Growing your Tree of Prosperity is an introductory investment guide written specifically for Singaporeans who wish to take their first step towards financial independence.
I'm still giddy over the monetisation of my YouTube channel. Still, I've to see money entering my bank account as the AdSense revenue for the blog and YouTube comes in a different pool, and YouTube will only update me on how much money I have earned every month. Currently, my numbers are very low, with revenue expected to be around $15 a week.
But this is only the beginning. I have many tricks up my sleeve that I will only play once I start getting real money from my videos.
$60 is nothing to scoff at if I built everything using PowerPoint slides and a free copy of Capcuts. If I start learning a few tricks, I expect to earn a three-figure sum every month.
So let's get into what videos will be launched next week :
On Tuesday, we will look into a few yield-focused ETFs on SGX and assess whether a position is justified even for someone with a decent dividend-paying portfolio.
Then we will make a shallow dive into one of the most stable REITs you can buy in SGX- Capitaland Ascendas REIT.
Finally, as I monetise, I will begin to create videos that most folks will want to watch. I'm creating a new series on how you can make your first million in Singapore.
This series will be red hot and should run in about 4 instalments over a month. Thereafter, I will build a mini-course around it, and it should generate revenue for me in the months to come.
As I'm remunerated for my creations now, viewers will be able to find many courses equivalent to a full day of finance lessons on my channel.
Slightly over four months ago, I decided to take YouTube seriously. The reasons are many - I bought a Blue Yeti mic and an Elgato camera, and I was not prepared to treat them as sunk costs. Another reason is that Temasek Polytechnic took a one-semester break and had no modules available for me to teach for the next six months.
And then came Trump's liberation day when markets crashed.
So this is my channel, started as a defensive manoeuvre to create a new source of income - better do one earlier before I became really desperate and actually had to draw on my capital.
(I have a Victorian-esque fear of drawing on capital, having read that Victorian landowners would rather engage in prostitution than draw down on their wealth.)
My situation is way better today, but the effort to build the channel continued intensely, and we rode the market recovery of the STI to its peak.
So I gained 1,000 new subscribers and clocked 4,000 hours of views in about 4 months, so I started on 6th April 2025, and we fully monetised today on 18th August 2025. To give a proper perspective, only 8% of channels get fully monetised.
My effort to maintain my channel is minimal. I generate 3 videos and post them every week using a free subscription to Capcuts. The effort is less than 6 hours a week in total - it must be less than someone's computer gaming hobby.
Also, my philosophy is not to put any money into a project until I can get some cash out. This has proven to be challenging as my videos do not have decent sound processing features - I'm counting on substance to attract my viewers, so I'm happy the fans came through for me.
When choosing the subject matter, I chose the topic based on what material I liked to present. This means accepting poor viewership for my Shallow Dive series, which made me a better retail investor. It's also very illuminating to map the viewers to the featured stock. One of the best value plays in my book is China Sunsine, but viewership was dismal; many viewers tuned into the discussion on MINT. So there's definitely some bias towards REITs with a higher market capitalisation!
Now onto my best content:
My top video is the one on how I lived on dividends for a decade. Dr Wealth suggested this title for my talk on SGX, and so it's no surprise the video alone clocked my 440 hours. The truth of the matter is that I'm very reluctant to harp about my dividends because they will gape at it without understanding the frugality, patience and strategic position that enables this lifestyle in the first place. But sometimes I end up doing it because I also want my business partner to succeed.
In the number two position is a provocative video on CPF that riffs on the 1M65's points on CPF. CPF can be a very polarising topic if done correctly, but it's essential to be fair and balanced on CPF reporting. I'm threading the zone between Mr. Loo's zealous support and Roy Ngerng's overly negative stance when it comes to CPF. The only thing I need to make sure of is to be factual and data-driven in my approach.
Finally, my mini-course on FIRE is the most comprehensive and straightforward explanation of the FIRE movement for anyone interested in joining. I'm disappointed it's not number one on my list because I wanted to create a free course for my viewership. It's also a harsh training in numbers. Shorter videos create longer views proportionately which really reflects on how short everyone's attention span has become.
Finally, I want to talk about building new income structures like YouTube or dividends.
As everything is data-oriented with instant feedback, it might not be totally productive to keep watching videos from so-called experts or relying on well-meaning advice. You do have unique strengths to succeed in your own way - I have the power of an existing clientele, public speaking skills, so I don't need to watch any video on AI or automation of videos.
My voice is enough to carry me through.
Instead, you must take aggressive action, then roll with the punches arising from negative feedback. You only seek to learn something new if you're stuck on a problem. Otherwise, only kinetic action will get you to the next payment milestone.
Moving forward, while doing more videos, I will slowly pick up basic copywriting skills, design methodology and digital marketing as core disciplines to drive all areas of my business.
With this milestone, you can expect more material to arrive after CPF week, and this includes a fairly lengthy collaboration with a more successful channel on YouTube.
Last week, Havend launched a new e-book on CPF, and to celebrate the launch, my channel is doing a whole week of CPF videos. Of course, CPF videos do very well on YT, and I'm likely to achieve monetisation of my channel in a matter of two days.
My first video, which is a simple one on CPF transfer, has just dropped, and I just uploaded my second one, slated to come out on Tuesday. I won't be previewing the rest on this blog; just subscribe to my channel to get future notifications on my new videos.
A bit of background on my arrangement with Havend. I have an introducer contract with Havend, but I do not get paid based on the content I dish out. Where I do get paid, it's enough to buy my latest batch of financial textbooks from Amazon.
So, I only get paid if someone signs up with Havend's services by using my link. My support for Havend's business is purely out of my own conviction that something is broken about the commissioned sales regime in Singapore, and any attempt to reduce this conflict of interest can earn my support. In all my videos, I've shared my opinion on what I've learned from the e-book, and my opinions are clearly my own and don't often toe the line.
In case you are wondering why I look like I'm attacking the CPF system as if it were a monster, I'm just making a fair statement that CPF tries to take on too many roles at the same time, so it can come across as not excelling at any individual task to the everyday Singaporean. It's like a Hydra.
But we should be grateful that it's the 5th-best system on this planet.
Anyway, it is not easy to publish an e-book on the CPF system as it has many moving parts. It's also not a high ROI activity. So I hope readers of my blog will be happy to download a free copy and study it like a textbook. You will gain a lot from this effort.
Sometimes this blog can still get a longer article if I succeed in connecting the dots between what I hear and what I do, and hopefully, it can result in some insights about what it's like to survive in Singapore today.
A few weeks ago, my buddy was saying on The Financial Coconuts that folks should not hide behind their degrees. I did not listen to the video, but this is a potentially memeable proclamation for all the wrong reasons. If this were said by a non-degree holder to a degree holder, it would invite more scorn than self-reflection, as it does sound like a challenge. I can just say "Sour grapes", then move on in my life.
But if I do that, it's also mean-spirited on my part.
But I suspect in this AI-obsessed economy, this statement is not a challenge, but just a reflection that, actually, no one can hide behind a degree these days, as the depreciation of knowledge is now very steep. GPT-5 already assists me greatly in my shallow dive videos on local company stocks.
And now there is actually a book on how learning can take place in the future. Lean Learning by Pat Flynn is not particularly revolutionary, but it offers an alternative to academic learning. In Lean Learning, learning becomes "just-in-time". People engage in small projects and learn enough just to reach the next critical milestone. So if I'm trying to build a business and I'm writing a copy, I check out a short article on how to write copy, write a bare bones copy, get ChatGPT to refine it, then launch it to observe results and prepare my next copy.
I'm not convinced that Pat Flynn is totally correct, as we may need a degree to cover multiple domains at a high strategic level, so that we will know how to intelligently engage with AI in the future to solve actual problems. I also do not believe that capitalist living is all about information products and building up marketing funnels.
Future degrees will also reform similarly to the AIAP or the 42 program from SUTD, which is asynchronous, problem-based, with a ridiculously high drop-out rate to maintain its value.
Finally, I have to address some of the things I am learning as part of my ACLP program. In this program, our job is to facilitate learning among working adults, in fact, non-PMET adults. If we play by the rules, we can teach based on frameworks like Gagne's Nine Events. In such a case, training slides become very inefficient, and it takes three hours to cover 4 slides of materials because we're trying to engage students with stories, fun and games. Engagement guarantees that students will fall asleep, but learning in Singapore needs to result in employment, which is a higher bar that facilitation can never address.
So I'm going to make a prediction.
ACLP is like a Grab license. You get enough to give you a basic employment teaching non-PMET skills that may or may not result in employment, so the ACLP credential holder is, in essence, the welfare recipient.
The serious qualifications will be taught asynchronously, so only the most focused and conscientious students will be able to complete the assignments for marking. The fewer humans who lead these courses, the more valuable it will be because of how mind-numbing it is to write code, put it on GitHub, and have an AI review it.
In the end, the human is just there to interview candidates for job roles.
For this National Day, I launched a video that goes over the same slides I showed in SGX Auditorium two weeks ago on "How I lived off dividends for a decade". And as usual, the video did not need a boost on social media as it hit 400+ views within two hours. So you guys can follow this link and enjoy the National Day special.
On Tuesday, I will talk about why REITs are still a compelling asset class that you can consider and detail three strategies on how this theme can be played for investors will different risk appetites.
On Thursday, I will perform a shallow dive on the first growth stock in the series, UMS Integration Limited.
That leaves a video for the weekend, which I'm still working on. I've agreed to work with Havend to talk about their latest e-book on CPF, but I've yet to come up with an angle on how to do this. I'll be reading the e-book in the meantime so that I can put my own spin on it. CPF videos tend to attract the greatest number of views, so expect a no-holds-barred discussion on CPF that authorities may not necessarily like by next Saturday.
Let's enjoy the holidays, and I will have a more decent article for you tomorrow.
What a crazy week it has been for me. On 30th July, the Artificial Intelligence Apprenticeship Program launched a skills assessment package. And immediately upon examination of the contents, I realised that it is one magnitude harder than the technical problems I have been taught under the foundation program. For the next 3 days, I still had ACLP classes to attend, but I was just focused intensely on data analysis and coding.
Just yesterday, I managed to submit my two programs that I wrote, and I decided that maybe it takes a younger professional to thoroughly meet the requirements of the full assessment package. The funny thing is that if the whole problem can be solved thoroughly, you don't need to be an AI apprentice. You are already a journeyman.
Maybe this is the grim reality in tomorrow's employment landscape. To even qualify for a job or a training stint, you need to master the material before you even land an interview.
No one can hide behind degrees.
No one can hide behind their incompetence.
But, since I do my videos in batches, we have not lost momentum on the YouTube channel, so expect the following in the upcoming week.
On Tuesday, I will launch a video on primary considerations before someone pulls the trigger on Early Retirement. Most of us focus on Financial Independence and Early Retirement, which usually does not attract a lot of consideration.
On coming Thursday, we will do a shallow dive on Mapletree Industrial Trust. This complements the video on AIMS APAC REIT earlier this week. You can really feel how biased local retailers are. Videos on the obscure small-cap dividend counters get poor views, but REITs actually do magnitudes better.
Finally, I revoiced the slides I used on my SGX talk on Wednesday. The topic is how I have lived on my dividends for the past decade.
Enjoy the rest of the week, and I'll update you again next Saturday !
