New Project - AI Explorer's Masterclass

I can finally reveal details on what I have been working on for the past few weeks. 

As part of my work to "retrain" myself as an AI-integrated freelancer, I've not just been trying to learn AI coding techniques under the AIAP Foundations Course. Like a professional software engineer, I've been actively using ChatGPT to answer tutorial questions, refactor my code, and push code to GitHub. However, I don't have a firm foundation in software engineering skills and find going to GitHub challenging. And it's just amazing that because I have some domain expertise and common sense, AI becomes a powerful partner in solving deep technical questions in data science. 

In the process, I've become a lot more sensitive to possible disruptions in the workplace. It's no longer replacing one senior employee with three cheaper and younger junior employees, as I was in my 30s. Nowadays, it's more like replacing four to five senior employees with one junior employee armed with an AI subscription and strong generalist skills.

So what does this mean for tomorrow's workers?

This is exactly what my cousin-in-law and I wanted to address when we started work on the AI Explorer's Masterclass, a two-day enrichment program for 9-13-year-olds. We intend to pilot this during the June Holidays.

The poster for the program is up, and I intend to use my channels to drive sign-ups.

If you have a kid aged 9-13 and you want to find some interesting activities for them, do refer to this graphic, scan the QR code below, or just email me at waichung.ng@gmail.com.

 

Beginner's Guide to Financial Independence

 

With some numbers, I now have a better idea of what folks want to see in a YouTube video. 

Now, it is time to create longer-form videos that, viewed collectively, would be a free 1-hour course on financial independence and the FIRE movement. 

My first drop just came out during lunch, which explains what financial independence stands for. Over the next week or so, I wil discuss different variants of FIRE, how to specifically invest to become financially independent, as well as special issues that are relevant to folks in the FIRE movement.

Enjoy !

Financial Markets Trend Analysis

I'm in the process of showcasing some of the features of the All-Weather Portfolio Masterclass in videos that show how students can understand key trends in the financial markets by running Python Jupyter notebooks that are demonstrated and taught in the program.

This first video, which will be featured regularly at the beginning of every month, shows me using my trend-follower roboadvisor to examine which broad asset ETFs are trending upwards and attempt to match our findings with geopolitical events. 

The All-Weather Portfolio Masterclass is a course that will be run as and when we receive a critical mass of confirmed students. It covers four types of roboadvisors that students can deploy to make investment choices for themselves. 

For pricing information and available dates, please contact Dr. Wealth by following this link: 

https://drwealth.com/awp/

Fictional works that shed financial wisdom

This video may not do as well on YouTube as the others. Still, I have to do it because I feel strongly about recent revelations about how MP Ng Chee Meng treated trainee teachers, which came to light during his stint as Education Minister.

As I did not have a robust humanities education in the 1980s, being turned off by how humanities like History and English Literature were taught by teachers of that era, a large part of my personal development came from playing RPGS and reading fictional works, with many books from the fantasy genre. I would say that even today, when most of my reads are "serious" in nature, I continue to appreciate comics, manga and even cosy Korean literature.    

I suspect that this continuous exposure to fiction kept my mind open and sharp to survive my SMU JD program, which is still dominated by humanities and the artsy types. It's also consequential when I was building my public speaking skills as an undergraduate. 

As such, I'm upset at the hectoring trainee teachers received from the ex-General. 

Why is there a dichotomy between fictional works and serious works? 

Why should people be shamed for the literature they consume in their spare time? 

One way to position this is that Ng Chee Meng is an electrical engineering major like me, which is true ( but this makes me boil too). I've attended a sociology class in NUS with my fellow electrical engineers, and my peers were reductionist as hell, not to mention endlessly entertaining.  But based on my experience, I've never met an engineer or IT professional who gets shamed for the fiction they read - it's a blessing that some people even read. Still, I've witnessed many senior legal associates disrespected for the "low-class" books they read or the K-pop concerts they attended. An old, grizzled veteran lawyer in his 60s even admitted that he would judge an associate on whether they attended anything made by Andrew Lloyd Weber. 

The fact is that if we understand what sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu have been saying, culture is a tool to distinguish people of different social classes. So even if fiction does not seem practical in finance policy making, it can be a great source of cultural capital, something members of the government need to understand. In this case, Singaporeans have suffered as Jack Neo seems to be our only cultural export, whereas China is levelling up to Nezha 2. 

As a finance guy, I must defend the reading of fiction. Three pieces of fiction say important things about money and finance.

I remain a diehard PAP supporter, but I think it's up to us to clean house to keep our government viable. 

Enjoy!

Is buying Bitcoin gambling?

I'm slowly mining for insights drawn from the general elections, and I should have enough content for two videos.

The first video addresses PAP MP Goh Sze Kee's allegations that investing in Bitcoin is like gambling. I take apart this argument with some nifty quantitative work. It should be enjoyable for both PAP and opposition supporters.

Please enjoy!

My channel is gradually slowing down when it comes to new subcribers, so if the content resonates with you, please share it around so that I can monetise it one day.

 

Election is over ! Back to finance content

 

It's shocking how many new subscriptions disappeared during the run-up to the elections. Once the winners were announced, the numbers started to trend again, so I expect this video on REITS to be quite hot. You can tell from the scammers talking to themselves in the comments section.

Ok, what about this election?

I'm happy with most of the results, but PPP losing the deposits for the entire team warms the cockles of my heart the most. Even as a PAP die-hard in Holland Bukit Timah and enjoying the ridiculous landslide of over 80%, I'm hoping that Jalan Kayu would swing the other way. Something about SAF Command and Control makes me uncomfortable when they make money or business decisions. I choose to be sceptical unless someone can prove themselves otherwise, as Chan Chun Sing has done. Also, rumours of someone talking down to trainee teachers will only push them towards the FIRE movement and get them to reinvent themselves as private tutors.

My support for the PAP will always be conditional. Singapore needs to remain a good business place. It should never fall into the trap like the EU, where the rich get soaked to pay lazy people to do nothing at home. 

The test for me has not yet come up. If I choose between WP and PAP, which party will earn my support? WP needs to disentangle itself from Jamus Lim's socialist policies, which will push the rich away and create a net loss of jobs. 

My ultimate allegiance is to continue collecting dividends without taxation and later enrol in a full-time AI course to collect some welfare-for-school payouts if things go further south.  

In the meantime, expect more content from me moving forward.

 

A simple story of my home mortgage

 

Because of the politically charged atmosphere, I've decided to take a break from the YouTube videos to focus on this blog instead, where I will write about my home mortgage.

As it stands, I have a home mortgage of about $520,000 over the EC I bought a decade ago, the mortgage is paid using my CPF contributions and dividends I receive from my portfolio. It has always been a pleasure paying for my mortgage as I watch my home equity grow. Also, not using my equity portfolio to repay the home loan feels like leveraging my dividend portfolio. 

During COVID-19, the bank offered me a six-month break from mortgage payments, but fearing other events in the future, I stopped paying for the principal but kept paying the loan interest. When SIBOR became SORA, I took the chance to switch to a fixed-rate loan at a promotional price and managed to free up some cash flow for myself as my business turned terrible. It was still tough to feed about $3,000+ into a mortgage as interest rates have increased, so a reduction to $2,700 was a lifesaver. 

So this year was a year of a lot of inconveniences. Last time on my blog, I wrote about fiscal marksmanship as I replenished my CPF-MA after my mum's hospitalisation, thinking that it was the right thing to do.

So recently, I had a new but less unpleasant surprise. 

My mortgage came up for repricing, and the bank is offering an even lower rate from 3.65% to 2.45% for the next two years, followed by SORA+0.7%.

But there's a catch—I need to contribute 2% of the remaining loan quantum, which is about $15,200. 

The loan was attractive as it could reduce my monthly burden, so I took a hit by paying this sum from my cash reserves. If you think about it, it's just another event like a medical emergency, so I have to rely on my dividends this quarter to recover from another drawdown. I'm okay with it because I can catch up with the loan moratorium I took years ago. My only regret is that I can't buy more stocks over the next 3 months as I refill my cash reserves.

This is my first repricing experience, so I'm unaware that banks customarily seek a small repayment before they are willing to process one. I hope readers will consider keeping about 2% of their loan quantum as part of their emergency funds if they get an offer from their bank that they can't refuse.

There's another interesting point in this story. The bank asked me to apply for a credit card to waive a $200 repricing fee. I went through the application process but was rejected by the bank. I earned enough during the past two years, and the bank clarified that the reasons for the failed application would never be shared with me. 

Is it my age?

Or could I always pay my credit card expenses on the dot every month, so I'm not a good customer?

This will remain a mystery to me forever. 

YouTube videos will return next week.  

 

Don't talk cock, just tell me what stocks to buy

One group of the population that investment course providers cannot win are folks who think that there is a magical list of stocks that, when bought, would make people millionaires, so there is no need to pick up some fundamental skills in finance.

This video shows how I deal with folks who corner me in social situations to ask for stock tips. 

You will find that this is worth your time. 

 

Personal Update - Three priorities moving forward

 

As of last year, I made adjustments to my social engagements and gained some clarity about how and with whom I should spend my time. I took this detox much further by reducing my binge-watching and stopping looking for games outside my home.  Now, I can clarify what I must do as I take a semester break from teaching at a local Poly.  

Beyond my training business, I will focus my time on the following:

a) Artificial Intelligence Apprenticeship Program Foundation course

This is not the AIAP program, but the course that equips students with the skillset. This program is very challenging as it's not conducted by a human but simply a set of instructions, after which you're thrown into the deep end with data you need to clean and process independently. I enjoy the freedom to explore a complex problem, but I'm not advancing as quickly as I did in classes in the past, as I want to thoroughly master the skillset before the semester ends. 

This effort may lead to an application for the actual program, but I expect the dividends to be paid to my ERM code base, and even my YouTube viewers may see some code very soon.

b) AI course for kids

Another project I'm developing is an AI course for kids aged 9-14 with a tuition centre in the East. If you have kids free during the June holidays, you can write privately to me to enquire. I really want to leave my comfort zone, find new sources of regular income, and learn new skills that I have not developed so far, and there is no better way than to create an AI course from the ground up.

c) YouTube Channel

This is the equivalent of my gaming hobby. One of my biggest regrets is that I should have built up my influencer street cred when I started conducting investment courses, because the feedback on viewers and responses can be addictive! My problem is that I'm a long way from monetisation, but the secondary effect is that some of my materials will reinforce my course materials after further enhancements. 

My next step is to find more creative ways to get viewers to pay me, and you will discover considerable developments in this space. I intend to engage viewers three times a week. 

The underlying theme is that I'm undergoing another transformation. 

This volume of work has been impossible to do in the past, as I lacked a strong AI tool backing me up in the bad old days. AI now improves my marketing copy, debugs my code, improves my slides, and corrects my grammar. I must spend six months trying to use AI to give me an idea of the kind of person who can make me obsolete. The hardest part is to resort to asking Chatgpt every time I'm stuck on something, and it's clear that there are so many obstacles for me. 

With all these breakneck changes and the impending doom that can come once Agentic AI is ready to take on the world, I have no idea what kind of profile a person needs to have to make a living in this world. 

It does not matter because with the proper domain knowledge, a person can become a one-man army and run an entire business operation independently. 

On Singapore Savings Bonds

 

For our next how-to video, I will discuss the importance of Singapore Savings Bonds and why retail investors need to track their returns. 

Watch long enough and I'll even show everyone how to purchase SSBs on the DBS website.

A crash course on the meaning of life in the context of FIRE

 

We almost had a personal finance festival, but the May elections forced the event to be postponed. In such events of late, financial institutions have been pushing an alternative to FIRE, implying that people in the FIRE movement experience a life with little meaning and that somehow paying expensive annual management fees can lead to a more meaningful existence.  

To counter such forms of propaganda, I spent a decent three weeks of my life decoding the meaning of life, devouring Roy Baumeister's book Meanings of Life. This article summarises the book's most fundamental ideas.

To start, we need to break meaning down into four parts. We need to pursue each part to have a meaningful life:

• Your life must have a purpose - Why do you exist?
• Your life must have value - You must bring value to others or society
• Your life must have efficacy - You need control over events.
• You must have self-worth - You need some way to feel superior to others.

Once you lay down these four foundations, you have meaning in life, and it produces a few effects :

• First, you connect all these positive and negative events together to respond differently to them.
• Secondly, this response will increase the stability in your life and help you cope with changes better. 

And that's basically the gist of everything else in this formidable volume.

If you examine FIRE within this meaning definition, then FIRE is intensely meaningful. 

• Purpose - We exist to be free of our golden handcuffs. We play roles like child, spouse, and parent rather than just a cog in the economy. 
• Value - A financially free person can give up a job to someone else who needs it more and pursue a calling rather than a job. 
• Efficacy - Passive forms of income give us a powerful sense of control over financial obstacles. 
• Self-worth - And trust me, you will definitely feel superior to others. 

That's all I have to say. 

I hope readers will use these ideas to challenge financial institutions with so-called more meaningful approaches to financial planning. It's not meaningful to be a source of commissions to these institutions.

Instead, just buy the stock, collect the dividends, and speed up your journey towards financial independence. 

About the High Cost of Living in Singapore

With the elections approaching, a JC pal asked me to make a video about Singapore's high cost of living. 

This should be the last of this channel's experimental content phases, and I will soon create content that would better suit viewership.

 

CPF-SA or CPF-IS ?

The following video taps into the popularity of content on CPF. 

I hope you guys enjoy it.

[I apologise if there are audio issues on this feed, even though I've given up on video filters. My cheapskate decision to use freeware might ultimately be to blame.It will be a long way before I become fully competent in this.]

 

It's very hard to become a financial influencer

 

After two weeks, I have some idea of what works on YouTube, and clearly, this space can be quite brutal and rewarding depending on what kind of content you intend to build. 

The video on how to think about investing in local banks was a clear winner in our series. The content most similar to what I teach in class would add the most significant number of subscribers and views to my channel. But we've yet to compare it with a video about CPF, so that's what I will be trying to launch over the next few days.

Another learning is that free tools like Da Vinci Resolve can be very hard and counterintuitive to use. I will find a way to subscribe to a new tool once I have a ready means to monetise the channel, but I suspect that this already has a positive impact on business. At the moment, I'm stubbornly trying to make do with freeware, but like other areas in a person's life, you actually get what you pay for. 

But I can't go through life with a large stack of software tools that nickel and dime me every month. Some influencers take more than a year to take off. 

I'm closing in on 600 subscribers, so I need 400 more to unlock Google AdSense. However, I need a total of 4000 hours watched over a year's look-back period, and I've watched about 300 hours so far. 

Some pals suggest we do more coffee-shop talk like Mr. Loo of 1m65. Still, I should develop my unique data-driven style in my presentations, as I'm ultimately responsible for my investment course business and personal branding. Next week, I would also like to use these upcoming elections to develop my unique perspective on Singapore's cost of living. 

If you have not subscribed to my channel, please support me here. 

HOW TO : Access dividends information on Interactive Brokers.

 

This video is short and sweet because I'm not at my usual place and must use an older laptop to create content. 

This is a video I made to help my students generate a custom report showing them the number of dividends they picked up over a user-defined time period.

Keep the subscriptions and views coming, and a lengthier video should arrive over the weekend.

Grappling with the Donald Trump Tariffs

 

The previous video has been very successful and has scored quite a few views for my channel and more subscribers. I'm still testing out the kind of content viewers will enjoy, so I'm taking the other extreme and explaining a tricky new concept in political science called dialectic materialism and seeing how it would fare with viewers.  If you find this video abstract or too difficult to follow, I have more practical articles on CPF coming up very soon.

Along the way, I also learned the basics of audio editing and normalised the audio. Despite all this, there is still some missing sound in my video, and I might remove the blur filter in future uploads. 

My face is overrated with my prism lenses anyway.

I've been trying to practice getting geopolitical alpha for quite some time, and you can find an earlier attempt here.

https://treeofprosperity.blogspot.com/2021/01/geopolitical-alpha-how-to-think-about.html

Considerations when investing in local banks

 

For this weekend's video project, I prototyped a more seminar-like video on investing in local bank stocks. 

Due to some feedback about the poor quality of the last video, I implemented a blurring filter to my video. Still, it slowed down my system and made the audio quality poorer, requiring a re-recording that only slightly improved the quality. 

So please bear with me and try to finish the entire 10-minute video. (According to analytics, most don't. )

Like I said, I will suck for a while, but I'll get better as I will focus on audio quality in my next video.

Nevertheless, I thank everyone for allowing me to reach 500 subscribers. 

 

Putting Trump tariffs and life into perspective

 

The Trump tariffs could not come at a worse time. 

My finances have just recovered from my mum's hospitalization, during which I proactively took some liquid cash to reimburse my CPF-SA. Furthermore, my teaching gigs have been frozen for one semester. The Trump tariffs may affect my other training businesses and, if they persist, may affect future dividend payouts. 

Some close friends say that my career and lifestyle choices are unsustainable without my dividends, which is mainly true. Sometimes, I wish to pursue a freelance career that can pay for all of my expenses, but mathematically, that is impossible without a full-time job. 

But if life throws lemons at you, you make lemonade. 

You may have noticed some significant changes on this blog. 

I will create more video content on YouTube to supplement written blog articles. This blog will become more meta, where I will talk about my journey as a professional and as a freelancer. The videos will contain more substantive material on personal finance as I want to reach a broader audience.

This should have happened a while ago, but I was doing well in investment training then, and there was no need to make too many significant changes in how I generate revenue. Now, given the possibility of being NEET, it is time to add a new dimension to my professional persona. A whole new world has opened to me ever since I started trying to build up my LinkedIn presence and fiddling with video recording and editing tools.

Uploading videos is complicated enough to become a new hobby, and the only price I need to pay is to binge-watch less Netflix and read up more on valuable materials. I use the Feynman Technique to boost my own understanding of my materials as I teach them to others. This has been my secret all along - when I teach investing, I'm ultimately teaching myself to be a better investor as I derive more from my dividends than my earned income.

So this week, I devoured a book for newbies on YouTube video creation, and a new world is being opened to me, including many new forms of revenue generation. As it stands, I already have a small base of students who will appreciate tiny bite-sized 15-minute commentary on local markets. I also have a ready form of monetization from my existing courses. The only thing left is to create 100 videos, making stepwise improvements for every video I launch. If I can unlock AdSense within 100 moves, I can turn this into a new vocation. Otherwise, I can chalk it to the multiple learning experiences I will get in my 50s that are becoming much more turbulent than I expected in my 20s.

There will be plenty of time to discuss the economy in the video format, but I want to put a non-financial angle to the Trump tariffs. 

What price are we paying to navigate through this kind of chaos? 

My easiest decision was to give up my identity as a gamer. This week, my D&D hobby lost two major leaders, Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, each deciding to move on when the game peaked. I'm unsure how much RPG books will cost with Chinese tariffs over 100%. It's also becoming logistically problematic to get four RPG players onto a game on weekends when I can stream a finance talk and interact with fellow retail investors using YouTube during the same slot. My extroversion demands that, given it's so hard to make new friends in your 50s.

So, will my new hobby work out?

At the moment, I've been doing this for a week, so things will suck for the moment as I ramp up the quality of the videos. A good friend has already asked me to tell you how bad my videos are, and I need to blur out the background in future videos. Negative feedback in this line is gold; anything is better than indifference.

But it will get better. If you wish to support me, just find any blog article with a video and subscribe to my channel. 

At the very least, I will do this for the next six months.

Stay tuned tomorrow for my video on local bank stocks.

Consoling retail investors as the crash stretches on in the local markets

 

I probably will not run out of materials at the rate the market is going.

I'm slowly levelling up in creating new video content. Today, I started transitioning from my face to the lecture slides on OBS, and it's pretty challenging to do this with only one laptop screen. 

Just bear with me. It takes 100 videos to become proficient in this, and I'm a one-man army here.

On today's market crash

 

I had to rush to generate this second video that talks in finer detail about today's market crash. 

In hindsight, this could have been done better. My live video blocked parts of my PPT slides, and there was no call to action.

Nevertheless, I'm still trying to learn about YouTube influencing, and I've not even started on my YouTube marketing texts yet!

Please support me by subscribing to my YouTube channel. 

Expect more material next week!

 

Baby Steps : A new financial influencer is born

 

This blog will reach its 20th anniversary in 2025, and it is time to create news to reach new audiences. 

For the past few months, I've been learning new video recording tools like OBS. Just today, I gave myself a 10-minute tutorial on Da Vinci Resolve to learn some basic video editing skills. Over one evening, I created a short video with PPT slides and some of the new AI tools I have picked up. 

The result is my first attempt to create a short YouTube video explaining how I intend to begin my journey as a financial influencer. I apologise, but it's a bit raw and does not contain much content. 

For now, I hope that readers can subscribe to my YouTube channel. 

In the meantime, let me know what you want me to discuss.

My next video should be coming up shortly. 

Catching up with AI's new capabilities will be tough

 

As I'm facing an empty semester, I've been trying to be as productive as possible, putting a lot of effort into getting up to speed on the latest AI developments. It began with going to the Polytechnic to attend an in-house session on how AI can assist lecturers in making their lives easier; I was pretty stunned that I could create a slide deck on Intellectual Property Law ( complete with local references to legal cases ) when I had never taken Intellectual Property Law as a module in SMU. My services may cease to be required by public institutions in the future, as in-house lecturers can do much more with less. 

To deal with this existential fear, I signed up for a foundational module under the Artificial Intelligence Apprenticeship Program to improve my coding skills. While I had no issues learning the material and incorporating data analytical skills into my investment coursework, I was intimidated by how the course is thoroughly run by AI. The lecture video can explain the concepts well with a decent accent, but the lecturer looks artificially constructed as he did not blink often enough. The assessment was highly effective as the AI could mark my qualitative answers, tell me how my answers lacked detail, and even assign a grade to me in real-time. This is replacing post-graduate educational courses, so students only need to show up to perform labs or role-playing sessions. 

Of course, learning is only half the story; I have to figure out how to use ChatGPT to solve practical issues. My web application for my investment course has flashed many warnings over the years since it has existed. These warnings are harmless but may be signs that my code will be deprecated one day, so proactive elimination of warnings is a good idea. I resolved all warnings in one night as ChatGT-4o could explain what the warnings were and tell me exactly what code I needed to change to remove it for good. 

As I was pretty happy with ChatGPT and the more straightforward programming tasks, I restarted my attempt to host my web application on the cloud, something I had been unable to do since my last deployment broke years ago, and I have hosted my website from my laptop ever since. So, I patiently copied my code to the cloud and attempted to bring up my website, sending error messages to ChatGPT, which would patiently suggest what to do. While the AI did not get it right the first time around, I was able to have my website up within about 2 hours of troubleshooting. This required amending code that I did not write, and my understanding of software engineering is in drips and drabs. I have been an IT systems administrator, project manager and compliance professional for most of my career, so I have never done coding professionally.

I see a lot more disruption on the horizon. I was enrolled in a new AI called Manus AI, and within hours, I could generate an analyst report for Jardine C&C with quality and explanation that seemed better than ChatGPt-4o. The free version of ChatGPt felt that Jardine C&C was worth six times more than the current market price. The paid version was more accurate, projecting the price to be about 10% above the market price. Manus AI gave me a fair, comprehensive sell report. 

Over the next few days, I'll pass a few employment contracts through Manus AI to see whether it can identify critical clauses and point me to the proper case law to resolve the legal issue. If it does, it means that all three of my degree qualifications that I've worked so hard for would become obsolete pretty soon. What I know would not be worth much compared to my knowledge of how I ask an AI to solve the practical issues I'm facing in my business.

So there you have it. 

It's not about a bunch of creatives who are upset because you tried to turn family photos into something resembling a Studio Ghibli animation. With such practical tools, IT professional teams can shrink by at least 10%, causing widespread unemployment. My ERM students no longer require brokerage reports to assess potential stock picks. DBS is not renewing the contracts of some of their contract workers.

Lastly, I suspect the next-generation tool, even if it might not be able to replace a legal professional, may force law firms, at the very least, to be able to set fixed fees for legal work instead of hourly billing rates; this is Kryptonite to a sector that has grown fat over the years. If anything, in-house counsels are way more innovative and have superior AI tools to assist them, so they will try to pay law firms less.  

Financially, I'm safe for now; I might not need to do anything drastic to survive in Singapore, but I will likely rush headfirst into AI programmes at NUS. It might not be too late for a creative, a bookkeeper or even a coder who is extremely unhappy to pick up a blue-collar skill like plumbing, electrical work, or a heavy vehicle driving licence. 

I suspect the future may not look good for cognitive workers, so plumbing and home repairs might become popular CCAs in NUS. 

So we're all BDSM professionals now?

 

A while ago, during lunch, a pal suggested that Dr Wealth's marketing approach was very neutral and bland and may thus lack the ability to provoke clients to take action.  He's describing how these internet personal physical training marketing materials do it. 

" Disappear for a month. Come back as the most dangerous person in the room !"

The marketing message proposed by my friend left a bad taste in my mouth because it reminded me of how the crypto bros talked in 2021 before the Terra blockchain implosion. I explained that marketing messages like this can attract a lot of incels and folks who take the red pill, and because it proposes a quick way to allow young men a change in status, the message may serve its purpose. The last kind of student I want are the folks who say," Don't talk cock, just tell me what to buy !" because there are many trainers who cater to that demographic at less than $500 per course.

Still, I have a slower community-building business model and prefer a smaller group of software engineers, CFA candidates, and even finance professors in my community. Over six years, I've built a 600+ community so unique that Maybank Kim Eng brokers will tell me they can identify my students from the carefully balanced margin accounts never seen elsewhere. 

But what my friend said bothered me, as I'm still a businessman, and sales numbers are a matter of pride and somewhat a measurement of my manhood, which has been flagging lately. 

So what can I do? I usurped the role from Dr Wealth and did my own marketing copy:

"Disappear for five days, and get a plan to get the most significant raise among your peers when you return to the office!"

Initially, I was happy to have 175 preview attendees, 75% more than usual, but eventually, I became disappointed, as social media only accounted for about 10% of preview attendees. Sales were decent but did not come from my copy - sales were decent because local markets are great again.

But I can't conclude anything about the performance of one rookie attempt. I need to build up marketing muscle and experiment with different messages. 

So, I spent the past few days creating a more substantial LinkedIn presence and taking some nascent steps to build my "personal brand." I've created a draft of my next marketing copy using LinkedIn's newsletter feature. 

There are so many questions I have for myself as I turn myself into a marketer:

• Do those marketing scripts work? "Give me 5 minutes..."
• Should I continue this blog or migrate to LinkedIn newsletters? Does Gen Z even use RSS feeds?
• Does my tone offend LinkedIn connections because they are so sterile and buttoned down? "I am humbled to receive...."

In an era when the latest version of ChatGPT can render entire professions obsolete, the ability to hustle, build marketing funnels, and seek ways to survive is more important than ever.

We are all into BDSM now.

BDSM = Business Development Sales and Marketing.

I thank my mastermind group of young hustlers and collaborators for convincing me that my personal obsession with the psychology of personality would make me a reasonably competent marketer.  

  

Letter to Batch 37 of the Early Retirement Masterclass

Dear Students of Batch 37,

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

Just like that, investors in Singapore blue chips are no longer the underdogs as STI heads into all-time-high territory. Local banks found favour from the possibility of higher inflation arising from Trump tariffs. REITs, however, have also started to recover, and the US Fed is still seeing two interest rate reductions in 2025. The overall effect is that Singapore stocks remain fairly priced at a PE ratio between 13 and 14 with decent equity risk premiums.

This portfolio's current yield is 7.1%. As the batch size remains small, we have again created a very focused portfolio of 12 stocks, not counting the Bank of China. We remain excited about the new SDR launched in markets like Ping An Insurance.

Also, this batch of students employed ChatGPT on Jardine C&C, and an AI-generated analyst report has been shared with the ERM Facebook community. Initially, the student used a free version of ChatGPT, which gave an outlandish target price projection, so we discarded the results on the spot. Moments ago, I recreated the report using the same methodology but using ChatGPT-4o, and the numbers became much more realistic. Researchers have confirmed that later versions of ChatGPT have performed better on mock CFA exams.

Artificial intelligence is improving rapidly, and the ERM program will continue to evolve toward greater use of AI. To ensure we stay at the cutting edge of AI use for retail investors, I will examine an automated generation of analyst reports using Python code and Agentic AI.

Lastly, I hope Batch 37 will participate actively in the FB group.

Hope to see you then!

Christopher Ng Wai Chung

Don't let the wrong finance ideas live rent free in your head

 

Those who have been following the news can imagine what might happen next. All thanks to a message from an influencer, spooked folks will try to withdraw money from a financial platform but will see withdrawals delayed. Financial advisors will strike at this point, trying to spin this as a bank run triggered by influencers, pushing regulators to tighten the rules.

In the end, even small-time bloggers like me would have to stay in touch with regulators, all because everyone lets the wrong financial ideas stay rent-free in their heads. 

This article is about wrong ideas. It attempts to expand on a previous article about ideas that are too true to be good (link).  

a) High-yield savings products

Any savings product yields higher than Singapore Savings Bonds, which is currently pegged at 2.83% for the first year, so you should not spend time rent-free in your head. 

We've learnt that high-yield savings products may either lack protection under SDIC or cause you to lose liquidity temporarily due to withdrawal delays. Still, we've known that for many other offerings, the higher returns can be nerfed or come with conditions that involve buying insurance or unit trust from banks.  

The issue arises if we spend much time obsessing over these products. Sometimes, returns cannot match the inflation rate, and oftentimes rates are unsustainable. It takes up a lot of energy to track different options, and opening accounts just to park your money for a small gain can be a waste of time. 

b) Better "miles systems" or more efficient credit cards

Another thing that baffles me is that there is so much effort spent on converting credit card utilization into point systems that influencers who track these incentive programs have such a strong following in Singapore.

This is funny because to generate these points, you need to spend money first, and behaving more frugally will result in much more money in your pocket than those miles that you earn. I've been on the same VISA classic card since I graduated from university, and it works fine. It gives me a $20 popular voucher every six months. 

Life should not be this dramatic.

c) What is an influencer's net worth or recent dividend payout 

Some folks use their blog to track their net worth or dividends. That's fine and good. I even have to share details of my previous years' annual dividends and net worth during my previews. But readers get excited when someone makes their first million or gets a massive monthly dividend payout. 

The problem with gawking at someone's figures is pointless unless that person has an actual plan on how to get there (like me), or by sheer coincidence, you have the same background and advantages that guy has. 

You should be focused on your net worth instead. 

There are a lot more ideas that institutions want to squeeze into your head, such as information on products that mix insurance and investments. Financial advisors or maybe an influencer might want to play the expert on "bonus units" for ILPs when we know that the entire product line is questionable if we can educate ourselves to invest our money in the markets. 

Ultimately, the folks pulling the strings are the institutions that sponsor the influencers and give the FAs commissions to distribute these marketing messages. The wise thing to do is to realise that if these marketing messages succeed, only by buying the shares of these institutions will earn a dividend for savvy investors.  

In a future article, I will share the financial ideas that you should have in your head. 

They even pay rent. 

The case for having no Integrated Shield Plan

 

Ok, I need to close the loop for the last article for my mum's hospitalization. Thank you for all the well wishes and very important folks have read the last article after Investment Moats notified his bosses of my experience.

Before I proceed with my insights, I want to shed more light on my mum's Class C Ward stay. The top line cost is about $37k - 3 days high dependency wayrd + 27 days normal ward, government subsidies reduced it by $19k, medishield reduced by a further $6k and about $12k was deducted from my Medisave account. My final cash bill is a big fat zero, which was a hugely pleasant surprise for me as I actually prepared $6k from my cash reserves to pay off this bill. 

So my Medisave has been fully reloaded, the sums removed from cash reserve have been returned and dividends from Wednesday this week can be fully deployed to expoit the volatility from Trump's administration.

So my insight for today is the question of whether there is a case for having no Integrated Shield Plan or ISP.

For a start, I did not get into this position of having no ISP willingly. My bloodline has been deemed too expensive or impossible to insure, so I could not afford H&S insurance even if I wanted to in my 20s. But over the years, as I grew my portfolio, I watched premiums paid by peers skyrocket. Along the way subsidized Class C wards was what my dad used his entire life and prior to my mum's brain bleed, she is a cancer survivor. In all these cases, I was saved by a full-to-the-brim Medisave account and 1 year of living expenses uninvested in cash.

So I believe very strongly that there is a case for NOT having an ISP. But like buy term and invest the rest philosophy, we need to very clear that there is a price to pay to do so. 

The biggest problem is that there is no commissioned salesman who is willing to support my position, so please forward this blog to your friends to read.

a) Don't listen to your FA, we can absolutely rely on default Medishield

The first thing that we need to be aware of is that we can rely on default Medishield that allows us to go up to Ward B2 in a government hospital. And we don't need listen to fearmongering from financial advisors. At Woodlands Health, my mum's ward was 6 patients, there was a screen to watch Youtube, and air cooler exist. It may be more uncomfortable at older hospitals but I suspect older hospitals get better acute care. 

b) You need to be responsible for yourself and become your own insurer

While ISPs can be costly and you will have more sums for yourself, you will need to imagine what your peers are paying for their expensive Class A or private plans and set it aside for investing purposes. This is similar to the BTIR investment philosophy. You need this discipline to make it work but dividends from this portfolio can cover a greater of range of risks - my cash reserves have paid for my daughter's Invisalign and my mum's proactive angiogram. Try calling your insurer to pay for that. 

c) Rush towards Basic Healthcare Sum as soon as practicable. 

So one of the best moves a young guy can do is to keep moving CPF-OA to CP or RSTU until you hit your FRS. The second best move for folks with marginal taxes above 10% is to push as much of your earned income into CPF-MA until you hit a BHS or $75,500. 

The beauty of ths move is that it reduces taxes, secure 4% interest rate ( better than Chocolate finance ), and when it overflows, excess can be fed into CPF-OA or CPF-SA to give you more flexibility.

Obviously, you probably won't benefit from doing all this until after your 40s where weird operating procedures become the norm, but your future self will thank you for it.

Also, after a hospitalization, have the ironclad discipline to refill your CPF-MA, so that you are ready for the next medical crisis. 

Finally, we need to really see ISP for what it really is. 

It is not a product to hedge your medical expenses because the increase in premiums is so brutal every year after age 50. 

The ISP is a compensation plan: not just for the FA, but for the private medical doctor who has a heavy incentive to practice defensive medicine on you to rack up large bills that is paid by the insurer. But this will ultimately bite you in the ass as insurers are not dumb - they will raise premiums year after year and reduce claim benefits. So in the end - it's the healthy folks who buy these plans who are subsidizing the sick folks who make claims from it. 

ISPs has poisoned the well not just for private patients with ISPs for also for those without insurance. When some private doctors hear that I'm uninsured, they know that I will scrutinise each bill and each scan carefully so some will give me a "sian jee pua" kind of face.  

Anyway, this chapter should be closed after today. 

But life goes on, and a medical crisis is probably just around the corner for my household. 

 

   

Fiscal marksmanship and planning for medical expenses

 

I finally managed to get some information on my mum's hospitalization.

In brief, my mum had a bad fall and hit her head while under a regime of blood thinners. It led to bleeding in her brain, affecting the brain regions that cover speech and movement. I hospitalized her after she could not speak coherently. 

While that time was excruciating for me, my mum's recovery was speedy, and she was discharged after a month from Woodlands Health. The hospital continues to look after my mum via a mobile team of doctors and nurses.

I thought perhaps revealing my expenses could help other readers plan ahead for medical emergencies. My mum is a PR, so Medishield does not apply to her, but we stayed in a Class C ward. There was no surgery, but there was 4 days of ICU stay with teams of allied health professionals working on her speech and physical recovery. Now, I know that some folks might gloat and say that I did not pay for an ISP, but my mum had a history of high blood pressure, making it impractical for my family to insure her even when she was younger. 

I don't have a serious breakdown of the fees yet, but the CPF website already has some information. A $12,250 deduction has already been made to my Medisave, and I will likely receive a $6,050 bill much later, which I need to pay in cash. 

So, it is likely that my bill is slightly above $18,000. This is an outstanding deal as the Class C ward in Woodlands Health puts 6 patients in a room, and there are air cooling units in the ward and Youtube access. 

In the grander scheme of things, a $6,050 fee payable in cash is significant but not something that will break a family's back, although I suspect a Singaporean will pay way less. However, I decided to top up my Medisave immediately with our accumulated cash reserves, hoping we would be prepared for our next medical disaster. In the meantime, I get to compound at a rate of 4% and even get tax benefits.

One big lesson readers can learn from this is that, predictably, I know some parts of my family will question my decision to put my mum in a Class C ward. I don't understand why people keep asking my mum whether she can afford the hospital stay when I'm the guy ultimately responsible for finding the money to do it. The answer is simple - my mum is a PR who is not insured. Some relatives will try to demonstrate or insinuate their superiority because they can do it under private wards - I think as fiscally prudent people, we need to resist all calls for it. My medal of pride is that I'm by my mum's side in hospital 6 days every week because I need to teach in a Poly on Thursdays. 

Ask their kids whether they can do that.

So, we are our own insurance company, and we have a six-digit uninvested sum to deal with medical emergencies. If any family ensures a senior for price hospitalization right up to their 70s will pay so much in premiums, they would not have their Medisave constantly overflowing to their CPF-OA account, a privilege I enjoy. 

My family also regenerates this hospital bill via dividends in a matter of weeks and not even months - I just need my mum to lay off buying 4D and Toto expenses for a while - I don't issue CDC/Toto vouchers after our family's version of the pandemic.

This is the essence of fiscal marksmanship. 

If there are ways to be frugal, just do it, and don't bend under pressure. 

There will be plenty of expenses after hospitalization. I'm still paying about $300-$400 for monthly house calls, and I need to pay about $700 more for two months of physio. 

Penalising a family or government is unfair if they have a significant surplus. If anything, a person's Medisave should be reloaded as the next medical emergency will not be far away if seniors are in the household.  

   

About adult literacy in Singapore

 

I was supposed initially to talk about my mum's medical expenses, but the Singapore Government was not in a rush to bill us as they are wealthy this year. Even though I took the pains to configure my access to my mum's medical bills via the HeathHub app, I can't get billing information.

Instead, I'd like to discuss my work teaching Law at a Polytechnic. Some adjuncts have not renewed their contracts, so we have no guarantees that we will have (earned) income next semester. Naturally, some of my colleagues feel a bit nervous. It will seem more like a disappointment for me because I enjoy teaching pre-employment students, and I take the liberty to give them some extra material I deem essential to young adults, which I wish someone would have taken care of when I was in JC.  

One issue I was passionate about was the low Singaporean adult literacy skills reported on mainstream media. I wanted to verify whether this was the case in young adults. Before asking for more details on their books, I reminded everyone that reading is a hobby that women find attractive, even though I know guys tend to buy fewer books than women.

Most of my students read a non-academic book over the past 6 months. 

They could also tell me about the books they read.

Finally, I recommended a book for those who generally don't bother to read anything. Michiko Aoyama's What You Are Looking For is in the Library would be a great way to start, as it is about how reading oblique book references can lead to massive improvements in a reader's life. 

There are a lot of folks out there who want to apportion blame on why literacy rates amongst adult Singaporeans are so poor. I read about some literature teachers blaming our policy of de-emphasizing the humanities as the real reason this is happening. 

Examining and testing folks on English Literature is to blame because Singaporeans who need fiction to pass exams will not be intrinsically motivated to read. My first serious literature was shoved down my throat when I was 10 years old; it was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, but still today, my belief is that once you understand Mr Darcy's cash flow from his estate, you don't really need to know about rest of the work. I also think it's very colonialist to force Singaporean teenagers to read books written by dead white men. 

I will never choose Shakespeare over Gary Gygax. What is the point of understanding Macbeth and the nature of human ambition when the 1st Edition D&D Dungeon Master's Guide already provides rules on the pentagram you need to draw to summon or entrap demons? Lady Macbeth can't fight a Type V Marilith demon. I read more than 95% of the Singapore population because I knew when I was 10 that digesting hundreds of pages of RPG rules makes me competitive in the RPG gaming tables and, subsequently, in some math/verbal exams. One of my greatest moments was seeing the word "necromancer" on my SAT verbal exams.  

Anyway, while we are on the topic of reading, I just completed the first arc of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives. 

The first arc of the series is contained in 5 brick-sized volumes. Reading it was a massive effort that took up much of my life. 

My motivation?

The Cosmere RPG based on this series generated $13M on Kickstarter, and I don't want to miss out on this new generation of RPGs.

Even fantasy has evolved beyond what my generation has enjoyed, like Dragonlance, Magician or Game of Thrones. This series ended up weaving concepts of mental wellness into a fantasy work. 

Sadly, I must teach myself to remain open-minded and enjoy this series. 

Five volumes are a serious investment of my time, and there are five more to go!