Personal Update

 

It's time for another personal update, as my blog frequency has been down lately.

a) Was down with stomach flu this week. 

Last Sunday, after some retail therapy at second book stores, I ate some scissors curry rice in Bugis at around 5.30pm. Everything was fine until Monday morning when I realised that I was feeling queasy and I had lost my appetite; then I emptied all the contents of my stomach, and I spent the rest of the day vomiting and getting diarrhoea.

I was so concerned about not being able to see the doctor without a diarrhoea attack I decided to install an app called Doctors Anywhere and used telemedicine to get my medical fix. The experience was really positive - I paid about $80, including medication (delivered in 3 hours), which included some non-essentials like electrolytes and probiotics. Still, even those came in handy for my recovery. The only downside I noticed is that the system does not recognise that I'm a CHAS orange card holder, which would have been much cheaper if I visited the neighbourhood doctor in person.

I imagine telemedicine to be handy for gout sufferers who struggle to walk 500m to the nearest clinic. 

b) Enjoyed a night of Japanese karaoke in a micro lounge. 

Another thing I did was to join some friends in a Japanese lounge in Shenton Way to understand why folks would spend $50-$100 a week on alcohol and some talking company. This act is way off my character, but I should also let my hair down occasionally. 

For those who are unaccustomed to nightlife, this experience was quite educational. Folks who run nightlife establishments are expert small-talkers, and it's an excellent way to keep company over a weekend. Conversations are nowhere as intense as when I hike with other bloggers like RetireBy50 when I often regret not taking notes because of so many lifehacks I can pick up from them. 

I will share the most family-friendly conversation snippet I can produce on this blog; for the rest, you need to ask me for a coffee or a long hike. We were talking about weird travel buddies, and someone was talking about heading towards a far-out location in Bangkok just so his weird friend could buy some watermelon juice. Apparently, this FOMO guy wanted watermelon juice because the seller had massive breasts. It was funny because I asked how a juicer with big breasts could produce better-tasting watermelon juice. I was also pretty sure that massive breasts can be found in other areas in Bangkok. 

The funny thing is that I missed most of the conversation because I was singing almost nonstop for three hours on the Japanese Karaoke system, as we were the only customers there. The equivalent fee to do this in Cash Studio may be much higher for a dedicated device that serves Japanese songs.

Anyway, I wonder if this lounge can survive if all their clients are like me, I only drank Soda Water and ate snacks, and with a cover charge, I spent $44. $44 might be a little on the high side if you benchmark against buying beer from your nearest supermarket. 

But I think if done properly, it should be compared with therapy. In such a case $44 is cheap. 

c) My single focus: Generative AI for investment analysis

My illness earlier this week derailed a lot of momentum as I'm on a crusade to being ChatGPT into my Early Retirement Masterclass. The work has been extensive, and it involves taking Udemy courses at x1.5 speed, reading research papers, and then reading O'Reilly books like the ones above to create a set of prompts to assess the future performance of local stocks.

While it does give me little latitude to raise fees, the investment in picking up prompt engineering skills will allow me to create similar materials for the legal sector when I run Legal Technology classes next semester.  

I hope to present some interesting results on this blog for investors to follow in the upcoming few days. 

d) What's happening in geeks, games and comics?

More distracting than a bout of stomach flu is the impending launch of the 2024 Dungeons and Dragons ruleset, and plenty of new reveals are going on. As the new rules are revealed, the usual theory is being crafted, and the following ruleset is being complained about. People are already unhappy with the new Ranger without knowing how the new rules work. However, there will be a lot of excitement on the 1st of August as the NDA gets lifted, and game influencers will start discussing in detail how the new game will be played. 

Of course, I can only update you by talking about how much the new movie Deadpool & Wolverine will rekindle the fortunes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's even bigger news that Robert Downey Jr. will be the next big bad, Dr. Doom. 

It may not bode well for fanboys over the long term. There's a woke faction creating shitty stories like the Acolyte that may kill Star Wars eventually, and there's another faction that will never be happy unless you develop a lot of nostalgic fanboy service like Avengers End Game or Deadpool and Wolverine.  

Can Disney create new storylines and characters to entertain the next generation of geeks and otakus?

I don't know. But at least I can watch The Boys on Amazon Prime. 

Do horny people find it harder to FIRE?

 

As younger Millenials and Gen Z begin their journeys towards financial independence, it becomes very useful and instructive to examine their own personal approaches to early retirement. And recently, one can't actually ignore the new rising star among our ranks as Ashish Kumar drove even the thought leaders here to refer to their dictionaries with a new word, "aroace".

Aroace stands for someone who is aromantic and asexual. If you are aroace, you experience very little romantic or sexual attraction towards other people. This is a novel concept because we know that most FIRE thought leaders here are single, with me being a rare exception with my wife and kids. So, it's not really arguable that being single makes it easier to make extreme financial decisions and engage in personal austerity programs, but being aroace takes singlehood to a whole new level because it may have to act at a fundamental biological level - you leverage your lack of horniness to attain earlier financial independence. 

The question for me is - Is it even ok for the FIRE movement to have its own sexual orientation?

I'm old-fashioned - for me, financial independence is a tool for family formation. I will earn passive income to better support my family in the future, and I expect my own kids to carry this forward. FI is a means to an end. It's not an end in itself. But I can accept that younger generations that have grown more individualistic would not consider family formation a life goal - I don't think any amount of cost-benefit analysis would justify getting hitched, and it's worse for young women. 

In previous articles, I've stated that family formation in Singapore can be lucrative if you scale the BTO/EC ladder and take advantage of economies of scale. Still, in essence, this works well only for assortatively mated couples, such as folks in the top universities who date and ultimately marry each other. 

If you run out of arguments, you have to hit the books, which is why I leveraged the book Red Flags, Green Flags by Dr Ali Fenwick, which has a fairly nice section on dating. 

The book does not discuss money much, but it highlights some issues with his decision to stay single. Singlehood works as a short-term strategy because you have the freedom to work on yourself, but studies on loneliness make it a bad idea over the long term. From my vantage point, I observe that singles are quite happy tight up to their 50s, then bitterness sets in, and they stop making new friends or lose the ones they already have. Many single folks don't have a real strategy for loneliness as they can't account for their personality changes over time. 

I was clear why I was single until my early thirties—I wanted enough passive income to live on and support my family. You need to know what you are working on. Maybe you are prioritizing your career, on a healing journey, or just trying to figure out your preferences.

The decision to stay single can also be a serious red flag. 

If you have stayed single for too long, becoming too stuck in your ways is straightforward. You also need to gain the skills and the willingness to handle relationship conflicts, such as my wife not liking my three straight days playing Baldur's Gate 3.  

The book offers a straightforward solution: When you run out of excuses (but being aroace is a valid reason to skip the marriage market) for being single, you should start dating casually to learn some social skills and about yourself. 

The consequence can be found in a recent CNA documentary. 

One fine day, your neighbours will complain about the smell coming from your flat, and folks will be called in to clean up your dead body.

Thoughts about my latest Cohort Reunion and 50th birthday celebration

 

As opposed to how awful my last weekend was (which will be a topic for a future blog article), this week has been pleasant as I attended a gathering of Swiss Cottage Secondary School's 1990 graduating batch's 50th birthday celebration. As I belonged to the "study" clique in school many years ago, I did not expect to be at the centre of social interactions. Still, I deeply enjoyed observing the proceedings yesterday, and I have enough readers in that event to be able to pen my thoughts on reunions.

We're still basking in the glow from last night's celebration, with some folks in the financial sphere claiming to know my cohort mates. My mum commented that the ladies looked dynamic and young even though we were half a century old. But the wisest thing a classmate told me last night was that class reunions can be a tense affair for some people and that those who decide to show up are the most satisfied with their lives. So, at least 30 happy people from the cohort. 

That being said, some topics of conversation are interesting enough to make it on this blog. 

Investing in Malaysia

So, the background is a classmate who is a Malaysian working in Singapore kicked me up and drove me to the event. He was discussing investing in Malaysia with another classmate, and that other guy was quoting from this blog about my anti-Malaysian investing thesis. You know the rest, I don't agree with the 1M65 mobs at all, and I believe that political and forex risk will damn Singapore investors in the future if the incumbent loses power. And I speak this as someone who owns an income-generating shophouse in the JB suburbs. 

But it's unfair for a buddy to be contradicted because of what I write on my blog. Malaysian Chinese have a significant advantage in earning SGD and becoming landlords in Malaysia. This is because they can shift their expenses to SGD or MYR and are slightly less affected by forex changes. My current JB shophouse yields about 6%, so I don't see an issue of a Malaysian Chinese earning SGD to play JB Monopoly to systematically buy shophouses and then swap them for a motel later in life. 

But good luck if you are a Singaporean facing information asymmetries and a ringgit that may plunge further.

 

Should you prioritise Financial Independence over starting a family?

 

I want to answer a reader's question that was posed to me lately. This person found someone very attractive, but she wants to prioritise early marriage and children. However, because this reader is close to FIRE, he is conflicted about choosing FIRE or jumping into the relationship. 

It is time to share my updated thoughts on this blog because I suspect my earlier articles may have had an undue influence on him. I am OK with changing my mind on this blog as I age. 

First, there are solid arguments for a single guy to choose FIRE over starting a family. This would be my choice in my 20s, having only started dating when I could live on investment income (because I can pay for every date with dividend payouts). For a guy, his bargaining power grows exponentially as his portfolio grows, and you be fixated on a kind of woman, but not a specific one, so go for someone only when your bargaining power goes up. Truth is, for most guys, the dating scene can be very cruel, with dates on Tinder trying to sell ILPs to you and most women going after that "6-foot-five investment banker with blue eyes." 

But as I got older, my mind started to change on this matter. 

Suppose you are a guy, and you've already been shopping around. You are already in your mid-30s with a solid career and educational qualifications. You find someone more attractive than your previous set of dates, and she is similar in professional credentials. 

I fail to see why her desire to start a family should stop you guys from going ahead; you're adamant about attaining FIRE. 

Some points of consideration :

a) Suppose there is a fear of divorce. The national statistics should not apply to readers of my blog. Suppose the rate of divorce is 30% in Singapore. Your probability of divorce should be much lower if both of you are not married at too young and have degree qualifications. Adjust your probabilities as you know more about your date. 

b) The idea that marriage and kids can slow down FIRE does not account for the government policies that are specifically designed to maintain a heteronormative society via the BTO/EC systems. While a single guy can probably FIRE much earlier, he will lose out on the capital gains from a leveraged residential property that only married couples can buy. So far, the increases in my EC valuation exceed how much I spend on my two kids. 

c) Folks don't understand that marriage and kids can build one of society's most potent economic units as you reap economies of scale. Statistics show a retired couple spends less than two singles living separately. 

The final point I want to make is that many readers may be fixated on the remaining single FIRE thought leaders, but I don't believe that they will have the last laugh.

Just because a person is wise with money does not make them wise regarding relationships. If someone has money and is unattached, it may even say something about their personality!

I don't believe that any of my happily single friends have a plan to counter loneliness, which can kill at a rate faster than heart disease, and it actually gets more complicated to form friendships as a guy after your 50s. I don't see Gen Z running up to me to get me to play D&D with them. 

At the end of the day, we can learn from the tragedies we read about in the press, the cases of Yang Yin  

and Mitchell Omg / Audrey Fang may be lurking in the corner, waiting to pounce on the elderly who are financially independent.

Who will spend your money in the end?