your Singaporean women can lead to some more interesting insights about how single men can plan their love lives better using financial securities and why many men fail.

• When in your twenties and building your career, you might what to be cheaper or have fewer dates. 
• Your bargaining position as a good life partner improves after you hit more than $85,000 a year when you hit 70% percentile within the male population.

Another way of looking at the dating game is this : Use Social Science and Evolutionary Psychology to your biggest advantage. When your position is weak, another words, when you are young and struggling in your career, the last thing you should do is to blow your assets on a sweet young thing. All the bargaining chips are in her hands.

The only thing you have at your end of the bargaining table is your small erection.

Build your asset base, start scoping your lady friends to determine who is a good candidate for a life partner - someone agreeable, non-neurotic and conscientious, when you have a more stable career and cash flow, women your age will find that your relative position has risen compared to other males in your age group.

Only then do you make your move.

Downside of financial independence.

Initially, I wanted to put up a piece on who the Child in the Basement really is. I wanted to talk about the problems of trying to frame social ills by telling a story and how it distorts the issue for everyone, Then I became so tired that perhaps I should blog about something much simpler that more people can relate to.

So this will be short post.

A lot of people speculate about what happens when someone reaches financial independence.

Does the person turn good and end up doing a lot of charity work ? Or does the person turn and start bullying other people with their new-found freedom ?

Increasingly based on what I've observed, it is none of the above.

Financial Freedom takes away all pretense of who a person is.

In the past someone may have to get up early and show up at work on time. Once they get cash-flow every month, there will no longer be a need to hold a job. Similarly, a financially free person may not be all that reliant on the people around them because free-markets will now be responsible for putting food on the table, so expect many folks to become more anti-social.

There is definitely a good reason to conclude that all financial freedom does is remove the mask that we put on to cope with the challenges society throws at us everyday, the net effect is that your life after reaching your financial target will reflect who you really are in essence. In my case, I always wanted to recapture my happy days  in NUS when I was an undergraduate. It therefore comes with no surprise that I am once again back in school.

That being said, I am slowly learning that have a cash-flow may not work out for everyone.

Some people can be by nature lazy and lethargic. Others are anti-intellectual. A steady cash-flow will kill off every motivation to improve themselves and cripple their ability to ultimately find happiness in life.

As it turns out that beyond pleasure, happiness is a sum of person's relationships, accomplishments, ability to attain flow and how meaningful their life is. Without a job, goals, motivation or need to interact with people, financial freedom will sound their death knell and they soon find themselves in a limbo.

I've read a lot of books on self-help and personal development and as much as I know, I could not find a cure for someone who sets a low standard for their own lives.

What are the first principles in Investing ?

The awesome thing about the finance blogosphere in Singapore is that bloggers can build on each other's ideas.

BigFatPurse has put up a really good article on first principles and why it can often be better than just employing analogies. 

While it does not apply to every domain I know, analogies are not particularly good in investing. Many investors like to talk about Warren Buffett but forget that he can takeover entire companies and fire managers which destroy value, this has the effect of unlocking value from the stocks that he buys.

Retail investors like us will not be that lucky. A value stock can be undervalued for decades tying our money down for years before they can be put to better use elsewhere.

Of course the other problem of analogizing success is that we often come across successful relatives who brag about their investments becoming multi-baggers. This is a terrible fallacy which is often committed after Chinese New Year - If a cousin or uncle sports a fine piece of luxury watch or drives a Maserati, we automatically think that we can copy what they are trying to do. There is no framework which guides how we look at finances.

While I do not have the answers as to what all the First Principles of Investing are, I can share what can be conveniently written in one blog article.

a) Compounding is greatest thing known to mankind.

The first principle is simply that compounding allows you to create wealth exponentially. The theory is obvious even though the practice is not. If compounding is the 8th Wonder of the world, the savings you make in your 20s are a whole lot more important than the savings you make in your 40s, so why are so many young Singaporeans fabulous and broke ?

Similarly, return of 8% are astronomical compared with returns of 6%.

b) Your profits are your raw returns from your investments minus costs.

Another obvious theory which is seldom seen in practice. If profits are raw returns minus costs, you should be aggressively managing your investment costs by pruning out investment vehicles which pay too large a commission to the salesman or fund manager.

The superiority of ETFs over actively managed funds over the long term should be something to concerned about. You should be trimming your personal expenses as well, if only to channel more money into your savings.

c) Asset allocation can be a free lunch if you re-balance your portfolio.

This is more complicated. Asset classes do not move in tandem and complicated mathematics shows that by mixing up these key asset classes, you can improve your risk-adjusted returns. Another words, diversify your investments to cover different market situations. Buy a mix of equities ( STI ETF), bonds ( CPF-SA ) and commodities ( Commodity ETF from SGX ).

Rebalance your asset mix every year. Your human capital or unearned income is also an asset and should taken into consideration.

d) Performance of an asset class is a question of statistics and probability.

Generally speaking the best asset class over the long term are equities with a return 8% and a standard deviation of about 20%. While proponents can argue about the fallacious assumption about markets being normally distributed. We know with a simple understanding of statistics that promising returns over 7% a risky proposition for anyone selling an investment product. This allows an investor to immediately filter out deals which guarantee 12% a year - the deal is too good to be true.

In summary, there is a broader reason why we need to turn to first principles instead of merely analogizing from the investment success of others. First principles sets the boundaries between common sense and salesman bullshit, allowing you to avoid paying hefty commission and scams. With the right foundation, a person can craft a plan to make his first million without looking for a guru or role-model.

An obstacle towards understanding these first principle is that the study of finance is inherently difficult which costs may years of a person's life. It is difficult to get started in investing using first principles without a strong grounding in statistics, economics and accounting.

Which alludes to an bigger question : Is theory that worthless in a society that is now trying to turn to competence and skill ?

For hands of gold are always cold...

Sometimes you wish that some classroom would erupt into full-scale political war. This almost happened the other day in class when we were discussing about the removal of juries in our legal system. A faction in class feels that the population is educated enough to being juries back but another feels that it is more efficacious to leave decisions regarding the facts of the case to the judges.

I have very civil classmates and the discussion ended pretty quickly, had this been other students, the discussion could have turned ugly very quickly. In an alternative universe, this would have become an opportunity to bitch about the strongman politics in the 1960s and some progressive will hijack the discussion to talk about human rights.

What is not obvious to most people observing this exchange is that underlying this discussion is that a specific ideology may have infected Singaporeans which go beyond their support for the PAP or the Opposition - The idea of Plato's Republic that there are Men of Gold, Silver, Bronze or even Lead. Our Administrative service is full of Oxford PPEs, living Philosopher Kings who determine national policy for the best of the country - readers do note that these super-scalar public servants cannot be voted out in 2016 no matter who you vote for. 

The abolition of the jury is just a small symptom of the underlying root cause. There is a notion that a judge, person of higher learning, is more capable of cutting through the rhetoric to dispense judgement in Singapore. This arose from the belief that there is someone more eminently qualified, or even better than a different class of persons.

This does end with the courts.

Opposition supporters, while upset with the PAP's elitism, are visibly impressed when Chen Show Mao has joined the cause of WP.

Some very silly Singaporeans abdicate the management of their finances to the so called Financial Advisors.

For now i would like to just like to invite the reader to see where they stand on this idea.

Strong-form of the theory

The strong form of theory is that not only are there men of gold, silver or bronze, children of parents of gold are also people of gold. This is the eugenics argument and part of the reason why many civil activists fought off the graduate women's policy which was implemented in the 80s ( Progressive are unlikely to give that hat tip to Vivian balakrishnan for fighting the good fight right ? ).

While this idea might seem repugnant to most readers, social science has lent support to the argument. In the US, assortative mating is now the root cause of income inequality with a whole lot of social advantages going to the children with graduate parents. Go read this week's Economist for more details.
 
Semi-strong form of the theory

The semi-strong form of the theory has more adherents. It is the idea that there are men of gold, silver and bronze but it is not an in-born trait. You can rise to your position based on your own talents and life is not an ovarian lottery.

This is an attractive idea for progressive change, but sadly this has less support in social science. You need to retool  and engineer society to make this a reality. This starts with more tax payer money to the poor and socially disadvantaged.

Weak form of the theory

The weak form of the theory would appeal to hipsters and art history majors. Whether a person is a man of gold, silver or bronze is contextual. A person can a man of gold if he chooses the right vocation and is put into the right situation.

This theory can be logical and I can imagine a lot of coherent arguements for it, but I fail to see what kind of consequences can arise from this belief. Since everything is contextual, do we leave things as status quo?

Fuck the theory

Some anarchists or communists will decide to simply fuck the theory. There are no philosopher kings, men of gold, silver or bronze, just human beings.

I can see the attraction of this stand as no one wants to be labelled a man of lead, the best way is to dispense with the labels. Problems might arise during CNY when your relatives start to label every cousin and nephew based on their income or academic performance.

As for my personal belief, I think that science does support Lee Kuan Yew and the strong form of this belief. But humanity should aspire toward a society that is semi-strong. If a clever kid did not choose rich parents, we need to elevate him to a leader, so tax payers must be prepared to pay to ensure that his disadvantage is reduced.

I am less supportive of the weak form of the theory because there are traits like conscientiousness which create all-round good outcomes for folks with such traits throughout his/her life so "better" people do exist ( try working with a flake if you do not believe me ) . 

Which periodicals do you read ?

Just a short article today, it's been kind of frustrating that I have to rush my readings tonight for tomorrow's lesson, I was not aware of the readings until this afternoon and I am not the kind of guy to do work last minute.

Just want to share the periodicals I currently read :

a) Business Times and the Edge.

Local investors should do their best to read these two periodicals on the local market scene.

Having no money to invest for about 10 more months makes reading this no longer mandatory. I continue to read the Edge to track my current investments, sometimes a very in depth article appears and it allows me to decide whether to keep a stock holding. Given that most of my stocks are high yield, I generally try to ride out a rough patch rather than sell my holdings.

Currently, I read the Edge every Friday and pick up BT for the Saturday issue because of it's Leisure section which is quite fun to read.

b) The Economist

For years, I was unable to have a breakthrough with the Economist. It was a magazine I admired and the folks who read it on a regular basis always seemed to have a lot of substance.

But I always found the Economist to be very dry and struggle intellectually with the articles. Finance class only helped me cope with the Schumpeter section but I still skip anything on Africa and South America. ( Does a REIT investor in Singapore give a shit about Robert Mugabe ? )

If the Harvard Business Review could be such a compelling read, why is the Economist so boring ?

These days, I look forward to my copy of the Economist as it summarizes the big news of the week and it's analysis is incisive as ever. Compared to my legal case readings, The Economist is as exciting as a fantasy novel involving Driz'zt, Elminster and a neo-Otyugh in BDSM action ( In the case of the Schumpeter articles, with Elminster wearing only diapers).

Of course my rationale for my new found obsession with the Economist is that it is the preferred writing style of the folks who mark my essays.

c) Financial Analyst Journal and CAIA Journal of Alternative Investments

The biggest reason why I kept paying my CFA and CAIA  membership dues is that it comes with the Journals on investing. The papers are fairly hardcore but I was able to dive deep into various new age investment strategies. (  latest being a treatise on covered call strategies. )

This is really an extension of my CFA studies and my independent has kept me updated with techniques like fundamental indexation and synthetic annuities after all these years after leaving finance school.

Just don't ask me why I can handle FAJ but not the Economist.

d) Special Mention : Malaysia Edition of Personal Money

There used to be a reason for me to go to City Square Johor Bahru every month.

Sadly, Personal Money, a periodical from the same team who brought us the Malaysian Edge, has been discontinued. I was a quite a big fan because of the human element of the magazine.

There is a certain quality of a Malaysian financial periodical which treats their readers as ordinary human beings. Personal Money had articles on hipster cafes, cheap gadgets and Chinese Astrology whereas the Edge Singapore views investors as the regular Singapore Tatler types who are only into expensive watches and fountain pens. It is dehumanizing to think that investors only eat at restaurants which charge $300 per pop.

If anything,take this as an appeal from me - At the end of the day, no matter how numerical or analytical  we are, we are ultimately human beings.

Investors do not exist so that you can rub into our faces the Ferraris, Michelin 3-star meals and Mont-Blanc pens. I'm fairly immune to envy but I am aware that this lifestyle proposed probably prevents many of us from building a decent portfolio in the first place.

The state of local finance periodicals is currently just that - hardcore analysis and then pages and pages of horological pieces which costs more than stocks which was just analyzed.

Power of the dual-lawyer family.

Some law students are like oxygen molecules, they form covalent bonds very quickly.  After one semester, it comes at no surprise that couples have started to form in class.

While I think that teasing is not a necessary part of campus life - I am certainly happy for my classmates who are now happily attached to each other, it would be interesting to examine what i would think is the most potent couple combination in class.

The lawyer-lawyer couple is, financially one of the most potent combinations you can form in Singapore. This may have far reaching consequences for policy makers if they are concerned about social stratification but that is not part of our discussion today.

After both husband and wife gets admitted to the Bar, their combined income far exceeds anything me and my wife have achieved in our entire lives ( once we discount our investment income ). Of course, the mathematics can also apply to doctor-doctor couples or management consultant - investment banking couples, but lawyer couples form very easily in class since there is so many opportunities to work with each other in SMU.

As part of my analysis, I generated a spreadsheet with a very conservative assumptions of the cash flow a legal couple can expect.

• Salary begins with a post-CPF take home pay of $4,500 and 3 month bonus every year.
• A projected 10% increment every year for a decade after which the increment slows to 5% a year. I expect lawyers to job hop a lot to maintain this salary trajectory. 
• A very modest assumption of 6% investment returns from a 25% savings rate.

My results are as follows :


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Year	Annual Salary	Couple Salary	Savings	Accumulated Savings	Investment Income
1	$67,500.00	$135,000.00	$33,750.00	$33,750.00	$2,025.00
2	$74,250.00	$148,500.00	$37,125.00	$72,900.00	$4,374.00
3	$81,675.00	$163,350.00	$40,837.50	$118,111.50	$7,086.69
4	$89,842.50	$179,685.00	$44,921.25	$170,119.44	$10,207.17
5	$98,826.75	$197,653.50	$49,413.38	$229,739.98	$13,784.40
6	$108,709.43	$217,418.85	$54,354.71	$297,879.09	$17,872.75
7	$119,580.37	$239,160.74	$59,790.18	$375,542.02	$22,532.52
8	$131,538.40	$263,076.81	$65,769.20	$463,843.75	$27,830.62
9	$144,692.24	$289,384.49	$72,346.12	$564,020.49	$33,841.23
10	$159,161.47	$318,322.94	$79,580.73	$677,442.46	$40,646.55
11	$167,119.54	$334,239.09	$83,559.77	$801,648.78	$48,098.93
12	$175,475.52	$350,951.04	$87,737.76	$937,485.46	$56,249.13
13	$184,249.30	$368,498.59	$92,124.65	$1,085,859.24	$65,151.55
14	$193,461.76	$386,923.52	$96,730.88	$1,247,741.67	$74,864.50
15	$203,134.85	$406,269.70	$101,567.42	$1,424,173.60	$85,450.42
16	$213,291.59	$426,583.18	$106,645.80	$1,616,269.81	$96,976.19

The results are very interesting.

Basically it means that if the couple maintain a steady household expenditure and increase their standard of living at the same rate of salary growth, they can expect to still accumulate their first million at year 13 from graduation ( about 15 if they used a bank loan to pay for the JD program. )

A 28 year old couple will accumulate about $1 million at around age 41, earlier if they can save their entire bonus and increments.

Of course it can be argued that life can be very unpredictable and my table does not account for the burnout rate of legal professionals. It is also entire possible that one member of the couple can take a few years off to raise kids.

Another impediment is that many lawyers can get used to the high spending culture and lifestyle common to keep up with appearances, which would make saving 25% unrealistic.

Lastly, it can also be argued that few lawyers, being very verbal creatures, might be able to eke 6% from their investments. I believe that they can afford the best fee-only financial advisors to meet their investment goals.

Of course, I am not just doing this analysis for couples.

Observe that by halving the numbers, a single lawyer who can save 25% of income can also achieve a passive income of more than $2,000 sometime around year 11. This means that a legal career sort of pays for financial freedom is it can be sustained for about 11-13 years.

This can be helpful in answering some crucial questions my classmates have on managing their lives.

My classmates are now faced with a decision on whether it is advisable to speed up and accelerate their JD studies from 3 years to 2.5 or 2 years.

In the grander scheme of things, with prudent management of resources, my classmates can reasonably be financially free after about 11- 13 years of hard back-breaking work, they just need to survive.

From this perspective, it makes the acceleration of classes unnecessary.

Functionalist perspective on the attainment of Financial Independence.

The primary reason why I avoided the study of Humanities when I was younger was mainly because I do not like the idea of getting lots of B's when the report card gets handed back to us.  The secondary reason, which also explains why I do not have great luck with Arts girls when I was an undergraduate, is that I have a very utilitarian and pragmatic philosophy of life.

Like many engineers, I am not only vulgar in my words, I am vulgar in my outlook of life. Here's hoping Law school can change that.

Imagine that you are in an RPG game and you find a magic sword. A great humanities scholar will be interested in it's history, the player wants to know who forged it, who wielded it into battle and how was it lost. Perhaps it was forged prior to the Doom of Valyria, wielded by Azhor Ahai, a great hero of ancient times who perished it battling an armada of fire breathing dragons.

When I find a magic sword, the only thing I want to do is to hit someone with it. The more damage I do, the more satisfying it is. I don't care if it's the great flaming sword of Azhor Ahai or the +2 Dildo of Sodomizing Justin Bieber.  I like to roll critical hits with my weapon, behead my opponent and kick his head around like a football after I am done with it.

Imagine my loss that it took me 40 years to discover Functionalism !

Functionalism is a methodology used in Comparative Law. To shed insight on legal systems around the world, scholar ask themselves what is the purpose of these laws ? Another words, while the Law of Contract differs from US, Singapore and German jurisdictions, the function of having rules is to govern agreements and promises between two parties. Different societies evolve different approaches to deal with people who breaks oath and promises.

This insight is actually quite brilliant because I think if I swing this concept hard and fast enough, we can learn something about why some people attain independence and why some don't.

I think  the problem with very technical financial authors like myself, there is a lot of focus on technique. If you distill the essence of how I attained financial independence, its basically get a decent job, save aggressively and invest in high yielding instruments until the yields exceed your monthly income.

Even today, it baffles me as to how people can't do something as simple as that. I have actually met lawyers in the past, salivated over their 5-digit monthly incomes and then they ask me how to budget their expenses because there's not enough to go by every month.

The insight on financial independence I just learnt from my legal texts is this : While almost every piece of financial advice is similar, the purpose of the person who seeks financial independence differ. This is the opposite problem in Comparative legal scholarship.

What is your purpose of seeking financial independence ?

If what you seek is income security to cope with job loss really want that quiet confidence  to live out your life without being a slave to any corporation, then the method of dividend and value investing makes a whole of sense and like many other financial bloggers, you should be able to attain FI before the age of 40. This life can be boring.

If what you seek is variety, you aspire to the kind of Facebook creature  living that parachutes off planes and take lots of picture of your high-end cuisine, you are likely to fail, because for FI to take place, it often means having a very austere lifestyle for more than a decade. All that advice on budgeting and seeking yield based instruments will not allow you to meet your purpose. It's like Afghanistan developing securities trading laws. I think that instead you should be attending Dale Carnegie courses and should look for a good sales job to attain that lifestyle.

The final insight from Functionalism is actually common sense : You need to know what you really in life and have a definite purpose before you look for the tools and the techniques to achieve that purpose.



 

One year after leaving the workforce !

Wow ! Since Christmas, my life has been a series of milestones.

It has been a year since I left the workforce, and it's been so long I am probably not even classified as someone as someone who is unemployed any-more. instead, I am now someone who is no longer participating in the labour force.

The economy has really changed a lot, I'd just like to speak about two trends which was not anticipated when I quit my job last year at about the same time.

a) SIBOR is up. Real-estate bulls are in for a beating of a lifetime.

I have had a balanced real-estate/equity portfolio for quite a while. What is really irritating and I believe this is being shared by many readers all these years are the kinds of fools who would never believe that a bear market in real estate is possible.

With SIBOR being up so drastically over the past two weeks, many of us with a home mortgage ( myself included ) should be expecting a higher payout over the next few months. This should be something that needs to be anticipated. But if you are a rentier who has to pay out of your mortgage for your bank loan, there is now a distinct possibility that you can have a net cash outflow after servicing your loan. Worse, there is going to be strong downward pressure on real estate prices now that it costs a lot more to service mortgage loans. That should be part and parcel of the risk of real estate investing.

What is delightful to me, however, is that some folks who have a livelihood selling real estate and loans would have to contend with less agreeable clientele as I believe many common folk will be a lot skeptical of the snake oil they are peddling. Sometimes it takes a real bear market to teach folks to be less trustful of salesman types.

( I do welcome critics to analyze the mortgage deal which I secured about 3 years ago, my perpetual rate moving forward is 0.68% + 3 mth SIBOR. So far I am seeing no rush to refinance. )

b) Oil and Gas sector no longer looks good.

I've been waiting for this for the past 15 years with great relish. A confluence of factors are driving down oil prices, mainly the US unlocking their shale reserves and a slowdown in China largely triggered by anti-corruption measures. Personally, I'm even inclined to think that low oil prices are a result of the world coming together to screw Russia over their annexation of Crimea. ( Otherwise, why would OPEC actually not cut their output ? )

Low oil prices can wreak havoc in most economies, but my take is that it is generally good as household end up with more discretionary income.

More importantly, even after the shake-out in the banking sector, oil and gas executives continue to be the cockiest fuckers you meet on the corporate world. For the  first time in 15 years of my working life, they are now quaking in their boots.

If you've been a regular reader of this blog, you might remember my article in the past where I exhorted my friend not to envy his whoring and arrogant friend who works as a hotshot in the oil and gas industry. Apparently, my friend is getting the last laugh now.

What is the moral of the story ?

The economy will eventually humiliate everyone and make fools of us all.

When I had my first job with Procter & Gamble, I felt like an invincible genius who got myself a first class ticket to the millionaire suite because what could possibly go wrong with a consumer goods company which looked immune to economic cycles in the 1990s. Who knew that the entire IT department would be sold to to HP within a span of 5 years ?

These days, even Coke is retrenching workers. 

So far I am doing fine, one record year paying taxes, a mortgage loan and school fees all without touching my investment capital.

Who knows what would happen next year ? Will I lose my financial independence ?

Singaporeans will learn that capping foreign talent will hurt the pockets of the local middle class workers. Getting rid of young workers from China and replacing them with our aged workers can only end in lower productivity and this is now being seen in all our metrics. I fully expect an electorate who will be much less xenophobic as I believe that ultimately all of us still vote with our wallets.

Perhaps I should start getting cosier with the law firm partners who come over to SMU. I've not been talking to them so far as I've yet to even figure out which area of the Law to specialize in.









   

At 40, I have no doubt that Confucius is wrong !

One of the WTF moments I had turning 40 is that I had the luck to know of Confucius very ancient ideas of personal development earlier to see if it is possible to compare my personal development with the Great Confused One.

I was not surprised that this effort made me more confused.

This was taken from Analects 2.4.

At 15 I set my mind on learning; by 30 I had found my footing; at 40 I was free of perplexities; by 50 I understood the will of Heaven; by 60 I learned to give ear to others; by 70 I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the line.

 子曰：「吾十有五而志于學，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳順，七十而從心所欲，不踰矩。

So at the age of 40, Confucius claims that he was free of perplexities - someone who has no doubts.

One contextual interpretation is that during those bad old days, there are many gurus or snake-oil salesmen who can survive selling personal philosophies and as a sage, Confucius needed a lot of confidence to be able to put himself forward as a great teacher. 

We no longer live in the time of Confucius. People in their 40s have more doubts than ever and are plague with more perplexities. Mortgage liabilities and children continue to take a toll on workers in this stage of their lives. Many will wonder what they have done wrong with their careers when some of their peers have started on directorships. So even if we are ethnic Chinese, Singaporeans are full of doubts, some over what is morality, but our doubts stem from whether we made the right choices in our lives. 

I have my own personal biases as an Ang-Moh Pai Potatoe eating Ethnic Chinese, one of these biases is that I've always been very sensitive of the Teng Lang Pai Chinese helicopters who come from all those loyal Chinese schools and favored as loyal and conscientious citizens. 

( Of of these things I was very sensitive about is their chauvinism. In a truly multi-racial society, designating ethnic Chinese students into special conclaves to study their mother tongue is a horrible idea which needs to be struck down in the next elections. We can designate special institutes for some passionate students to cover their mother tongue as a first language on Fridays and Saturdays. In normal days, Singaporeans should have contact with all races and this should include foreign nationals as well. )

Coming back to Confucius, I do marvel at his intellectual arrogance in thinking that he has no doubts. 

This is not a simple matter. this is something which affects our daily lives. 

I am increasing noticing that many folks in their 40s, uncles and aunties like myself are starting to develop psychological defenses to account for their own mediocrity. I urge readers to just observe the folks they meet during Chinese New Year. 

a) Success and wealth are immoral

This psychological defense is erected to show that the folks more successful they are more more immoral. For example, one might argue that someone lives in landed property because he is a successful salesman - he cheats people for a living and unlike honest folk, does not work with their hands. 

b) Success can be proxied.

This second psychological defense is erected when face with someone perceived to be more successful than them. This is fine, as they know someone who is "lagi" more successful. 

Is this not the moral development hinted at by Confucius ? 

Uncles and aunties in their 40s, having no doubts at the corruption and mediocrity of the folks they are compared against ? 

Maybe I am immature, I think this is mainly an Ethnic Chinese problem within my own community. I don't experience much of these amongst other races, so do feel to correct me if I am wrong. 

In summary, the only thing which I have no doubts is that Confucius' teachings do not mirror my own personal development. 

I doubt whether the decisions I made are even right. 

I doubt whether the bets I have placed on the economy would turn out my way. 

I doubt that readers would be pleased by this post.

Countdown to 2015 - Create Systems, not Resolutions.

As we approach the new year, I start to find myself busy again. SMU has started spamming the readings for the next semester and I've been finding that I'm spending more time clearing the cases for the upcoming semester, so this has not been very much of a break in spite of being a month long.

After working on getting my condo into a livable state, things have been so comfortable that I have not been able to travel our of the country before school reopens. Hopefully, I would be able to budget for some travel during the next round of holidays although that's the break where the bulk of internships and pro-bono work would take place. 

Recently, many financial bloggers have started sharing their resolution plans with everyone. Being conscientious in nature, I expect most of them to succeed in their resolutions. 

This year, I'm going to move away from crafting my resolutions. Instead I'm going to see if it's possible to have a better year by employing the "Systems, not goals" approach proposed by Scott Adam's How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

So for 2015 I'm going to stick with the following systems.

a) Health and exercise system

For my health and exercise, I'm going to use up the ridiculous $320 I now pay as conservancy for my condominium by trying to swim or cross-train 3 times a week. Not much motivation is required these days as gym facilities is s short walk from my unit which is on the first floor. For a start, I will stick to a 30 min session and push it to 45 min once my body gets used to it.

b) A "system" of no touching of capital 

My finances are taking a back seat in 2015 as all I need to do is not touch my capital for one more year. I have two more major installments of close to $18,000 each to clear this year and need to worry about the final pay-out in October. Pay-out for April was partially offset by SMU thanks to my good fortune last semester. With any luck, I would have some ready cash to get into the markets next December.

While I might regret some of my market moves later, I have not touched my portfolio for the greater part of 2014. While there are few really bad dogs in my portfolio, I am strangely unaffected by the drop in oil prices. Maybe next year, my real estate holdings may take a hit when interest rates start to rise.

c) Better system to cope with school-work.

As a student, I would expect most of the effort to be concentrated on my studies in 2015. My current approach to my school-work leaves much more to be desired. I am still clueless on how to write a winning essay and have a mediocre strategy for exams.

My first system to implement is to look-out for resources on writing decent legal essays and treating it as a topic of study two weeks into the term. This also means knowing the exam Qs early so that question spotting can take place throughout the semester.

The second system is to overhaul my inefficient studying process. Despite acting really in the semester on all my assignments, there was a lot of rework getting my notes up which facilitates exam preparation. Exam-grade notes are now prepared as part of seminar preparation, so that I can avoid the nasty panic of creating notes only just weeks before the finals. In this case, the Kaizen guys understand what it's like to get it right the first time. Some rote learning cannot be avoided in an open book system as precious minutes can be saved if there is no need to refer to the cheat sheet.

To ensure that I have resources to put these systems to work, I would have to hold back on DMing my games and instead, will participate as a player in the next semester, Fortunately, someone else is ready to take on the mantle of Game-master while I plan my aggressive campaign to survive Semester 2 of the JD programme in SMU.

About to begin my fifth decade....

Tomorrow, I will celebrate my 40th birthday.

Just some thoughts and reflections on the last decade of my life and what's in store for me in my next decade.

It has been a very productive decade leading to my 40th birthday. On the family front, I started dating, got married and became a dad within this time. More interesting, this is probably the most prosperous decade I would ever experience in my lifetime as I was able to accumulate a portfolio size which gives me a higher drawn income higher than my previously held job, which then opened up a host of opportunities which would be closed to many other folks who are busy getting house in order, including getting into SMU Law School and gaining access to an entire host of "forbidden knowledge" which is only available for a very high fee.

Looking back, I can't say that I've made entirely good moves for my career. I was doing well in the private sector and made some moves which I soon grew to regret as I mistakenly thought that I would be happier and better off with more work life balance, which is where my biggest career mistakes were made. As I lost interest in IT work in my later jobs outside the private sector, I count my lucky stars that my financial knowledge allowed me to get a second chance in the legal industry.

This was something I had to do upon gaining financial independence, a lot of work frustration over my 15 years in IT was due to legal related matters, it could be clauses in a outsourcing contract, procurement or some terms and conditions for a software competition. Each engagement with legal professionals was, unfortunately for me, extremely unpleasant and I came off feeling very stupid every-time, I've always felt legal advice too dubious and clouded in . Law school is vindication. It's not enough to get a degree, I need to convince myself that I can make an above average lawyer.

I guess it's my fault that I'm too much of an engineer and geek at heart - I don't trust the so-called "experts" and had some success making financial decisions on my own and being from the outsourcing industry, I've always believed that insourcing is best.

I think a man's fifth decade would be the darkest decade in his lifetime. His parents will not be getting younger and the bulk of the most productive period of his time is over but the mortgages and liabilities would still be there. As for me, I have the dubious position of rebooting my career as a legal professional which I would have make a sincere attempt to build.

As I prepare to get back to the workforce in my mid-forties, I have articulated two major financial goals over the next ten years. The first would be to generate 5 digits worth of average dividends every month over a year. This is attainable very quickly if I can get a job as a lawyer as I can start saving my current dividends beginning 2016. The bigger challenge after reaching that income threshold is to rapidly pay off my 36 year condo mortgage over 3-4 years just to get to get rid of that big albatross around my neck. This needs to happen fast and before I hit my 50s as the Fed may raise interest rates soon.

This year is shaping up considerably well taking into account as to how fiscally challenging it was for me. I've accumulated almost a full year of unemployment, paid the highest income tax expense I ever had, moved into my new condo, bought all the furnitures and appliances, paid two semesters worth of fees, carried on servicing my mortgages and living expenses and I still managed solely using investment income.

Still, I had towards my 40th birthday on a new high.

My results were good enough that SMU has given me an award to shave off a couple of thousand bucks from my next round of school fees. It was probably more luck than skill as I've done better for my team projects and class participation than my written exams, this is not likely to repeat itself in future semesters.

There are still two more months before the adverse year of Horse ends. I'm cautiously optimistic for my luck in  the year of the Goat but I'm not holding the hard work for the next semester.

Catch you guys on the New Year  and Merry Christmas !

Who wants to be a "Sergeant" ?

A class of problems in a modern urban city is that problem of "Who wants to be the Sergeant?"

Why would a top A level student choose Engineering as a discipline when the pay of a technical professional lags a marketing or finance professional after 5 years ?

Similarly, why would a medical practitioner choose to be a GP considering the gap between the salary of a GP and a specialist ? More likely, why would someone really smart and capable choose nursing, pharmacy or an allied health practitioner and play the sergeants and assistant to doctors.

To a lesser extent, most lawyers prefer corporate law to community law, we have a case of too many law graduates when there is a shortage of legal professionals in the community space.

Closer to many readers, recently some students made a conscious choice to choose a neighbourhood school in spite of getting a PSLE aggregate of 261. This led to them getting the attention of the PM. While I respect the choice made by the student and the parents, this is the exception rather than the norm. In my opinion, joining a neighbourhood school after getting fantastic grades is not a strategic move because of the power of the alumni of the top schools. You may get a decent education in a neighbourhood school, but you deny yourself a great alumni which can be a major asset to your career in the future. Even if the government can make all schools good schools. The reality is that not all alumni are great alumni.

This is an important problem, because if everyone were to let the invisible hand determine career and school choices, society might be less optimal or anti-fragile as a result of this. As Nicholas Taleb recently told Singapore officials, some entrepreneur needs to feed all the bureaucrats within the system, so Singaporeans should not be over-educated. Now we have a situation where our top engineering schools are the recruitment grounds of our best banks, which is great for the engineering graduates as it's a ticket to a great life, but who would create the new jobs and bring out the hottest start-ups of the future and risk living a life of serial failures most successful businessmen has to go through ?

I don't have a solution to this problem but I do know what generally does not work : Appealing to morality will most likely fail. There is no nobility in poverty and mediocrity. What I want to do is to reframe the problem in terms of evolutionary psychology so that we can look at the problem in a more visceral and fundamental manner:

I always challenge a start-up founder/engineer by saying that if he is stuck in a singles bar with an investment banker, doctor and lawyer and all of them want to hit on a chick, who is likely to score in Singapore ?

This is just a mental experiment which I think sheds light on how to solve the problem.

Policy makers need to get into the singles bar and create a situation where if a start-up founder, investment banker, lawyer and doctor wants to hit on a chick, the start-up founder has a fair chance of getting lucky. At this point of time, no one expects the situation needs to change to give the start-up founder an unfair advantage.

Just a fair chance would do.



 

Financial Independence as a Continuum.

Since my exams, I have been busy getting my EC ready as TOP occurred a couple of months ago.

Most of my day has been spent moving my belongings from my parent's place and assembling Ikea furniture. As we spend quite a fortune on conservancy fees, I was also retooling my exercise routine to ensure that my conservancy fees will result in a healthier life which will hopefully defray medical expenses in the future.

This blog article is my first one from my new home.

A lot of bloggers and the financial community have been very anxious and excited over Anthony Robbin's latest book entitled Money. Overall, I think that it is a a very credible product. I don't really read Tony Robbins for his financial know-how, his genius lies in making really complex self-improvement habits accessible to the lay-man - folks who are emotional creatures and not conscientious scholar-types who would not require a motivational speaker to meet their personal goals. This is something which I struggle to do as a finance writer.

The financial community has had many years to criticize Anthony Robbins when he was the King of Infomercials in the past, when he was trying to sell his brand of NLP and even invented a new measure of healthiness of  a food product by labeling each item with a frequency measure.

This time, twenty years after his previous book, Tony Robbins actually created a real product which can benefit a lot of readers, he has come under  attack from all corners of the financial industry. The criticisms  focused on nitpicking his choice of portfolio allocation, but I think what the financial community really wants to do is to muffle his central message which is to get everyone to cut down the commissions they pay to the financial industry. Another words, readers are advised to move away from actively managed funds into low cost ETFs.

I am only currently a third into his book and can't really comment on his investment strategies yet, but I am already impressed with the way he broke the concept of Financial Independence into manageable steps which people can aspire to.

Basically, according to Robbins, there are 5 levels of financial independence. At each level, your investment income covers some of your needs. A person who is financially secure covers his basic expenses, a person with absolute financial freedom can buy a private island in Greece and live a life of constant luxury without being answerable to anyone.

A summary of Robbin's ideas are as follows :

• Financial Security = Investment Income covers  Mortgage, Utilities, Food, Transportation, Insurance
• Financial Vitality = Financial Security + 0.5 x (Clothes + Dining + Entertainment + Indulgences)
• Financial Independence = Current level of expenses
• Financial Freedom = Financial Independence + Some travel + Donations
• Absolute Financial Freedom = Financial Freedom + Private island + Private Jet

If you refer to Robbin's model, I can currently cover his criteria for Financial Independence but that's mainly because, beyond the fees I pay to SMU for Law School, I have few indulgences in my life. 

More useful to the beginner who is just beginning his journey in investments, is that it may be better to break the first step of  Financial Security down into component expenses. For a young graduate or blog reader who has just realized that he needs some retirement planning, one approach is to start with each expense item. 

For financial security, let's say that you incur $200 of insurance expenses a month or $2400 a year, As a beginner, you do not know how to invest and has decided to buy a portfolio of REITs which yield about 6.5% ( Suppose you alphabetically buy 1 lot of all local REITs with your savings ) . Using a conservative 5% estimate for dividends, you will need a portfolio size of $2400/5% or 20 x $2400 or $48,000 to permanently cover all your future insurance expenses. If you can save $12,000 a year, you may attain the state of being able to pay off all subsequent insurance expenses after 4 years of work. 

Similarly for transport, you may also spend $200 on bus and MRT trips. By saving another $48,000, you also permanently resolve your transport woes once your portfolio reaches another $48,000 milestone. This will take shorter than 4 years as you would have a couple of raises and can also save the $200 you no longer pay from your earned income to the insurance company. 

In your journey towards becoming financially secure, you may start with Utilities, Insurance, Transport before moving on to food and the mortgage which tend to be larger expenses. This may take a decade of work but at the end of the journey, you can stop relying on your earned income to pay for these basic items. Note that disciplined savers may also find that they can accelerate their wealth accumulation as they earn more and spend less of their earned income as the years gone by. 

All in all, it was nice that a motivational superstar like Anthony Robbins agree with my slow and steady approach to wealth accumulation. The problem with each generation of folks is that they are always looking for a short-cut to gain financial independence where there is none.  By the time I was in my early thirties, I was able to save 100% of my earned income every month. I was even more pleased that Tony was also able to highlight areas of growth for folks who have achieved financial independence. Perhaps after I resurrect my career as a lawyer in the future, I can start thinking about designing a more comfortable lifestyle for my self and my family.  

Why Jack Ma is wrong about education and innovation.

Jack Ma joins the list of very successful billionaires who laments about the education system he has gone through and has spoken very convincingly of why the Chinese education system must change in order for the country to make progress.

This is not a new idea. Einstein himself values imagination above knowledge.

Many successful business men and even our own minister talks about the value of creativity and imagination in creating a vibrant innovation driven economy. In fact, I count a large part of my academic achievements not so much by my mediocre exam taking skills but mostly through public speaking and class participation. My ability to think out of the box comes largely from my 30 years playing RPGs and Dungeons and Dragons. We spent years linking up class abilities, spells and magic items to resolve any scenario the Dungeon Master tosses at my party. The current generation will use the same mindset and thinking to plan their next Zerg rush or Warcraft raid attacks.

In spite of billionaires, famous scientists and top politicians who wax lyrical about imagination, innovation and creativity, I am inclined to think that they are all wrong.

The primary reason why this thinking is wrong is that while creativity and imagination allows a few individuals to really achieve quantum leap progress, we are not convinced that a system which fosters such out of the box thinking is good for the masses.

That is the dilemma faced by policy makers.

Creativity, imagination and innovation worked for me, Jack Ma and Albert Einstein. But does it work for Tan Chee Hong, a fictional Geylang Pimp,  who finds an interesting way to name his prostitutes to increase repeat customers by 30% ? How about the Chow Ah Beng, who experiments with colours and Surrealism by spraying a national monument to demonstrate his artistic talent? Or Roy Ngerng ?

Clearly the most innovative country in the world is America. It has Facebooks, Google, Apple and Microsoft - no other country can do that. But America is also the country where a liberal arts graduate will graduate with crippling bank loans and his best possible job is making coffee at Starbucks, why do we have private schools that trick him into a course where it's hard to get a decent job ? Where else you can be shot by a cop because of the colour of your skin or by a gun toting psycho because you are attending high school. You can also be raped by a comedian in the 80s or worse, have to listen to Justin Bieber.

I'm not going to take the position that creativity and innovation is bad. I think that it should be confined to a select few. How much, and who should be given such training is something I'd wish social science would be able to answer.

The problem of Asian societies and Singapore is not not whether creativity or innovation should be emphasised in educational training, the question is how many should be given this emphasis and how do we select these people. Western societies which desire to open the minds of everyone are taking the wrong approach - just look at Justin Bieber. Singapore's elitist approach emphasising academics may also be wrong, look at Dr. Eng Kai Er.

What we know is that most of the population need to be trained to follow instructions and run the bulk of the economy. That is to provide society with operational personnel, engineers and bureaucrats. There exists a sweet spot, a magic number of population where the Jack Ma's exist waiting for the system to unlock their potential.

Of course, taking my idea to it's logical conclusion runs the risk of adopting Plato's concept of the Philosopher King which can lead to a totalitarian regime. The moment you take the road to select people to be treated in a different way, you also run the risk of thinking that men of gold will produce children of gold, which I think is increasingly becoming a problem in Singapore.

Technology can provide the answer. Data analytics and the science of personality can isolate the traits of the Jack Ma's and Bill Gates and we can determine what are the traits which can make a difference. The answer may well radically differ from our government's fetish with academic ability.

We need to bring personality metrics, income and social economic status into a database for number crunching first, then we need our social scientists to work with our data scientists to determine what is that sweet spot.

That is the key to a truly Smart City.

The Myth of the Self-Made man.

Wow ! It has been a while since I blogged. I've been busy on my first Law Exams which took me out for about 3 weeks, and after that, I've been playing Dragon Age : Inquisition and trying to move into my new condominium.

It's going to be almost a year since my last pay-check and it's been quite a struggle maintaining my fiscal balance in 2014. I have to settle two semesters of fees and condominium furniture and appliances on a year of investment income and I've been barely making it with some of my counters declaring fewer dividends ( like that blasted Sabana Reit counter ) over the months ahead. But so far so good, one of the biggest benefits of law school is that I no longer have any time to enjoy the stuff that I eventually pay for so my personal expenses have dipped below $200 a week.

2015 is all about interest rates with the Fed expected to raise rates over the year. Everyone is speculating how this would impact their investments, but Im going to sit this one out as I believe that many other countries like the EU and Japan will start their own QE in the months to come.

Today I'm just going to blog on what I've been observing among my non-law school friends ( Yes, I now have two categories of friends because of social pressure to conform to law school norms of drinking and talking about cases. ). As you know, many of us are approaching our forties and I've been realising that we middle-aged uncles, having sort of found our positions in society, are starting to erect very elaborate psychological defences to cope with middle age.

One such defence is the idea that there is such a thing as a self-made man.

The idea of the self-made man comes in many forms. The "weak form" of the self-made man idea is that it is inherently more noble not to receive help if you have privileges in society. A "strong form" is that you are actually better off not receiving help even if it is normally expected that you do so because we are an Asian society because it makes you grittier and more amenable to succeed.

Personally I think that this idea is comforting because it has a hidden purpose and meaning. When faced with mid-life and mediocre life outcomes, middle aged men like myself want to create that impression that we did it the harder way. It's an act of the mythologizing the self, so that we seem more heroic in spite of our pathetically average life outcomes in our health, finances and relationships. It's also quite easy to find evidence to support this stance, there is always a wastrel in the family from the rich side of the branch who amounts to nothing ( We forget that folks who are low in conscientiousness can come from both the rich and poor branches of a family ).

I'm against such psychological defences ( I am actually not entitled to it because I grew up in a relatively ok middle class household. )

My first disagreement is that there is no nobility in mediocrity. There should be little nobility in success, if you feel morally superior, use your success to help others. No point crimping yourself and not receiving help from your rich parents when you can give so much more to the world if only you get a slight push. You might as well say that you have average outcomes because you are a good and moral person.

My second disagreement is that a gritty life is a choice. If you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth, it's still your prerogative to choose a harder target to meet. If you have more, you can desire to achieve more.  If your peers are trying to get to a University, you can always choose to create jobs for others because you have started out with so much more. In Dragon Age III, you can choose the level of difficulty of your play experience. You can slam rich and successful people but there are those among their ranks who have created thousands of jobs today who would never apologise for using their social advantages.

My third disagreement is that even if you did not receive advantages from your family. A lot for folks are blessed if they have families which do not impose a burden upon them. You need to explain why you are mediocre when some folks who are born to gambler parents can still achieve greatness. In such a case, the psychological defence fails when someone who have less than you do, end up doing so much more.

Finally, I think folks who adopt this stance needs to ask themselves this question : If you really believe in the self-made man and that it is better not to tap your natural social and economic advantages - are you consistent with that philosophy when raising your children ?

Do you deny your children comforts, refuse to pay for tuition or even refuse to give them your personal time ? After all, if you are truly consistent, your kids will be grittier and more successful right ?

At this point, if I go further, I would just generally end up losing my friend.