Some clarifications on some of my CPF videos and articles

 

For the past week, we've been working hard to fact-check some of the materials being put up on the Dr Wealth blog. As you may notice, some numbers differ between my article and another Dr Wealth shareholder. 

• Louis Koay's article can be found here.
• My article is here.
• I also have a video here.

There has been feedback that my article contradicts Louis' as we project a different payout for CPF-Life.

I need to write an article to clarify my numbers as they are part of a thought experiment to project the amount of money needed today in our CPF-RA to lead a comfortable lifestyle based on 2021 figures from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. In 2021, that number is $1,421; that amount today, assuming 3% inflation, is close to $1,560 in today's dollars.

Now I've got a severe problem because most of the tables from the press will start with a multiple of BRS today, then allow the amounts to compound for ten years, then use the CPF Life Estimator to project monthly payouts many years later when the member reaches 65 years old. The narrative is that you will have a nice payout when you hit 65 if you let your money compound in the CPF-RA until you can start paying annuity premiums to get a monthly payout. 

There are too many degrees of unpredictability when we do this because we need to know how much annuity premiums cost in the far future, how much annuity costs depend on interest rates in the far end, and the average life span of a Singaporean. If humanity finds a cure for cancer, everyone's lifespan will extend by 3 years, and annuities will become more expensive per dollar of payout. On top of that, we will have problems projecting the basic expenses of a 65-year-old ten years in the future. A more significant proportion of 65-year-olds is spent on medication, and medication has an inflation rate higher than our reported amounts. I have evidence of this - my evidence comes from the Medisave BHS, which grows faster than 4% yearly. 

So when I use the CPF Life Estimator to figure out how much I need in CPF-RA today, I can't work the 10-year 4+% compounding into my figures from age 55-65. I have to input the amounts a 65-year-old member has today. Then, I used the CPF Life estimator to calculate my payout immediately in 2024. This extremely theoretical exercise will result in a monthly payout much lower than the Louis Koay article or mainstream media. 

We need to know how much is adequate to cover today's expenses. i.e. In 2024 dollars.

My conclusion remains that we need at least 3 x BRS in our CPF-RA when we hit 65 for payouts, which may be $3k+ as written in other articles, to barely meet the basic expenses of a 65-year-old. Another conclusion is that it may be unproductive to put the full 4xBRS into CPF Life as there is a risk of over-insurance as payouts, even with the Escalating Plan, don't seem to mitigate inflation completely, which means that members still need to pick up investing skills and take on market risk to succeed in retiring conventionally. 

The private sector carries a heavy burden when we write articles about CPF. I can lose credibility if I am wrong.

We have been combing through some of the comments raised in our videos and using the CPF website to fact-check our materials against the statements made. The CPF website needs to make this a more straightforward process for us. 

Please be patient and understanding if you find factual inaccuracies in my material. 

I intend to come clean if these can be found,

Make Polytechnics Great Again !

If we go beyond CPF reforms, the biggest game-changers are the ones for mid-career changers over 40 who can go back to a Polytechnic to study for a diploma and draw a monthly allowance of up to $3,000 a month. 

I do not have any policy details right now, but I want to share some thoughts on this important game-changer that will create a massive seismic shift in the way we look at educational institutions today, which will upend any of my previous posts on polytechnic education.

At first glance, this looks like a welfare scheme that will give unemployed mature workers a two-year reprieve while they retrain for a new career with no guarantee of an actual job at the end of the course, but if you look carefully at the policy, it would be hard to abuse. Folks who have been unemployed longer than a year do not have a salary track record to get payouts from the scheme. The scheme is also keyed to half your original salary, so it barely covers all living expenses for most mature workers. At first glance, this may not be a successful policy as it benefits the few and may not result in re-employment.

Now, if you are willing to go beyond looking at the scheme as a welfare program for folks who are on the verge of unemployability, I think the genius of the program stands out.

The first effect is that folks are not forced to become gig workers, so they have better options for at least the next few years, which can reduce chronic underemployment. 

The second is the amount of entrepreneurial fervour it can generate. 

Many MNC executives need a risk-controlled option to transform themselves into SME owners. This can become a pipeline for the transformation to take place. 

Imagine I am a successful, mature executive who has a few colleagues who are concerned about restructuring and predict that our careers will be over soon. I can hatch a plot to start a business, but before I can create a minimally viable product and get funding, I need time to pick up the latest skills for running a new business. A few partners can enrol in a Polytechnic to pick up some missing skills and spend the next two years preparing the ship for launch while drawing a small allowance. If the business plan does not work out, I can still get re-employed as a plan B, which is all about optionality - the government is using tax dollars to give you a call option on your human capital. As Polytechnics provides me with access to young classmates and many ITEs grads fresh from NS, I can even build a labour pool from my classmates and provide jobs for them.   

There are a couple of things I hope to see from details in 2025:

a) First of all, bureaucrats will try to plug all loopholes. The path should not be closed to successful executives who are NOT involuntarily unemployed and can generate plenty of income while being a student. I'm selfishly putting this on the table because I foresee a lot of temptation to do this.

b) There should be a decent drop-out provision where someone can drop out of Poly when they find a job or launch a business. This person should be able to suspend welfare payments and still be entitled to a future remaining stream at a later date. Dropping out should be viewed as a success and normalised in a Polytechnic.  

c) As it stands, the core curriculum in most Polys just meets the needs of O-level graduates. Mature students need core subjects that are more relevant to them, like basic business operations and planning, online marketing, prompt engineering, and, of course, personal finance. Significant reforms need to happen here because I'm not inspired by the current Poly core syllabus. I'm taking into account this work as Polys now needs to cope with an O level, ITE, and mature professionals' intake. 

d) In addition to internships, students can work with VCs and Incubators as a subject. They can try their hand at business 

e) Some mature students should be allowed to teach a specialised to get credits.

Anyway, after speaking to a few friends with no problems generating income from their own businesses, everybody seems interested in attending a Polytechnic in 2025 to pick up some AI skills. 

I have even started combing the Poly websites.

This is because I'm confident of earning a decent income from my businesses even as a Poly student, but I am worried that some clause will stop me from enrolling in an institution. I can farm the $3,000 into my CPF or SRS, which I will need to do to hit the new ERS.  

Finally, we now have a credible plan to end the comparison of Polytechnics against JCs. In 2025, Polytechnics will become a new beast, a very strange institution that brings different Singaporeans together to carve out some kind of new entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country.

Or I'm just a dreamer. 

CPF investing is "dangerous"

[ Kyith of Investments Moats has pointed out an interesting point I was unaware of. While I know that RSTU up to FRS into CPF-SA exists, I was unaware that after age 55, you can RSTU up to ERS!

He also sought clarification on what I mean by the uncertainty of annuity payouts at age 65 when annuities are designed to provide fixed lifetime payouts. What I meant was that the uncertainty comes from not being able to predict annuity pricing before payouts begin. The CPF Life estimator is just a rough guide.]

What a historic day! What a landmark Budget!

I'm focusing on one significant CPF policy change: to make everybody's CPF Special Account disappear after age 55. The first effect is that CPF Shielding will no longer work, so folks trying to juice an extra 1.5% from retirement savings can no longer get assistance from a financial advisor. The second effect is that the compounding effect of 4% in the CPF-SA will render some of the 1M65 strategy useless.

You can refer to some of my previous posts and judge whether my articles are prescient on such matters.

• CPF Shielding
• Critique of 1M65

A more detailed treatment of the available financial mitigations for someone over 55 years old will be posted on the Dr Wealth blog later, I just want to share some random thoughts on these changes.

a) What is the political cost of making CPF-SA vanish at age 55

The first thought I have in mind is the political cost of this move. I think the CPFB really wanted to replace the 4% with a variable rate tied to the 10-year bond many years ago but probably refused to make this move because they were concerned about angry voters. 

I think this policy is much milder because it largely impacts richer folks who have over $426,000 in the CPF system who are milking the 4% risk free. If the CPFB no longer owes 4% to many millionaires, they might be able to enact more generous policies for lower-income voters. 

b) CPF-Life is now a cognitive strain on financial decision-making

CPF Life is now very central to retirement planning.

As the 4% is now gone, folks have to decide whether to commit funds into the OA account that gives a measly 2.5% or park monies in the RA which converts to an annuity. I suspect this will engender a lot of anger in the future because CPF-Life payouts can change over time depending on when you use the Life estimator or reach age 65, and folks don't really know when they will die. I think this cognitive burden levied on the populace, while good intentioned, will cause a lot of unhappiness in the future. 

In a future Dr Wealth article, I will provide a framework about how much to put into the CPF-RA after age 55. I will also talk about investing to minimise the market risk whilst retaining at least a 4% dividend yield for a locally focused portfolio. The days of getting 4% risk-free are over.   

c) If you raise ERS to four times BRS, maybe you add a few new policies to make it easier to reach it.

The raising of ERS to 4x BRS is what baffles me. Many features that can speed up the accumulation of retirement funds switch off after you hit FRS. These features include the OA->SA transfer, and the Retirement Sum Top-Up scheme ceases to function once you hit FRS. The central problem of conventional retirement is that if I accumulated just the FRS, CPF-Life payouts would not be able to match the $1,421 in 2021 dollars required for a 65-year-old to live a dignified existence. There will be a $400 shortfall.

Extending the OA->SA transfer and RSTU to 3x BRS would help greatly for folks who want to attain retirement adequacy earlier in life, given that CPF is no longer burdened by the millionaire's CPF-SA accounts. 

The collective effect of this seismic change in CPF policy is that CPF investing is now highly "dangerous". You no longer have a risk-free 4% CPF-SA account after age 55. 

• You still have a risk-free 2.5% account in the form of CPF-OA.
• You can move the funds into CPF-RA but you take on the risk of uncertainty of CPF-Life payouts at age 65 which can be based on annuity pricing. You also don't know when you will die so you struggle with deciding which plan to choose. 
• Finally you can invest in the equity markets and take on some market risk.

I'm actually pleased with these policy changes because it is going to be much harder to ignore our local stock markets if you want a source of returns denominated in SGD. This may actually provide a longer boost to SGX equity markets.

Happy Valentine's Day ! How can we stop the Enshittification of relationships in Singapore.

 

The word of 2023 is enshittification. 

Enshittification is a term invented by Cory Doctorow that describes the degradation in the quality of online platforms that function as two-sided markets. While the details are pretty specific about how it happens, the main culprit is Amazon, which operates by trapping customers into decent services like Amazon Prime, then raising prices and lowering standards in a bid to monetise for shareholders. 

I can stretch the definition by saying that dating platforms are two-sided markets (men and women), and young folks are very used to finding love on platforms like Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagels. 

Has enshittification occurred in these dating platforms yet? That's up to you to judge, but the stories of meeting weird guys who talk non-stop about crypto investing and fuck boys may point to a longer-term decline of such matching platforms. I also think such platforms are disadvantageous to charming talkers who may be charismatic but not visually appealing. 

So, in today's thought experiment, I will be speculating on what I would do to find a mate if I were in my 20s and single today.

a) Use dating platforms as a practice arena

I have described that dating is best done using the Secretary's Problem. Approximately 37% of the time is spent dating casually to determine your preferences. Dating platforms speed up the process of determining your preferences, I can cycle through multiple dates just to understand my preferences. 

The only difference is that I will set low standards, cast a wide net on these platforms, and reject women directly using WhatsApp instead of ghosting them. In return, every date should be pleasant, and I will read up online on what not to do during dates - like eat at Saizeriya, wear Decathlon from head to toe, or talk non-stop about shitcoins.

b) Focus on activities as a more serious arena for meeting good dates

Serious research into married couples shows a high correlation between couples on educational levels and political affiliation. With that insight, it may be wiser to ask questions about where folks with the same qualifications hang out other than work. I found my wife in a Japanese language school, but LLMs have made multilingualism less useful, so I need to think about alternatives if I am in my 20s and single again. I might have to join a book club or learn singing as a first move. 

I may also educate myself in BDSM - Business Development, Sales and Marketing courses because they have a more balanced gender mix. My usual coding and finance classes are not a place to find women. 

I might also seriously consider grass-roots work. I'm quite anti-woke, so hanging around in the community centre to hit on grassroots PAP women should work better than hooking up with a woman from opposition groups who might not be too sure which pronouns she uses.

If I date some woke-redistributive chick who is a fan of Teo You Yenn, and she knows the dating budget comes from dividends stocks, I'm not sure how she will react. 

c) Join a cult or some kind of religious group

If you think about it, religious groups are captive audiences where affiliation makes you a lot more attractive as a mate. Suppose I can get someone rated 6 in mainstream society; maybe joining a cult can get me someone rated 7 because she really has no other option except fellow cultists.

There was a stage in my life when I tried joining a fundamentalist Christian organization to meet women. The women are very single and very hot, but I baulked because I could not see myself in permanent bondage with a Christian cult for the rest of my life. 

I think if I can replay the script, I might go with a more mainstream group like the Roman Catholics or some kind of Buddhist organization. If I pick Buddhism, which is my most appealing option, I will pair it with my interest in Transcendental meditation, so I won't really struggle with a woman who is too devout. 

Now, all this assumes that I'm financially ok to start dating in the first place. I've always been quite strict about my dating life, prioritising financial freedom first. 

Girls should find me safe. I'm happy to pay for any date with money from my investment instruments.

The Year of the Dragon ! Huat ah !

 

I get three opportunities to think about my life every year. The first opportunity was on my birthday, Christmas Day. The second opportunity arises when considering the new year after the holiday season. Finally, about a month later, I got to use some Chinese metaphysics to think about my year ahead. I don't just contemplate my Tiger Horoscope; I'm born on the day and month of the Rat, so I need to think about that, too. The year of the Dragon would be, at best, so-so, but it is a year of change. I must proactively deal with some of my problems and grab each opportunity for 2024 to be good. 

This means that, for Tigers, financially, I can expect little gain. My real estate valuation will be meagre, as most capital gains have already been earned in 2023. While REITs will do well when interest rates start to fall later, this will happen quite late, and I'm not sure US Office REITs would have capitulated by then. I made bold moves on Keppel Pacific Oak REIT, and then they delayed their results until the end of February. This will hurt the value of my portfolio. 

Business-wise, it looks better for us. I'm stabilising my cash flow with more side gigs to deal with even lower revenue on my training business. The final result is fewer work hours than a full-time worker but more cash flow predictability. This arrangement also allows my health to get better. There should be some positive news and collaborations with new partners soon. 

I'm glad I have fought off any temptation to take on vanity mega projects; as I reach 50, I'm putting more time into simplifying my life. From my examination of the literature, pursuing a Simpler Life is complicated because it requires a deep analysis of our lives and priorities.

The School of Life series has something quite profound to say about friendship. Why do we need friends, and what should we expect from them? 

There are three answers to this:

• Friends understand what we go through and give us a sense of normality despite our struggles and idiosyncrasies. 
• Friends help us clarify our vagueness and help us understand ourselves better.
• Friends ease us out of our defensiveness and point to a way out in a non-humiliating way. 

My problem with this framework is that if I apply it to my life, I may have no friends at all, and I would not be a particularly good friend to others either, so I can't complain.

This may reflect the metaphysical struggles of a Tiger facing massive changes this year. You have to put in more effort for the folks who can meet this high bar, but then you need to try to meet this bar yourself. It takes a lot of effort and personal development to do this. Doubly hard for ENTJs.

But a slight tilt in this direction will result in massive changes in your social life that will pay dividends for the rest of your life because loneliness is an epidemic in modern societies. 

I will be headed to Malaysia this CNY, I will resume blogging when I come back next week.

Huat ah !

Discussing the hypocrisy around inherited money

 

For a meaningful discussion, I'd point you to this lovely comic strip by the Woke Salaryman on inheriting nothing. While I do not fully agree with this strip, I am a loyal fan and want to put in some additional points of my own on the issue of inherited wealth.

Before I begin, I want to remind readers that Vicki Robin, who invented FIRE, was heir to great wealth and was somewhat of a hippie.

a) You will always inherit something, whether you like it or not.

One major problem with modern society today is the non-recognition of non-financial capital. Some folks think it's uncool to inherit wealth from their parents. Still, it's ok to inherit conscientiousness and high intellect from professional parents who engaged in assortative mating. In some other cases, folks who inherited the social and cultural capital from their parents still have the gall to call themselves self-made men.   

I don't think you can ever disentangle yourself from your parents. In my case, I've prepared myself to manage my family's money since I was a kid - it was obvious, I had no siblings and lived in landed property. 

But I don't feel bad because I inherited diabetes as well and need all the help I can get. 

b) Wealth itself can change a person's mindset, and it's not always for the worse.

When I was an undergrad, as an only child, my parents let me use $600 every month. That was a princely sum 25 years ago and my dad kinda made sure I knew it. In those days, I was quite bad with my money, but  I always spent it to make myself more competitive. I bought all my engineering textbooks first-hand and I was too lazy to zap the books in the NUS library. I paid excess cash for certification exams and got my MCSE and various Toastmasters awards in my final year of Engineering school, which was helpful in those days and this discipline made it easier to tackle the CFA a year later. 

But truth be told I had no savings then. 

Here's the thing about the magical $600 my mom would give me every month. I felt comfortable spending all of it and knew I was spoilt. So when I started work, I felt no inclination to spend above $600, so I lived like a spoilt undergrad rather than an insecure status-conscious young professional. In fact, when I discovered my personal version of FIRE in my mid-20s, all I needed was $120,000 to get me $600 a month on 6% dividends. And if I just spent $600 a month, it would be super easy to get there with a few increments. 

Then, becoming a millionaire would be easily achieved if I saved every cent I earned at work. 

c) Wealth paradigms upgrade with every added digit to your portfolio

I'm clearly not for disinheriting my kids. I intend to do the opposite and give them a reasonable-sized portfolio to play with when they are still young and dynamic. 

This is because I'm well aware of the kind of mindset when dealing with sums of money and don't want my kids to start a "low level" in this MMORPG called Singapore Life. 

• Until you hit $10,000, you tend to think more like a gambler; some of you make momentum trades to make a decent amount to buy maybe a better meal, or you keep your cash in a fixed deposit. A lot of crypto bros start at this level. 
• At $100,000, a 4-6% dividend flow becomes meaningful enough for you to commit to a proper stock portfolio to at least get a dividend income. $400 a month is consequential. This is why I believe that a $100,000 "bribe" to get kids to pass the CFA III exams is something every parent should consider if they can afford it. 
• At $1,000,000, you will gain enough incentive to operate using different asset classes and may become more interested in volatility and standard deviation. At least because it's painful to lose your millionaire status.
• I suppose beyond $10,000,000, you will expand your horizons towards more private equity or look into wealth preservation through fixed income. Philanthropy probably also starts here. 

All this being said, I can still sympathise with folks who glorify their lack of a financial inheritance. 

I grew up in a landed property estate and spent my childhood being bullied and shot at using plastic air rifle pellets by ACS boys. I suspect the animosity against inherited wealth comes from meeting assholes who stand to inherit plenty of money. In my case, my bully had a wealthy newscaster/publisher, Doyenne's mum, who could buy him a foreign degree.   

But also, like the Woke Salaryman, I guess bullying from ACS boys has also made me more resilient.

How would you design your life if you are young again?

 

When a group of uncles meet up to have a coffee session, we talk about how we will live our lives if we can be in our 20s again. This is an exciting thought experiment, not because we think there's a better way to live your lives for Gen Z, but because it reflects what we think we did right or wrong in our own lives.

What is surprising is that even with two Gen X guys who have many similarities, we would have drastically different answers to what we would do if we were in our 20s again.

A friend, a successful IT professional and landlord, thinks that if he's given a chance again, he will cruise through his 20s. He would work a bare minimum and save money just to travel worldwide. For someone who is actually one of the hardest working IT professionals, he would lie flat and do the bare minimum just to maximise the experiences he can get from the world. He may not even start a family.  

My answer is opposite his. 

My 20s are all about my chaotic energy, which I can bring to the table. I would focus on a remote and output-driven job. Then, I will actively break the employment contract with HR to take on another remote job to get paid in crypto and stack at least two jobs to become over-employed. If I get caught and fired, I will still have another job that pays the bills. 

As I would have no time to spend my money, I would double down and try to reach FIRE before 30, and then I would either join the JET program to go to Japan or take a tourist visa to pick apples in New Zealand. Only after I travel out of my skin will I return to get a tedious, conventional 9-5 job to start a family. 

I invite readers of this blog to share how they would design their lives if they were in their 20s again. There isn't a need to consider whether Gen Z will find this approach feasible - Gen Z grew up in a much different environment.  

You'll be surprised at how much it highlights the regrets and achievements of your own life. 

What about the JC Experience?

 

When the O-level results are released, it is typically not a good time for JC students because the media machine is subtly trying to play down the option of taking the A-level exams via the JC route. As I read the articles, they seem to have painted a very negative picture of the JC student. A childish imp who still needs to wear a school uniform. Someone who does not know what they want to do but has a parochial vision of what success is like in Singapore. And someone bereft of practical skills.

As I'm only really trying to understand the new education system as I now have a child in secondary school, the best I can do is offer some of the more significant experiences I had in NJC in the 1990s. Some of these experiences are good, but some are bad. Overall, they are exciting experiences I would not trade for anything else. 

Even today, when I was feeling down last year, my JC pals from Computer Science got me out for dinner to cheer me up. I even had one JC pal attend my classes last week, whom I had not seen for many years but is a loyal reader of this blog. As most of my clique went separate ways in University, I felt the only issue I had with JC was that it was too short. For folks from NJC, many of us come from neighbourhood schools and saw how an effectively run education institution feels for the first time.  

Here are some of my experiences in a nutshell:

a) A fairly uncharismatic guy was running for the JC council, but he had the misfortune of offending the girls from MGS and the convent schools. Because he wore blue pants for the first three months of JC. The ladies hatched a rumour that he loves lying about being an ACS boy. The story worked, and he got the lowest votes in the election, much to our amusement.

b) We had a school band that was much hated because the lead singer threw a throw into the audience. WTF!

c) A schoolmate of mine did not know what smegma was, that cheesy discharge below the folds of his penis. I told him to ask that girl who took biology in her subject combination. And he did.

d) My friend wrote a rant essay arguing that education is destroying the environment because of the amount of paper used. He was sent for counselling by the worried GP tutor, who thought he had finally snapped and dug himself into depression.

e) Someone slipped a science essay full of sexual innuendo into the school magazine, which had to be recalled. Students were reluctant to give up their copies, so teachers had to beg us to do so in class. The teacher in charge of the magazine was in tears. 

f) Sex education classes conducted by Mr. Clarke were so hilarious that they were better than some episodes of Monty Python. Unfortunately, he raised the bar for a generation of confused adults by talking about swinging from chandelier to chandelier.

g) A few top GP students decide to play a horrible prank on their GP tutor. They independently invented a Korean philosopher and attributed various quotes to him. Because multiple students did this and Google did not exist to fact-check Park Chun Mong, these guys got away with it. 

h) A student trolled Mr. Whitby so hard in class that he told him he said he'd quit and appointed the offending student as GP tutor for the next session. In the next session, Mr Whitby sat down as a student, and the student came prepared to conduct a tutorial session. It ended when the student pointed at Mr. Whitby and said, "Hey, who said you can dye your hair blonde?"

i) I got a bunch of classmates to cheat in a stock market game organised by the Economics Society. We wanted to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of Computer Science students, so we engaged in off-market transactions to consolidate winnings in one championship team - something organizers should have anticipated. There were many complaints, but we knew that the rules did not mention what we did was wrong. Eventually, we were disqualified for insider trading. The ruling needed to be corrected even by today's securities regulations. The president of the club was quite traumatised.

j) I was showing a junior from secondary school on campus when the joker of the senior year walked through the school gate. I told him, "This guy is the funniest guy on campus". At that exact time, that guy scratched his crotch and my junior burst into laughter. He came to NJC the following year. 

k) Some of us needed to gain access to JC facilities to participate in a Micromouse competition during the weekend. We climbed over a gate and broke into the college campus to prepare for it. My classmates will commit a crime to win a Micromouse competition.

l) At one point, students were spreading this rumour that a Physics teacher had a vasectomy over the school holidays. 

I should remind readers that NJC could have been a cooler place to study in 1991. We were labelled stoners by the CJC and ACJC folks. We even have installed a "Stone Garden" in the old campus. I hear of folks from my batch who experience a much more depressing NJC, one that gives more privileges to minister's children. In practice, though, I enjoyed my JC days as part of a crew of fellow lunatics in an asylum and still am grateful that I still have good friends from those two years.

Though we were hard-working as hell when it came to the crunch. I never experienced that level of kiasuism, dedication and conscientiousness until I went to SMU Law School many decades later. 

Personal update on my eye health

 

I've been receiving a lot of messages from well-wishers, so I'd like to provide another update on my thyroid eye disease that has caused double vision and is now treated with special prism lens stockers on my spectacles.

After waiting for a few weeks, I was able to get treated by a government doctor at TTSH, and my previous update on my health has predicted totally different suggestions on what I should do next.

To recap, I panicked when I discovered that I was seeing double and took some urgent steps to get treated in the private sector. I spent a ridiculous amount of money to see three different ophthalmologists. Out of $3,000, about $1,700 was spent on an MRI; the only outcome was that I could get poorly made prism lenses to mitigate the issue. 

The suggestion from the private doctor was to get me into a hospital for three days and get an intravenous injection of steroids into my body. But this will be expensive as I steroids can interfere with my diabetic control and there's a possibility that I have to repeat this regularly if there is no improvement of my situation. I playfully suggested that my budget was only $50,000 as I do not have private insurance, and it seemed this option would blow my budget quickly. 

I consulted some doctor pals, and I was told that outpatient options are available, and this was likely suggested so that most clients with integrated shield plans would end up getting insurance companies to overpay for extra checks. In fact, a promising new drug called Rituximab exists that can help with my eye disease and would not wreak havoc with my blood sugar control. 

With $3,000 down the hole, I was not about to just submit one suggestion from a private doctor, so I booked an appointment with TTSH to see whether I could get a second opinion.

As I have guessed, once the incentives change, the treatment takes a 180-degree turn!

The government doctor considered my case extremely mild and gave me new lenses, fitted professionally after a lengthy process, which improved my eyesight dramatically from my previous lenses from the private sector. He instructed me to observe symptoms if they worsened but suggested no medical intervention. I would have gotten all this for just $275. My only disappointment was that the doctor still needed to attend a conference on Rituximab but promised that I would be considered if a trial was conducted locally.

In the end, I had to pick the option that was gentler for my wallet. Informally, the doctor told me I could do some eye exercises, so I started doing them to see whether they could speed up my recovery.

I do have a third option in reserve. I have two specialists in Malaysia I can contact to see whether I can get some out-of-the-box ideas, but this involves travel and risk. The idea that I can talk some Malaysian doctor into administering Rituximab is really tempting, but what if I get into trouble and need to enter A&E in a local hospital?

Anyway, I'm writing to warn of two extreme suggestions for treating my problem. One is to blow a large wad of cash, get myself hospitalized and take something that affects my blood sugar control with the odds of doing this again if nothing happens. The other option is to just let my eyes heal naturally. 

I wonder if both doctors can be correct.

Government facilities and staff to fit prism lenses to patients are vastly superior to what I experienced in the private sector. I even have evidence as to how badly cut my lenses were. 

( Just don't ask privately for me to share the identities of the private clinics. )

That may be why Benz Hui commented that HK doctors are terrified of Singaporean patients because they tend to do a lot of research before seeing them. 

If you look at my situation, what other alternatives do I have?

 

 

Next ERM/AWP Community Webinar will be on 17 January 2024

I've not conducted a Community Webinar as I've been busy fighting off ailments and stabilising my side gig teaching law subjects in an institution. After prepping a battery of courses, including a cybersecurity module for legal executives, updating my usual investment materials, and debugging my code to provide investment advice, I'm ready to conduct a seminar for alumni and public members. 

The next Community Seminar for the Early Retirement Masterclass and All-Weather Portfolio will occur at 7.30pm on 17th January 2024. 

I will be speaking on the following topics:

a) Invest like a Gambler 

In this theoretical segment, I will discuss how we can use techniques gamblers employ to break casinos to assist us in asset allocation.

b) Introduction to Quants Cafe 

We will walk through a new portal built by Evan Koh of the Stocks Cafe fame that performs screening and back-testing. This will be featured increasingly in our programs that already include Stocks Cafe and Pyinvesting.

c) ERM Portfolio review of 2023 results and outlook.

d) AWP Portfolio review of 2023 results and outlook.

e) How to sign up for a refresher course for alumni.

You can click here to register for the event:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BfZ7hMy8R9KK1SN6b7gv7A

Seedly Personal Finance Festival 2024

 

I will speak at the Seedly Personal Finance Festival 2024, Singapore’s largest personal finance festival, on Saturday, 6 April 2024. I've yet to begin planning for the event, but my topic will be related to FIRE. But I hope to introduce a new twist to my presentation that differs from my usual spiel. 
What has been agreed on with the Seedly organizers is this:
How to Achieve Financial Independence & Retire Early (F.I.R.E.) • What steps are needed to reach F.I.R.E.? • How does investing play a part? • How much do you need to F.I.R.E.?
The festival, which is a ticketed event, will be held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Hall F. Each festival ticket will grant you:
• Access to ALL stages and event booths• A Goodie bag worth S$68• A chance to participate in lucky draws and giveaways worth over S$17,300 in total.
Get your ticket at https://bit.ly/PFF2024Speakers and enjoy an additional 20% off the early bird price with promo code: <20OFFDRWEALTH>

The hardest resolution is maybe not to have any resolution at all

 

I was reviewing how I was feeling last year at around the same time and found that I was pretty pessimistic about 2023, and I was essentially correct about how the year unfolded. Things will look terrible until we get a clear signal that interest rates will stop rising. After that, things will look much better. I will leave the details to a Dr Wealth article which I completed that summarises the performance of both my ERM and AWP portfolios.

2024 will be a lot sunnier than 2023 for investors. But for me, getting thyroid eye disease would mean changing my priorities for 2024 - basically, no new initiatives unless my eyes get better. 

So, instead of listing my resolutions, I will list the stuff I would have loved to do next year, but I should hold back until I feel better.

These are my anti-resolutions:

a) Writing a new book on personal finance.

This December, I tried to have a month to complete the fantasy and non-business books I have on my KIV list. I was pleasantly surprised by Haruki Murakami's Novelist as a Vocation. I found the book as gripping as any of his written works as he described his creative process and view on creating works of fiction. One point that has left a deep impression on me is that a great novelist is the kind of person who can look at a situation and store it in his mental cabinet without casting judgment on it. Folks who are compelled to judge are better off being critics or journalists. 

I spent most of the week hanging out with friends and going through social interactions without many filters. I have already warned a pal about a business that could be a front for money laundering operations. Explained to an ex-colleague why an investment scheme may be illegal or a con job. And in a New Year party, why may a young person be a product of assortative mating, is about to engage in it very soon, and thus, part of the problem of income inequality.

Of course, I'm not in the business of writing novels, but it is high time I author a new book that summarises all the new insights I gained since becoming an investment trainer. I hold myself back because the idea of finding a good publisher is quite tempting, given that the proliferation of AI books on the Kindle platform makes self-publishing unsexier by the day.

b) Starting a new channel for lifelong learning

2023 has been a disappointing year for me as my eldest has gone through her PSLE. Without going into much detail, it was more my fault than my kids', as we did not play the game like other parents did. I also need help to convince my daughter to learn the technique of studying rather than actually the subjects in a secondary school as Sec 1 is not much of a consequential year. 

As there are many experts in the learning field, like Barbara Oakley, Scott Young and Cal Newport, I could start a video channel on some tips and techniques to learn better. But this would require my YouTube channel to be repurposed for this.  

If I attempt this, it would require a lot of personal rebranding, but it can lead to more students for my investment courses.

c) Get Overemployed like a Gen Z worker

One of the more remarkable things I see younger workers do is over-employment. They got hired by two employers and delivered enough to keep both happy and draw double the salary. I already have a reasonably efficient setup that allows me access to teaching as part of a private business and a public institution. It is very tempting to find another institution to work for to teach subjects that, well, I need to be qualified to teach.

I've already imagined what a cybersecurity programme would look like for legal executives this year, so I should ask for more work. Another more severe project is resurrecting my cryptocurrency course and running it entirely from Python scripts like AWP. This would mean that I will take three Dr Wealth courses simultaneously. 

As we head into 2024, most folks will try to improve themselves by tackling big goals. I'm one of the few with fairly detailed objectives I need to restrain myself from doing. 

We will see whether, as we enter 2025, I will fail in my resolve and attempt any of these objectives. 

 

 

Thoughts as I enter my final year of my 40s

 

Thanks for all the well-wishes coming in from social media. 

I'm officially one more year from my 50s, and the latest health scare has led me to think about what will happen soon. Typically, entering the 50s would mean crossing over from the unhappiest moments of your life and reaching peace with yourself. For the folks I know who reach their big 5-0, many take a long trip somewhere to reflect upon their lives. The question is whether I should do the same since I enjoy travel quite a bit.

With almost 2/3rds of a person's spent, it makes little sense to still think about achieving more and hitting more life goals. Only some people can be Colonel Sanders, who started KFC quite late. The over-arching theme for someone who got into life's third trimester is some kind of gentle retreat and reprioritisation of life. 

Let's go through some of these strategies I've observed.

a) Compromise

For some folks, compromise is a strategy. As we age, only some get to meet all their life goals. A person who could not get a publishing advance has settled with self-publication, or like myself, I had to pare down my goals of doing legal work to becoming a law lecturer. 

A compromise is good because it conserves energy, allows the attainment of small wins, and enables us to refocus on other important matters in our lives. 

b) De-invest

While I'm still fully vested in the markets, I have told my community my wish to stop applying leverage to my portfolio because I'm simply too old for this, given that I'm still leveraged with my residential property. This does not mean that leverage is terrible as interest rates drop. 

Anyway this is not meant to be a point about finance. We've invested quite a bit in our careers for most of our lives. All it takes is one restructuring exercise to end this. I'm seeing this happen to many folks in their 40s, and inevitably, the strain will cause them to retreat from their peers, isolating them further into loneliness. 

That being said, I recognise how difficult it is to do this - it's something that even a five-digit monthly dividend cannot solve. For me, I try to run multiple gigs to maintain my relevance and find something new to do every few months. 

c) Re-Focus

Finally, there will be things that you will not like in your 50s as much as in your younger days. I've always enjoyed GunPla, until my trip to Japan when I discovered that the kits here are marked up 50%. Since then, I've realised that Japanese goods are a scam. Just because something is Japanese is an excuse to sell $25 sandwiches and $50 Demon Slayer figurines. I hope someone takes revenge by going to Sinjuku to sell Ang Ku Kueh for 500 yen.  

One of the things about getting older is that nothing excites me very much. I'm bored most of the time. Reading is probably the last thing I do with enthusiasm, but turning it into a social event is quite challenging because a lot of the book clubs here are dedicated to the elderly. Many must attract the ambitious and dynamic types I like to hang out with.

While not totally healthy, I am getting increasingly interested in this hobby of solitaire war games. These wargames should not exist as a hobby because they can be converted into software. But it is a thriving hobby for geeks and wonks. You can be commanding the Luftwaffe one day and then trying to survive a US presidential term the next. 

d) Re-dedicate

This leads to my point about people. I observed folks in their late 40s begin to tire of others and their peccadiloes. Some friends are talking about just bailing out. In many cases, this move is justified, as I've done this myself a couple of times - some relationships don't add much value. We came from a generation lacking social media, so hobbies were a unifying theme for making friends. Things are very different these days. I don't have to join a D&D group if I don't like their wokeness. 

But note that making friends is more challenging as you age, and loneliness can be fatal, so remember to replace this with networking sessions. If you don't want to go alone, go with your remaining pals. And these days, I realise that my students often make my best pals. 

So for now, I leave these four points. 

Perhaps in the New Year, I will talk about my plans for 2024.

Have yourselves a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Personal Update

 

As I'm turning 49 next week, it's a good time to update everyone about my life.

a) Managing my Thyroid Eye Disease

Last week, my left eye was occluded, as I can see better with one eye than with two. But a couple of days ago, I got a piece of prism lenses, which improved my look slightly, but there is still some distortion in my vision, and it may take weeks to get used to. But at the moment, I'm struggling to get back to my old productive self, which is challenging as my left eye sheds tears easily, and I give my eyes a rest by taking multiple naps a day.

But the prism lenses are good as they buy me time to transition to government-subsidised care, which can only come online in mid-January. I can't trust my private provider anymore as my options involve high costs and hospital stays - perfect for taking advantage of folks with a high-end H & S policy. The government doctors actually confirmed that outpatient options are available. 

If there's any wisdom readers can pick up from this, incentives matter. If doctors get paid a significant portion of scanning fees, you will always be made to take MRI scans. For folks dealing with information asymmetries in medical care, you should always seek a second opinion, preferably from someone with different incentives. 

Government care is not perfect as my diabetic management can only occur once every 4-5 months, so I am now interleaving visits to a private and govt practitioner. 

b) My side gig

I've started sharing more of my work on my side gig with an educational institution. For three hours a week, I teach legal executives a program on issues running law firms and the specific IT software that comes with it. After my stint at a law firm ended, I wanted to retain my legal knowledge, and I tried to minimise disruption to my training business. 

The work is slowly gaining momentum, and I'm working on a cybersecurity program for legal executives. My career interests me, but I want to remind everyone that I'm a gig worker, and my materials may need approval. 

Also, I might need help maintaining my gig after this one is over in 6 months. This is purely to supplement my dwindling business, which will recover in 2024. 

c) My investment training business

I can handle anything else in my business if I can survive 2023 with my health issues and poor sales. I now run a fairly stable program investing in a dividends portfolio in the local markets and a one-of-a-kind program on operating your own robo advisor to invest in internal ETFs. 

The markets will take a while to recover, but I will struggle much less in 2024. 

d) Financial markets

Regarding investing, 2024 is going to be a good year as interest rate increases have come to an end. I still maintained most investments in REITs, so I would do okay. There could be a chance for a massive upside if a ceasefire occurs or interest rates begin ratcheting downwards. 

But for personal reasons, this is not a moment for aggressive risk-taking. As attractive as getting some leverage seems like a good idea, I do not need to make that much money, and I should keep some reserves for medical emergencies. 

e) Books I am reading

I'm not reading at a pace I like as my eyes get tired quickly, but this month, I have restricted myself to non-business books. I've covered a lot of ground on fiction and tackled a history book that discusses multiple What-If scenarios. I suspect this book will take me all the way into 2024. 

Overall, 2024 is a year of consistent change and evolution - I thrive on change and improvement. If not for my eye condition, I have planned a year of plenty of travel and even the publication of a new book. But at this moment, it's probably not wise to be too ambitious as managing my condition and maintaining all my gigs is already a massive challenge. 

2024 is likely a static year for me. I'd like it to be a lot more dynamic and bring in new stuff to do and meet new friends, but who am I kidding - I turn 50 next year!

Catch you guys again once I turn 49 on Christmas.

More struggles to cap an awful year !

 

Soothsayers were not kidding when they said that this was not a good year for folks like me. 

Three weeks ago, I started getting double vision and thought that there was something wrong with my new progressive lenses. After multiple visits to the optician, they said that my eyes were misaligned and only an opthalmologist could resolve the issue. So I thought I would resolve it quickly by using the private sector to get help.

The problem turned out to be much more complicated than I thought. I was diagnosed with Thyroid Eye Disease and after seeing three ophthalmologists, getting an MRI, and spending over $3k, I was able to order a new lens to mitigate my vision problems. Sadly for me, treatment in the private sector will cost me a five-figure sum over the next year, and I've decided to go back to the government-restructured hospitals for help. It's slower, but at least I can deplete my almost-full Medisave account.

( Concerned readers can note that tomorrow I get to see someone in TTSH, so please don't bash our excellent medical system here. )

So as of now, I can see clearer with one eye than two so I told the clinic to cover my left eye while I wait for my new lens stickers to arrive. 

The strain of managing private-sector clinic visits, research and costs has caused me to skip investing my latest tranche of training fees from my training problem. I taught 32 batches of students and this was the first time I held back in case I needed liquidity to pay the medical specialists. 

So you can imagine how I felt when markets rallied just as I predicted last week with REITs leading the charge?

Fortunately, I have not sold any holdings since interest rates have gone up and the fees are a drop of the ocean like everyone else stubborn enough to remain invested locally, I made a tidy sum today and look forward to an ever better Capricorn effect next year. 

But hey, health is always more important than wealth. Until I actually get a slot to consult a specialist in a government hospital and get my corticosteroids, which can take a while, I'm holding back my funds in the rare probability that my situation will get worse. I even have documents in a folder in case I get into an A&E situation. 

I have also started to obtain contacts for Malaysian private doctors. If I can combine an eye operation or steroid injection with a trip to KL, Girl Maths will tell me that the savings are enough for my hotel stay and shopping to be free! 

Finally, as I hit my 50s, I realise that the game is starting to move from Normal to Hard difficulty mode. There is no way I could have played my cards better, I even started a new gig to stabilise the loss of income from investment courses, but for every step I take forward, I have to take a step back. My only consolation is that at least I'm alive - I was shocked that a number of celebrities have passed away this week. 

Tomorrow, I will be conducting a lecture on Legal Ethics with the use of just one eye.  

 

Letter to Batch 32 of the Early Retirement Masterclass

Dear Students of Batch 32,

It's been a great honour and privilege to conduct a 5-Day Early Retirement Workshop for you.

As I managed to complete successive instalments of this program, we found that the markets have been trending ever lower in 2023. Things have gotten so bad that the equity risk premium we tracked has exceeded 7%. The only time when the Singapore market was cheaper was at the bottom of the pandemic crash which created the most successful class I ever graduated.

If you decide to be plucky and invest this upcoming week in our portfolio your dividend yield will exceed 7.4%, and while there are no guarantees that geopolitics can worsen your performance, there are two upcoming events that may bring your portfolio performance some upsides.

The first is when the FOMC concludes in the middle of next week. If the Fed does not raise rates further, an investment into REITs should enjoy a nice rebound.

The second is after the New Year holidays when markets start 2024 with the Capricorn effect, which will bring further respite to Singapore stocks that took a pounding in December.

Beyond January 2024, I would like to think that luck may play a better role than skill. Things will look more positive if China demonstrates more resolve to stimulate its economy. Or perhaps we will see some glimmer of hope for peace in the Middle East. As far as Singapore is concerned, we’ve played our cards the best we can with a 30-day visa-free travel arrangement, our deep push into AI, and the arrival of Taylor Swift. As I’ve said in class, It’s ludicrous that such a well-run market with such a stable government can sell at a PE ratio of 9.7.

Lastly, I hope Batch 32 will participate actively in the FB group. I look forward to seeing you in the following community seminar slated for end-2023.

Hope to see you then!

 

Christopher Ng Wai Chung

Short Update

 

I don't have a lot of time to be blogging this week because I'm conducting a course every night until the weekend. 

I'm also nursing the tail end of a nasty flu despite being flu-vaxxed.

So if I'm not conducting lessons over Zoom, I'm drinking lots of water and sleeping off my drowsy medication. 

Also, I've decided to do something unusual this December month. In the past, I have managed many book reviews on this blog as I believe it is useful for readers. This month, I've resolved to clear, as much as possible, all the works of fiction or non-finance works I've accumulated or ignored in the past.

So hopefully by this weekend when this blog resumes, I will have some fairly interesting insights from my reads.  

It's a holiday month, so maybe we can dispense with books on investing for just 30 days.

Regular Employment is Dangerous

 

I've got some genuinely crazy fans on the dividends groups. One guy was so crazy and affected by my statement that "regular employment is dangerous" that he sent my LinkedIn profile to a headhunter who promptly concluded that I would never be able to get a job. I might be the only guy who can get a rejection from a headhunter for a job I never even applied for. 

( If you guys are wondering, the job is a robotic automation apprenticeship. I researched because I wanted to hunt down the headhunter and give him a piece of my mind. ) 

Today, I won't be covering the primary details of why regular employment is dangerous. We know that folks here have to deal with outsourcing and retrenchment as part and parcel of corporate life.  

Before I unpack the statement, regular employment is still the best way to attain FIRE, and I've actually turned away some unemployed potential clients because I'm not a miracle maker. So don't go resigning from your company reading this post.

a) Most economic rewards in Singapore go to capital rather than labour anyway

First of all, according to some economic data, in Singapore, labour's share of GDP is around 40+ per cent, which is about 10% lower than in many OECD countries. This means that in this country, we tend to get less of our productivity from earned income. Most rewards do, in fact, accrue to capital owners. Our attitude towards our work should be a means to generate capital because that's how you earn a larger share of our economy today.

b) All employment is time theft

The second reason is that if you look at your life from a different angle, all employment is time theft. At least in Singapore, we have yet to start to reward employees for results, so some folks are still bound by a 9-5 job. Why can't we leave the office when our job is done? There are also very few laws granting staff overtime after they hit a certain income. I think in this new era, we should beware of jobs that take up more of our time than necessary because you can monetise your after-office hours. This covers conference calls with the US and Europe.

But so far, you are not being compensated for it, and we've normalised the theft of time by organizations and companies for quite a while.

c) Reskilling and Skillfutures will benefit employers and may become bad investments of your time

I'm speaking with a lot of authority here because I was the IT certification king in my 20s and 30s. With Skillfutures, everybody is potentially the certification king of tomorrow, and the supply of skills will begin to exceed demand. Thanks to Coursera, the IT certifications kings of the 00s will have gone into extinction. In my case, the IT Certification King has transformed into the Dividends Pig. 

Here's a way to think about certifications vs qualifications. In economics, the Coarse theorem says that companies are better off outsourcing tasks which are well-defined and can be turned into a contract. Companies prefer to hire permanent staff when their tasks cannot be so easily documented and where work requires some flexibility and ability to handle ambiguity. 

Here's the rub: In order to be able to conduct a skills future course, the government must define a syllabus and come up with ways to test students on what they have learned. This is not too different from clearly defining a task. This will ultimately make it easier to outsource to another party. The process is very different from a university degree program that invests time into developing a skill but an attitude to deal with and handle novel problems. 

In my work in adult education, which has nothing to do with investing, I teach and describe things like HR performance appraisal forms. Students can describe them quite well and identify a system. Students are so-so at figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of these systems, but we do spoon-feed it to them. However, students are bad at predicting what happens to a company culture when a performance appraisal methodology is internalised. You can argue that predicting how employees will game the system is well beyond what adult education entails, but I'm quite passionate about ensuring that my students have some idea of how to do this. 

So what does this mean? MNCs and bigger companies will still pay a huge premium for university graduates and folks with qualifications. They can train employees to get skills for their work, but the value in having permanent staff is the general intelligence to gain market share and reduce costs. These guys can use a latticework of models they pick up and apply it to new situations at work ( hat tip to Charlie Munger). 

Basically, what I'm saying is that skills can help you get your current job, but to move up would require more than skills and if Skillsfutures makes skills available to everyone, you won't really benefit from spending too much time developing them. The mid-career degree will become inevitable. 

If regular employment is dangerous, what is the point of following Millennial career influencers who focus on office politics, leadership and networking? When the ones who see themselves as major players in the office are losing their jobs when interest rates go up? 

Fortunately for us, Gen Z is already responding to this devaluation of regular employment. 

My favourite Gen Z invention is overemployment, where highly productive software engineers work on two more jobs at the same time. This will allow them to FIRE even faster and cost them just a small part of their youth. Gen Z in Singapore should exploit the low unemployment rate to do this. You can figure out what to do with your life later. The only caveat is that over-employment must be used in tandem with investing to build capital to eventually replace your earned income. 

Imagine a new-age worker creating a combo chain of over-employment, dividends, asymmetric investing, and geo-arbitrage. Such an influencer does not exist in SG right now, but someone needs to invent one ASAP.

As much as I am now a sceptic about regular employment, downshifting and lying flat is probably a dumb idea. We should see ourselves as time merchants, selling out time for as much money as we can, then using our capital to buy other people's time to balance things out later in life. 

When do you give up your dreams for pleasure?

 

Collectively as a movement, we are getting better at the nuts and bolts of retirement planning. We are getting close to being able to balance our spending needs with maintaining a sustainable portfolio. But most of the folks in the movement have not mastered the fine art of living in retirement. Many are unprepared to decouple their personal identities from work. Others still live in fear of running out of money to spend.

As such, Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-Reum is another good book to read for folks at the tail-end of the FIRE journey. It gently talks about the mental processes of South Koreans who choose an alternative lifestyle against conventional measurements of success and shares some of the internal struggles of folks who drop out of mainstream life. 

I encourage readers to enjoy this book by supporting the author and its Singaporean translator. Instead, I will talk about one philosophical question raised by the book:

When should we give our dreams for pleasure?

The concept of a dream in this case is a little different from what we understand conventionally what it means. A dream is something you may long for to fit into what society deems a success. So in this case, for a South Korean, perhaps a dream is to become a senior manager of a chaebol. When a person is pursuing a dream, he is trying to achieve a long-term kind of satisfaction, but every conscious moment is a struggle through hard work, stress, anxiety, and pain. 

From a Korean perspective, the pursuit of a dream comes with sacrifice.

As opposed to a dream, pleasure is closer to conventionally what we think it is. Moments of pleasure signify the feeling of happiness and blissful contentment.

I was a corporate drone chasing my dreams of climbing up the rungs of a multinational when I was in my 20s, but after rounds of getting outsourced and doing outsourcing in the IT field, I realised that life-long employment is a pipe dream, and not everyone makes the director of a company. My dreams shifted to attaining financial independence through dividends investing. But after starting to live on dividend payouts at age 32, I carried working and meeting other conventional family milestones until I was 39 when I finally met my Waterloo in the public sector. 

This was a stage in my life when I was the most smug and confused. I spent 4 years studying law because I wanted an option to remain relevant in society. Law is, after all, the discipline chosen by the recently departed Charlie Munger, it is also the best thing to study if you have no idea what you want to do in life. I will never regret law school because every case is a latticework of models. But fate intervened when we sold out eight investment seminars during my days as a law student. After finding actual legal practice training worse than public sector work, I finally threw myself into investment training which I remain today.

The truth is, even post-financial independence, and having no idea what my dream is today, I was still struggling to stay relevant when I attempted to start legal practice early this year on top of my investment training business. This time, disaster struck. Not only was I unable to find clients for my legal work ( hard even for senior associates), but my hyperactive thyroid made a comeback. Luckily, I was able to salvage my legal training by taking some gigs in adult education this year for a small allowance. 

Until I read this book, I was not even aware that it's ok to give up a person's dream for pleasure. If you can live on your dividends and can work a little to reduce your rate of expenses to less than 3% of your overall investment portfolio, I know from my simulations that you can even enjoy spending more in your later years, while data from academics show that household expenses begin to drop when the head of the family reaches 50 years of age. 

What does giving up your dreams for pleasure like? In my naivete, I thought it was to start drawing down your assets to travel around the world. But many forms of FIRE do not have much money catered for travel - I have 5 pax in my family so every trip will be very expensive. 

I think what the book has done for me to generate some viable alternatives that will not break the bank. 

In this book, there is a story of a graduate who did well in university and has chosen to become a barista for the bookshop. He has a very fixed schedule in life, doing yoga, choosing coffee beans, and then serving coffee in the bookshop in the afternoon before retreating back to his apartment for rest and contemplation. His mother is distraught that he does not have a real job, but he takes coffee making to a whole new level, much like the concept of a shokunin or craftsman in Japan. 

Maybe being a master craftsman like those you find in Japan can be a pleasure. I definitely will not be able to monetise my Monte Carlo programs that simulate retirement portfolios and gradually improve them every time I see another research paper, it's just a way to add gravitas to this blog when I say that someone is underspending or even incorrect from a rational point of view. 

I think by now, you would have realised that I've not really gone beyond a paragraph or two on the book I was attempting to review, but it is obvious that this book has been extremely consequential in my life at the moment. 

Hope that some readers will attempt to read this and engage with me on this blog.