Catch me on Chills 276: The Smarter Way To Build Wealth While Working Full-Time

Most people trying to get rich faster are optimising the wrong variable. They're looking for a better fund, a better broker, a better entry price — when the portfolio is still too small for any of that to matter. That was the starting point for this week's Chills with TFC episode, where The Financial Coconut put three of us in one conversation: Chris How (semi-retired, retireby50.me), Chris Chong (ex-accountant, 45K-subscriber FIRE channel), and me. One commenter in the video called it "Chris's universe" — accurate, and a reasonable summary of how the hour went.

The core argument won't surprise anyone who's read Growing Your Tree of Prosperity or sat through my $100,000 challenge material: for someone in their 20s or 30s, the return on a small portfolio is noise compared to the return on growing income and controlling spending. Financial independence is a cash-flow engineering problem before it's an investing problem. Salary truncation — fix the lifestyle cost, direct the surplus, invest it on a system — still does more work than any stock pick. That hasn't changed since 2005. It's just less interesting to say than "which counter should I buy."

The more useful part of the discussion was what's aged badly, and why. Not just a list — the reasoning behind each one:

• Crypto hype rewarded timing, not process. Most people who made money were early, not right, and the strategy doesn't survive being repeated.
• Thematic funds chase last quarter's winner into your portfolio at the point it's most expensive, with a fee structure built for the fund house's marketing calendar, not your holding period.
• Job loyalty as a wealth strategy conflates tenure with security. It ignores that the employer's incentives and yours diverge the moment restructuring becomes cheaper than raises.
• Over-reliance on one strategy fails the same way concentrated stock positions fail — it works until the one condition it depends on stops holding, and there's no second system to fall back on.

We also went through robo-advisors, brokers, CPF, and regular savings plans versus the newer dynamic RSPs — and the thread connecting all of them is that every platform has an incentive that isn't automatically yours. A broker earns from turnover. A robo-advisor earns from AUM regardless of your outcome. That's not a reason to avoid them; it's a reason to know what you're being sold before you decide whether it fits.

Which is the real question the episode keeps returning to: not "what gives the highest returns," but "what game am I actually playing, and does this strategy fit my life?" Same question I put to students in the "Are You Investing or Just Collecting Stocks?" sessions — most retail investors can show you a portfolio but not a strategy, and the gap only becomes visible after something breaks.

Disclosure, since it's directly relevant to the RSP discussion: this episode is sponsored by Webull, and part of the conversation covers their Dynamic RSP — reportedly the first of its kind in Singapore. Mechanically, it adjusts contribution size to price: more when prices fall, less when they run up, instead of the fixed monthly amount a standard RSP commits you to. That's a variation on dollar-cost averaging worth understanding on its mechanics, not its marketing. Webull is also running zero-fee US stock and ETF trading — no commissions, no platform fees — separate from the RSP feature and worth checking regardless of which savings plan you use.

Cry for Govtech if you wish, but you should be crying tears of joy

About a week ago, one of my very skilled first-year students asked me to write a letter of recommendation so she could get an internship at GovTech. I said no.

My student is not just one of the most highly skilled students in my class; she also has a lot of gumption, having personally led her team in hackathons, and is mature beyond her years. So I explained that while GovTech produces some pieces of software that many of us know and love, like Singpass, I told her that to grow in the organisation, she might pick up some bad habits from HQ, like ringfencing her work, backstabbing her colleagues, or stonewalling useful initiatives. I also did not want such a capable student to be hurt when joining an organisation with a different career ladder for scholars and farmers; perhaps her stint in ITE and N-level grades might be held against her. I told her that I would be more than happy to provide a glowing recommendation to a tech firm or a bank, and that she should have the confidence to aim higher in life.

Then, almost like a miracle, the news of GovTech's retrenchment of 93 employees hit, and I was stunned. So I decided to pen my thoughts on this blog.

The first point I wanted to make is that on social media, I've noticed little sympathy for folks affected by the reorganisation. Most private-sector workers and businessmen felt it was the right move, and that removing all the "dead wood" could result in a more dynamic and forward-looking organisation. So if folks are generally positive about this news, I actually believe civil service leaders should be blamed for not doing this sooner. I remember during my time, some of the things I had to do were patently absurd. One presentation I had to make to senior management was explaining what an API was (initially I thought I had to explain what a REST-based API was, but no, it's just an API, you know remote function calls ). My technological skills atrophied so badly that I, somehow, became a subject-matter expert in food catering, the only thing I'm good at, given that none of my procurement papers succeeded. 

The second point I wanted to make is just how wonderful the retrenchment package is. It's one month for every year worked up to 25 years, plus an extra 3 months! And too little credit went to AUSBE. AUSBE are the real heroes in this story. When I was there, having come from NTUC-ARU, I volunteered my time with AUSBE because I had learnt to respect non-degree associate staff from my NTUC days, and you will not find another group that so doggedly works for their fellow employees outside office hours. This package is so attractive that I know some folks who left GoveTech lamenting that, had they stayed, they would have been able to FIRE immediately with it.

The third point is that government and statutory boards are winners, not losers, in this restructuring effort. The biggest losers are the vendor organisations like NCS, HCL, DXC or even IBM as the government begins to move work in-house. Work will dry up for these organisations, and believe me, when they start retrenching tech workers, there will be no 25 months or 3 months' extra notice when engineers are asked to leave. There's no AUSBE to negotiate for these guys, and many of them are people I know. 

A final story of my days should include a personality we all had to take called Emergenetics. And I vaguely recall that a director had to apologise for the personality test results in the HQ organisation. The reason is that the only kind of personality that can survive in HQ tends to be Green or structured, conscientious types with low openness to new experiences, whereas higher flyers tend to be more yellow or conceptual thinkers or blue, who are analysts. The saddest part of the survey is that folks who "red" or people who have empathy and love interacting with people are noticeably absent in the entire organisation.

This restructuring will bring balance to the organisation, and I'm particularly pleased that the 93 retrenchments are just Phase 1. There are more phases to come, and, if executed well, could mean that no part of the government is safe from obsolescence. If we make our bed with a Tech career, we should never expect an iron rice bowl. 

So, I actually come from reading this with a sense of hope and optimism for GovTech.

Next week, I will return to class and tell my student that I stand corrected in recent events, and I am now willing to complete her recommendation letter to Govtech.

 

Personal Update - Cheating Death and Getting Diarrhoea

 

Today I wanted to take a different spin on a personal update and talk a little bit about my health situation.

Some time ago, I started on insulin jabs, and while I'm seeing improvements in blood sugar, they don't seem to be improving fast enough, and I'm tuning the amount of insulin I am getting on a daily basis. So there is obviously some fear that I won't live long enough, given my short-lived ancestors are kind of short-lived.

So longevity is of great interest to me, and I've been reading a lot of books on it. And the logic is simple - the longer I live, the longer I can compound my wealth, the longer time I can guide my kids on how to manage their finances. 

So immortality is the ultimate game-changer, and I will take personal and financial risks to extend my life just a little bit.

So this billionaire, Bryan Johnson, launched a longevity mix called Blueprint, and I decided to pay about $200+ for two packs of the mixture. You can Google the contents of the mix. I don't think the contents are revolutionary; it's just a mixture of various compounds, all purported to extend your life, in a single package so you don't have to buy them individually.

So I started on this mix based on the recommended dosage and ended up with diarrhoea for a couple of days, and I also experienced bloating and nausea. Then AI told me it's a known issue for folks who take this mix. So I halved my dosage, and I've been able to do this for more than a month already.

I've since been trying to Google the immediate benefits of taking this mix and have found the effects fairly subjective; some people report feeling more energetic, which I can easily get from a cup of coffee, so it's no big deal. Others claim it gives them better sleep, but for me, I have more vivid dreams I remember when I wake up.

Anyway, while I'm still in the middle of this regime, I found out that Bryan Johnson has developed some kind of autoimmune disease that really ruined his plan for immortality.

I think at this stage, what humanity has achieved, you can't cheat death at the moment.

Instead, you get a lot of diarrhoea trying.

Anyway, if any reader is taking this mix, do share your notes with me on how it has changed your life.

Personal Update - Books I am reading

 

The effect of moving funds to my CDP from the higher-turnover IBKR is that I'm more relaxed about financial thought leadership, can take a chill pill, collect more dividends every quarter, and read material beyond the finance domain. 

So one of the effects of being really into using AI to create portfolio management tools and streamlining my work is that I actually think that it's now warranted to pick up new technical skills. But these are not the traditional coding skills that engineers need to do their work. To utilise AI to become a stronger builder, one has to pick up skills in technical architecture, which is too steep a learning curve for me, as I lack the basic foundations to start. 

So naturally, I turned to AI to suggest a plan for me based on where I am and where I needed to go as a builder. 

And AI pointed to The Pragmatic Programmer by Thomas and Hunt.

This turned out to be an enjoyable, relaxed read, and the advice is so powerful and general that I suspect the skills transfer across domains. After all, a legal contract is just a piece of code in English, ultimately parsed and compiled by a human judge or the counterparties. Simple maxims like "Don't Repeat Yourself" and Orthogonality are useful even in contract drafting or hardware systems design. 

Looks like I might have to find an excuse to teach my Data Analytics students this if they aspire to higher education.

( For folk in Law, the equivalent text is Learning the Law by Glanville Williams, which Min Shan recommends every law student read 4 times before embarking on a legal course. I must be so mediocre because I read it only once. There is, sadly, no equivalent in finance; The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is great but does not come close.  )

Of course, that's not the only book that was interesting.

Last year, I was crazy about Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive, but this year I found a series that topped it. 

Dungeon Crawler Carl is the flagship offering in the LitRPG genre, and the author likely has years of gaming experience to write a work as absurd and entertaining as this series.

The story is about a guy named Carl and his girlfriend's Persian Cat called Princess Doughnut, going on a dungeon crawl and starring in a reality show watched by almost every alien in the universe.

The most exciting thing about this book is that I was raving about it so much that my 10-year-old son has started reading it. 

Parents who read the book will note how violent and vulgar it is, but I'll do anything to get my own to read a book that is just words.

Ok, this summarises the personal updates on my blog. We will get back to regular programming on this blog after this.

Personal Update - The Impermanence of Dreams

 

In my third personal update, I want to talk about hobbies and some of the dreams I had when I was much younger. I gave it a funny title because I think there is a sense of universality in the idea that the dreams we have when we're younger often don't persist into mature adulthood. 

So one dream I had when I was younger was to own a game shop. 

But modern games, even RPGs, barely excite me these days. RPGs evolved from wargaming, and gamers in my generation continue to play D&D like a serious game raid with an emphasis on combat tactics and cinematic carnage. But Gen Z plays D&D more like a therapy session, and I suspect my style of gameplay, often involving ambushing NPCs in an outhouse when they are taking a shit or setting random buildings on fire ("DM, how flammable is this building? "), may be considered toxic gameplay. We Gen X D&Ders are often the source of trauma for Gen Z players.

Even modern TCGs have moved away from competitive cut-throat gameplay, as I observe the latest Riftbound decks and have to take some time to figure out the gender of some of the characters in Riftbound TCG.

Another fantasy is retiring in a place like Perth to play RPGs all day with my gaming buddies.

Yes, before I discovered FIRE, Perth was the Valhalla where all the gamers I know go to play D&D for the rest of their lives. 

But over time, I've become crankier, so I'm now more selective about who I hang with, and people my age have become a lot more annoying. It might be a side effect of becoming financially independent, but I just don't share fellow Gen Xers' negativity about life, Singapore government policies, or the corporate world. So net-net the Gen X folks around me often drag me down. As such, I very much prefer the blissful optimism of Gen Z, even though I try to avoid talking about pronouns.

So, actually, I thought I'd talk a little bit about D&D because for months I've been contemplating quitting the hobby I've played for the past 42 years. 

The scene has changed. It used to be just medieval fantasy, and I can tolerate occasional forays into Wuxia territory, but this generation is really weird. There is some kind of Southeast Asian flavour to the gaming style, but it's purely flavour and doesn't come with mechanics my brain can be trained to understand. It's good to have a cultural identity for our gaming hobby, but it's just not for me. Maybe some gamers are just overcompensating, and the postmodern decolonisation they teach in modern humanities degree programs is finally invading my beloved hobby.

The gaming company has also done a lot to spread ill will. Now the producers of D&D are selling feats and spells piecemeal on their portal, while refusing to let us buy PDF copies of their book. 

All this is a sign for me to move on and pass the hobby on to a new generation, except that something very strange has happened to it lately...

For a start, an old friend wanted to try his hand at game-mastering, so I got an experienced friend to form a small group where he DMed for us, and we just functioned as referees to let him gain some experience. There's a lot of theorycrafting, understanding the mechanics and making the game enjoyable and challenging for veteran players. We were happy because we got to play the 2024 ruleset. None of us thought this was even sustainable.

Then my friend got the hang of running games, and now more people in our networks wanted to play with us. So our group grew, and immediately some players even wanted to buy adventures to keep the campaign going.

So without any intervention on my part, I actually managed to be part of a fairly substantial group of Gen X RPGers playing my favourite RPG, without the wokeness, weird Renaissance SEAsian cosplay antics, and pronouns. Instead, I just tell my gaming buddies that in our 50s, we need some kind of system to manage loneliness, as it can kill 3x better than a heart attack, so guys need to just hang out and do stuff together.

I do what I do best in D&D, throwing fireballs, killing things and taking their treasure, all in the name of the greater good.

Personal Update - Business

 

Ok, so now for my second personal update. 

You should have noticed that some of the trainers who were active five years ago are nowhere to be found, so it does not take a genius to figure out that my industry is practically dead. My Early Retirement Masterclass has been running for about 8 years, and it no longer pays the bills directly; it has become more of a hobby to me.

The inclination to just quit the business is quite strong given such poor numbers, but the primary reason I remain in this industry is that it forces me to maintain my knowledge of financial markets, and teaching it sharpens my investor instincts, as years of using my programming skills to suggest financial trades and backtest different scenarios give me an understanding of financial markets that is rare for such a small, insular market like SGX. And we've come a long way from queuing up to use a Bloomberg terminal at Lee Kong Chian Library to figure out whether a low-PE strategy worked against the baseline investment across all STI stocks. These days, I vibecoded a solution to run 3,200 backtests on the top 80 market-cap stocks in about 30 minutes.

So I can safely say that it's not my superior investing skills that made me an investment trainer. It's the fact that I can teach investing that supercharged my investing ability for the past 8 years. ( This is called the Feynman Technique )

Technically, for ERM, we can probably lower prices to drive more revenue. But a poorer business and falling numbers also mean that folks who cough up the fees are serious investors, probably very motivated to do well for themselves, and that almost everyone is someone worth networking with and guiding along their investing journey.  

So work has become more pleasant.

But there is a counterweight to all this.

I have gigs teaching at public institutions that now pay a larger share of my earnings, and this adds a new dimension to my development as an instructor. I have a fairly privileged position in that I teach Law and Data Analytics simultaneously, and this work may even expand next semester, as I am negotiating to teach a hardcore maths module as well. 

In these gigs, I cannot set a price filter to find the students I want. I have to take anything the system throws at me, so I can continue to struggle to grow. Truth is, I've been scolded in class by angry students (who make up their view of what the law is) and disrespected by some colleagues at a level I will never experience as an investment trainer. So, as someone with a five-figure passive income, I find it takes some philosophising to justify doing all this for just $100/hour.

Over the years, there have been people who cruise when passive income hits a certain level. 

I'm no longer keen to live like this because now I believe that if a person removes all suffering and inconveniences from life, which financial independence can do at the drop of a hat, meaning gets wiped out as well. I also have no wish to become a bad influence on my kids. They need to see me do some work, like my dad when he became a production operator after selling shares of the pet shop he founded.

Finally, having some kind of tenuous link to the world allows me to continue to understand what any workplace can be like, and it has an effect when I pitch my investment courses. Of course, not needing that income is itself a shield that allows me to keep carrying on like playing an arcade game. I get a nasty encounter on Thursday night, and I sleep it off till Friday morning. 

So this year, folks will notice that I'm doing more. My talks at SIAS are proceeding, and I'm seeking speaking opportunities with brokerages. Not all the gigs will pay, but they are a good marketing effort.

My next talk will be on CPF in August with SIAS, but more details will follow soon.

Personal Update - Personal Finances

 

I'm going to do a series of personal updates, and it's lengthy enough to warrant a number of articles that are not aided by AI at all. So the first personal update is on personal finances.

To understand what my personal finances have been going through, it might be useful to review the series of blog articles I wrote when my portfolio was facing the worst drawdown in March 2020. Thanks to private bankers telling their well-heeled clients to deleverage their REIT portfolios, the stable REITs with strong sponsors actually collapsed, and I saw a 45% drawdown within a matter of weeks.

In those days, I was under tremendous stress and had to deleverage as well, as I might be just inches away from a margin call. Worse, the brokers were not picking up their phones, and I eventually got so mad that I terminated my margin account with DBV Vickers. As a final insult, after not picking up my call for days, their incompetent team even sent me a margin call after I had completely deleveraged from the markets!

This marked the beginning of my stronger relationship with IBKR. When the market recovered a little, I went full leverage again, but after recovering some losses, I pared down the margin portfolio and transferred some funds into my CDP account, putting a large six-digit sum into just DBS, which has flourished to this day.

One of the things I promised myself then was that if the market melted up, I would treat the situation with the same urgency and rebalance my portfolio from custodian to CDP. This kind of dramatic trading that I had to perform in the 2020s is not something a 50-year-old should be engaging in, at least not on that scale. 

But it would be a happy problem, if I stopped my leverage, it would mean that I have won. 

And finally, after 6 years of anticipation, that moment is finally here.

With the STI above 5,200 and PEs above 16, markets, while not overpriced, have become a ripe moment for another round of voluntary "panic" deleveraging and repositioning into the more stable CDP portfolio.

I have taught 42 batches of ERM classes, and now their portfolios, which I have carefully built from scratch, are gone from my margin account. Sums have transmigrated into my CDP and are allocated to ultra-stable blue-chip stocks in a portfolio designed to generate steady cash flows to cover my family's expenses. I still have a happy tech-stock problem: my gains in tech, even in my CDP, need to be shuffled into an underperforming REIT or a high-yielding bank in Hong Kong, but tech momentum is strong, and companies like UMS are not really tied to the AI boom at the moment.

My custodian account is now almost bare, with just over $20k, no longer leveraged, and its purpose has been transformed into a trading account with three algorithms running simultaneously. A trend-follower ETF strategy, a mean-reverting stock picker, and finally a trend-follower SGX stock picker that scans the stocks with powerful momentum and invests in them tactically. The future of my custodian account is to be run like a high-leverage hedge fund with both long and short positions.

What does this mean for my students who have current portfolios?

Absolutely nothing. 

I continue to track these portfolios and celebrate their victories.

I continue to hold the majority of these stocks in my CDP account, currently 66.

In Batch 43, I will add a Python script to the training covering momentum trading in a market that is no longer woefully underpriced.

In the next article, I will talk about the training business.