Upcoming videos and personal update

Last Friday, I just started my ACLP training with the Institute of Adult Learning, so it's technically my first qualification held under the auspices of SUSS. I suspect there are quite a number of ACLPs reading this blog, so yes, I am still going through many "WTF!" moments in my head, but let's be fair to the authorities. This is a qualification that can unlock taxpayer dollars, so expect numerous checks and balances before certification can be attained. 

I will provide more profound thoughts in a later blog article after completing my program. 

For my YouTube channel, I just launched a commentary on a Julius Baer report.

Next Tuesday, I will be reviewing Budget Babe's latest book, Take Back Control of Your Money. I suppose some people might want to know my thoughts on the Tokenise exchange issue regarding Budget Babe. Still, unfortunately, I don't have enough information about the situation beyond acknowledging that some comments exist on the Telegram group. I guess I'm lucky that I have yet to collect money from sponsors on my own channel.  

Next, we will take a brief look at AIMS APAC REIT on Thursday. This series is not popular, but it sharpens my own skills as an investor, so I wonder if a video on a REIT would gather more eyeballs. 

Finally, for next weekend, I will talk about the gurus and goondus. We will also review various scenarios in which the STI can be reached and the actions I will take in such cases. 

As I'm on course, I may have to slow down content creation. Also, please note that the quality of the material may drop slightly in the meantime. My programme stretches until November 2025.

Why guys without a passive income of $500 had better not start dating.

 

There is a wealth of research emerging from the US on dating, family, and money that can be an enlightening read for individuals who typically only read books on investing. 

In Myra Strober and Abby Davisson's book, Money and Love, one of the most counterintuitive findings is that women who earn more than their husbands actually do an even larger share of housework than women who earn less than their husbands. The researcher named this the "economy of gratitude".

The more economically dependent men are on their wives, the less housework they do. 

It gets worse; you may think that modern society would shift this balance of workload, but the research papers are pretty recent, so this is not something arising from the 1990s. This also applies to women whose husbands are unemployed, as it can be particularly stressful to renegotiate household responsibilities. 

As a guy, even though I spent my NS doing more area cleaning than even NS guys today, I do negligible housework at home. However, to be fair to myself, I'm the only person working in my household and I'm hardworking, investing the family funds. But as a father to a daughter, I would not like her to have a deadbeat husband who does nothing at home when she brings home the bacon.

Which sort of brings me to one of the more controversial ideas in my talks. 

In an earlier presentation with Tiger Brokers, I mentioned that I had never seriously dated until my passive income reached about $500. I also had a fragile male ego in my 20s, and the $500 gave me the confidence to date, allowing me to graciously pay for all the dates using my dividend income with plenty of leftover money to buy even more dividend stocks. Over time, the dividends can grow to the point where the individual can become a two-income family on their own efforts, giving their wife the option to leave the workforce. 

Yes, this is a very old-fashioned way of looking at relationships, but clearly we're still living in an age of fragile male egos and toxic masculinity. 

One of the essential lessons you can learn from the book is that modern couples need to establish household responsibilities during the dating phase. Therefore, I think that if guys have a big ego, they should develop a substantial income or net worth to match. 

Be fair to the ladies, work on yourself so that you can contribute fairly to your future household. 

Super Terrible Index makes everyone in my household a millionaire !

 

In case you're not aware, the Straits Times Index is currently at an all-time high of 4,189.5 points. 

Not too long ago, if you were an investor in the STI, you'd be the butt of jokes. However, thanks to chronic indifference from Singapore's own investors, who prefer US stocks and dividends, older investors who enjoyed dividend investing were able to stubbornly accumulate companies that generate decent free cash flow over the past decade. A few, like myself, who primarily invest locally, currently hold US stocks just to demonstrate the power of my Python Jupyter notebooks. 

I never anticipated that the STI would exceed 4,000 so soon; in fact, I did not even think MAS's moves to stimulate the money could get us there, but my intuition tells me that if Donald Trump wins, I would easily make a 6 figure sum from something, be it my crypto holdings or real estate holdings. AS it turns out, his tariffs caused a movement of capital out of the US markets and into the world, where Singapore primarily benefited from a stable currency, a sane government, and a low inflicted-upon tariff rate.

I always said that if you are a local investor, you are, in essence, investing in a broken clock. However, a broken clock is still correct twice a day, and you only need to be right once in your life. The first time I was right was when I invested all my take-home pay in SGX stocks during the Great Financial Crisis. That made my first million, but it also laid the foundation for me to FIRE early in my life and return to my career as an investment trainer. 

But I kept at it because I was bothered that only the folks talking big on blogs and social media about FIRE are all singles pontificating about life, while families continued to require financial support. And whoever makes a million dollars or has left the workforce would get slammed by salty Sinkies. So I carried on thinking about earning money because I have family members, like my kids, who have not achieved FIRE yet.

However, thanks to recent events, as I tallied the valuation of my real estate holdings, CPF, and investment funds from all sources and countries, converted into SGD, I can say that everyone in my household for this weekend is a millionaire.  

Unfortunately, I won't be able to enjoy my weekend. 

I came down with the flu, despite being thoroughly vaccinated. I was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder, and now I'm deciding whether to turn to TCM or Western medicine. The government system will only grant me a specialist appointment in September. I have slides for a week of videos, but I can't record the voiceover until my throat feels better.

Maybe markets will retrace this week and we will lose our millionaire per pax status next week. There is no functional change in the way I manage my household.

But this surely makes an exciting blog article title. 

Rest assured that a video will follow once this financial position is further secured. I want to review the effects of my earnings and dividends in Q3 before I can really consider this a big win. 

Insights from the demented genius of Nanjing Red Uncle

 

The most interesting piece of news that has gone viral around the world is that of Nanjing Red Uncle, a 38-year-old who managed to convince 1,691 men, many of whom were heterosexual, to have sex with him. As I have fewer subscribers on my YouTube channel than Red Uncle has men, it was pretty fun to read up on the commentary regarding his behaviour.

Over the weekend, I've been hanging out with really smart Millennials, and one snippet of our conversation was about ladies from an elite school in Singapore who are having problems dating men because they are just so good at cutting them down. Of course, it took me a while to put two and two together, which was only after I read some commentary from Taiwanese gossip channels about Red Uncle's genius that my mind was blown by this insight.

Red Uncle's genius lies in being the inverse or opposite of these elite ladies.

In some perverse way, Red Uncle, being a man, has a firm grasp (yes, pun intended) on the problems that men in China, and possibly most Gen Z men, face. Men in China have serious demographic disadvantages, as the unbalanced sex ratio condemns many men to a life of singleness. Even if they do find a way to get hitched, Chinese women call the shots on dowries and bride price, making it hard for a family to establish itself for men in rural regions or low-earning men. 

So there's really no reason for Chinese women to pander to men because of the bargaining advantages they have. So over time, I suspect what's missing in a guy's life is emotional safety. A place to be vulnerable, but also to feel like a man. You find this in many gag videos where American Gen Z dudes pay women to say nice things about them. 

Which explains Red Uncle's demented genius. He looks like Shrek, but all he wants is for the men to hook up with him to bring some fruits and, occasionally, some milk or cooking oil. Red Uncle also makes it a point to occasionally find ways to make his hookups look heroic, like asking for help gently to dispatch a cockroach. If you put everything together, this is the exact opposite of how Chinese women, and possibly our elite ladies, would treat the average non-PMET guy in Singapore - how else can you explain the high margins of "hang flower" places?

With all this analysis, the question we have to confront is whether a homegrown Red Uncle exists, perhaps in the underbelly of the Yishun area.

I don't think Singaporean men are so hard-up that they can settle for some anal with Shrek. Our currency is strong, and there are bridal agencies specialising in brides from other parts of Asia.

But what makes me ultimately uncomfortable comes back to the notion of emotional safety. Not every guy has that in their relationships. 

Maybe Red Uncle is, indeed, the girlfriend of a better age.

Upcoming videos on my channel next week

If only I could create a video that can latch onto the popularity of the Red Uncle meme, my channel would monetise immediately. Still, I was unable to come up with an angle as I made all these videos over two days.

My first video, scheduled for Tuesday, is on how to think about the differences between insurance and investment. If you understand the difference, you will be able to save on commissions and put thousands of dollars back into your pocket.

On Thursday, we will be reviewing a deep value play that has numerous issues, not unlike an encounter with Red Uncle. We will be examining China Everbright Water, a textbook dividend stock with negative free cash flow. 

Finally, over the weekend, I continued to leverage memes arising from the 1M65 telegram groups by diving deeper into the "Super Terrible Index". 1M65's genius is in turning abstract finance ideas into something that other investors care about.

I continue to seek support from readers to forward any material you like to your friends, as even Red Uncle has more sexual encounters than the number of subscribers on my YouTube channel.

Catch you in the middle of the week for deeper articles on this blog. 

Updating our understanding of what capital is

With my new video release schedule, I can gradually consider ways to integrate this blog into my content creation mix. One approach is to update everyone on what's been happening with my wife; another is to discuss deeper insights into what I've read, as the material would be too abstract or boring for a YouTube video.

For this article, I have chosen to discuss different forms of capital as presented in the book "A Wealth of Well-Being" by Meir Statman. This book is not primarily about finance, but rather the broader issues that surround it.

On social media, someone commented that I am too cynical about women being attracted to economically resourceful men. He reasoned that most pairings occur in tertiary education when men have not yet started earning money, so there are some considerations for romantic love in modern society.

I rebutted the point fiercely. Why are ACS guys a hot property in the dating market? My reasoning is that women are not fools; human capital is the present value of income as yet unearned, so they are selective about the guys they date, strategicaly weighing the potential of mates they meet on Tinder or the latest dating app - this is a consideration of human capital rather than financial capital, even successful female executives want men who can at least eqaulise her earnings. I don't say this to mock any gender; Good research is seldom politically correct, but I think men need to up their game because making money via regular employment is getting harder by the day, thanks to AI adoption.

Social science research backs my point - in societies like the US, marriage rates within ethnic groups are low when the ratio of female to male incomes is high and approaches 1. When females earn as much as men, marriages become unnecessary. So, the marriage rates of Whites and Asians are high in the US. In contrast, the marriage rates are low among Hispanics and Blacks.

As such, it might be helpful to update ourselves on he latest four forms of capital we can consider from the book by Meir Statman.

Here are he four forms of capital :

a) Financial Capital

This refers to a person's wealth and income. This is easily quantified and is the most important. Having financial capital can improve well-being and might even be convertible into other forms of capital. It is the most critical form of capital.

b) Social Capital

Social capital is a measure of the power of personal networks. Even among lower-income groups, people can pool resources to assist in child rearing or engage in bulk purchases. For the elite, having the right doctor, lawyer, or accountant in your personal network can solve many problems of daily living. 

c) Cultural Capital

I don't trust cultural capital because it is fickle. Your taste is a marker of your social class. I recall an ACS colleague reviewing my CV. He remarked that the paper I used was too flimsy; it should be printed on 80 gsm paper. It is the most irrelevant comment I have ever heard in my life - but on hindsight, he is so correct!

My cultural capital is not particularly high, as I'm basically an engineer who was admitted to the Bar. Cultural capital consists of behaviours and attitudes that make a person a part of an in-group. Sometimes, a person is simply not a cultural fit in a corporate environment because they don't dress the part. Two people, dressed in a shirt, pants, and a tie, yet one has the bearing of a commissioned financial advisor, and the other resembles a private banker. 

d) Personal Capital

The idea of Personal Capital is new to me, as it has not been mentioned in the sociological texts I read in the past. Some aspects of capital are clearly personal - tall people tend to earn more money and are perceived as more convincing. Beautiful women enjoy privileges. Jade Rasif discussed being consistently chosen to play the role of the butterfly in school plays. This is also extended to ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. 

Some forms of capital are simply innate.

So, there you have it; there are many forms of capital. You need to recognise that some groups, such as IT professionals, have financial capital but low cultural capital, while some cool, hipster poets are the opposite. If anything, there is really no such thing as a broad middle class if we break capital into four different parts. 

My channel content for the upcoming week.

 As we gather data on our performance, I will adjust my approach to content creation.

The mini-course on FIRE was successful, with a single video generating over 300 hours of viewing time. I was disappointed that the average time viewers spent on the video was 12 minutes out of an hour, which demonstrates how short attention spans can be these days. I'm better off producing shorter videos, about 10 minutes in length. However, that also means creating hour-long mini-courses, perhaps once every few months, as I combine slides from previous videos.

This week, I'm changing my approach - I will generate three videos in one go, then focus on other priorities, such as my AI data package, which is scheduled for release on July 10. I need to crunch a dataset to qualify for an apprenticeship program.

Tonight, we will have a light segment on CSE Global. 

On Thursday, I will launch a Beginner's Guide to the Supplementary Retirement Scheme.

And I saved the most entertaining video on Saturday, where I try to decode the statement "Dividends Investing is Dangerous" made popular by the good folks of the 1M65 chat group.

I hope that you guys will support my YouTube Channel. We've come a long way from 400 legacy subscribers to close to 1,200 at the moment. 

Please share this with folks who might benefit from my financial content.

Come for my free Mini-Course on FIRE

 

The primary assertion made by the protagonist in the Squid Game is that we are not horses but humans.

But so what, even if we are, we can still lose the game and die a horrible death, while the VIPs get evacuated to safety. So it comes as no surprise that my longest video attempted to date on my YouTube Channel will channel the leitmotif of the Squid Game, which shook me to the core after Season 3. 

Initially, the YouTube gurus suggested that I could simply chain my videos together to rapidly scale up viewership numbers. However, I wanted to add more value, so I re-narrated over the slides after adding more material to the content that had appeared in my videos at an earlier date.

There are initially five videos on FIRE, then I added a section on the future of FIRE and alternatives competing with it. 

The motivation behind this is to create a one-stop video for individuals to understand what the FIRE movement is all about before they start engaging with an FA who has been making claims that they can assist with someone's FIRE journey. The only investment required is slightly over an hour of your time.

The video will premiere at 9:00 p.m. tonight, July 5, 2025.