Mad Max shows us how the Singaporean Dream can become a Singaporean Nightmare.

I think by now most readers would have watched this face-melting action movie so it's time to write an article on this action flick.

Why is Mad Max a teachable moment for the investor capitalist ?

The reason is this....

...If you follow my advice, work hard, save a large chunk of your earnings and learn the arts of investment well, you would be just like Immortan Joe, the villain of the movie !

I just can't relate to the two heroes of the movie. Instead, I found myself cheering for Immortan Joe, a self-made leader who carved a new society in his own image.

If you really think about it, what has Immortan Joe done wrong ?

He found a way to pump water up from the ground, quietly built a garden to raise crops, and built a loyal corp of war boys who obviously loved him like their own dad. Yes, he has a harem because he worked so hard to accumulate his assets but he's eminently human about it - there was this one scene where he would rather crash his vehicle than to hurt his unborn child. He also demonstrated much angst and sadness when one of his wives died.

If one character represents everything this blog and it's fan base stands for, it's Immortan Joe.

So why should all of you eager beaver capitalists need to watch Mad Max ?

Because Mad Max is about what kind of folks who will eventually lead to your downfall and the destruction of your Singaporean Dream.

Let's start with Imperator Furiosa.

The true protagonist of Mad Max is a woman who rose up the ranks to hold the title of Imperator, which clearly goes to show how much Immortan Jow respects women of ability.

The equivalent of the Imperators in our society today are the Latte Liberals in Singapore today - armed to the teeth with liberal arts degrees, living in their expensive district 10 condominiums and drinking Civet Cat-Shit coffee while lamenting about the state of income inequality in societies today. Of course, to these liberals, it's not enough to be the right hand of Immortan Joe, Imperator Furiosa has her perverse vision of a egalitarian society represented by an evergreen land where all mothers reside in. Interestingly, such lands do not exist anymore and has been destroyed by the so-called Vuvalini crones ages ago.

In short, liberals lead you to a utopian society which cannot be sustained.

What about Mad Max ?

Mad Max's equivalent in Singapore is what I term the Mediocre Middle-class. MMs are family men like me, actually enjoying the asset inflation created by the government and giving their kids a world class education. But unlike most of the middle-class, MMs desire more than what life gives them. There is this sense that society robbed them in the past. Maybe the education system short-changed them, maybe they have a tyrannical boss, but the bottom line is that the fault must lie with the government and the capitalist if they are mediocre and can't afford the best Patek Phillipe watches or drive the awesomest BMW cars.

MMs also want equality, they hate the financial independence of the capitalists, thinking that that they will have a New Zealand lifestyle. In a sense they are as Mad as Mad Max because at the end of the day, they are too rich and well-to-do to be given welfare. A more distributive society actually hurts them more as they end up paying more taxes to fund these welfare schemes that they want so much.

But in the movie, Mad Max played into Furiosa's plans fairly well. He is but a base thug and henchman to Furiosa, working for a deluded elite who has stolen from the capitalist and wants to lead everyone to desolate and barren land.

Watch the movie and take a good look at Singapore.

Is is not true that the liberal elites are often joined by the dissatisfied middle class in Singapore politics ?

The lesson for us capitalists is to figure out how not to end up like Immortan Joe, some of us are innovative, worked hard to build up our assets, but this can be easily lost when someone like Furiosa and Mad Max gangs up to steal and misappropriate your property then kill you and your entire family.

The question of how Immortan Joe could have done better will not be discussed today.

What is important is that now you know who are the Imperator Furiosas and Mad Maxes in your midsts today.

Let them win, and your Singaporean Dream will become a Nightmare.

<< In case you are wondering, this is a satirical piece written with a hint of irony. >>

What kind of prata does your job resemble ?

The Thosai article has attracted quite a lot of attention so I'd thought I'd follow up with a similar article about career management. This framework is inspired by Robert Reich's The Work of Nations has been explained before in my previous books but I have updated my ideas to include some new insights from Law School.

a) Mechanical jobs resemble Roti Kosong

I think by now, people agree that many jobs are dead end jobs in Singapore. If you are manufacturing worker who performs mechanical work, you are probably already jobless in this country. Even in China, automation is rapidly changing the modern factory  why hire a villager when a robot can do the task with greater precision and will not commit suicide or engage in industrial action.

It's not just production operators who need to be afraid, I would consider legal work which fills templates equally at risk as this work can be fronted locally but outsourced to India. This is the same for stock brokers who just enter enter orders and send out house research mechanically every week.

If you career resembles Roti Kosong, be prepared to go hungry quite soon. How many people can be full after eating just one Roti kosong. In fact, you need to eat two pratas to be minimally satiated.

Better hold two jobs if you are stuck doing mechanical work.

b) Service jobs resemble Ice Cream Prata

Some jobs cannot be outsourced and are a safe haven from outsourcing. Taxi drivers, sales representatives and hair dressers belong to this category.

Service jobs are relatively secure but the problem lies in disappearing mechanical jobs forcing the bulk of citizens to fight for service oriented employment. This keeps a lid on salaries. In the 90s, my haircuts at Sri Dewa at Coronation Plaza was $8. These days my haircuts cost me $5 in the Woodlands heartlands. Malaysian staff relocate to Singapore to help Singaporeans with affordable haircuts.

Ice-Cream Prata looks sweet just like service staff and can be filling, but after a while you get hungry for meat and want some proteins in your diet.

c) Symbolic Manipulation jobs are like Murtabak

Highest paying jobs invariably require very solid symbolic manipulation skills. The ability to use personal knowledge to produce insight and advice to solve very complicated problems.

Software engineers in Silicon Valley command $100,000 premiums. SMU's recent information on law students show 97% employment rate and a starting pay of $5,500 - Although I advice my classmates not to be too cocky - the restriction of a few universities play a big role in this.

But degree holders should not be too happy to read this. Robert Reich wrote his book prior to the Second Machine Learning revolution. A lot of symbolic analytical work is getting replaced by artificial intelligence. The learning for symbolic analysts should never stop, a good programmer needs to develop strong domain knowledge and architecting skills to stay ahead of the curve, otherwise he can get drowned by competition.

This is why the Enhanced Diploma Programmes from our local Polytechnics is crucial to develop the consistently evolving symbolic analysts of the future.

Murtabak is ultimately rich and filling, you can vary what goes into the prata and come out with combinations of your own, results can be surprising and delicious. The problem is Murtabak is expensive and costs $7 a piece these days. Degrees cost time and money and there "paper thosai" problem I highlighted in an earlier post.

d) Convergence jobs are like Indian fusion cuisine from a 3-star Michelin Chef.

I thought I'd go beyond Robert Reich to talk about jobs which do not exist yet. There's something to be said about symbolic analytic work which spans multiple domains. Potentially a lot of innovation and great jobs await those who are schooled in multiple disciplines.

The best jobs of the future is similar to fusion cuisine. Imagine Indian prata wrapping a nice slab of Wagyu Beef and then infused with blend of chilli hot-sauces then served with a dessert derived from Lassi and molecular cuisine.

I experienced it personally in Law School, I saw a problem with regards to awarding contractual damages which top academic legal minds struggle to resolve. Contracts are based on words and absolutes. I tried to adopt the view of an options trader and found various hidden derivatives in the contracts and was able to suggest an innovative way to look at future rulings.

It's not just me, AI experts are now trying to predict which english words are likely to become extinct and making a lot of headway in English Literature. A paper was released recently on looking at Big 5 personality traits from Facebook posts.

This evolution of jobs is not entirely good news for policy makers. The biggest innovations and opportunities for job creation will come from insights from multi-disciplinary studies. This means that folks need to spend more time in school to power these new companies.

Perhaps a possibility is to adopt your career in stages and move from Murtabak to Indian Fusion Cuisine later in life when you have more capital to invest in your studies.

This is a highly advanced area of financial planning and career development which involves tactical asset allocation of your human capital. I bet no one has even invented this discipline yet.

Why hanker for a safety net or a trampoline when you can have a jet pack ?

Singapore is really lucky, we had a one in a million chance of being ruled by Lee Kuan Yew and after he passed away, we continue to come under the able administration of Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

( I'm not PAP IB, I like Low Thia Kiang's brand of constructive politics as well and actually think that WP will survive the AHPETC scandal. ) 

Lately Tharman's interview with the BBC at the Gallen Symposium has impressed almost everyone. When cornered about Singapore's unwillingness to provide safety nets, Tharman executed an awesome rhetorical manoeuvre saying that Singapore's approach is to provide a trampoline instead.

When I first heard the interview, I was stunned like a vegetable. Our politicians are only beginning to really understand the need for rhetoric in statecraft and Tharman seems so much ahead of the curve. The trampoline is a very powerful metaphor and counters the decades of use by progressives and liberals to employ the term social safety net for welfare schemes. 

Personally, I think we should paint welfare payments as a crutch rather than a safety net. A responsible government would not want its citizens in crutches but would have been considered cruel by international standards if they don't provide safety nets. 

I want to to build on the metaphor of a trampoline and propose that our government has indeed gone beyond providing a trampoline for Singaporeans. 

If you review the tax policies and how transparent we are with taxes, for the folks who learn how to invest and manage their affairs, every Singapore can have a jet-pack if they want to. This is largely from the introduction of REITs and Business trusts in Singapore. 

Over here, Corporate taxes are low and dividends are not individually taxed. No other country can produce this combination of low taxes, public services and high dividend yields. I dare to even challenge fans of Hong Kong to show me where their high dividends stocks are. 

The jet-pack looks like this :

a) If you are single, studied hard, willing to live with parents, work your butt out and save your income.

b) By taking steps to save your income every month preferably at rates higher than 50%.

c) It is possible to accumulate $300,000 of cash before age 35.

d) There is nothing stopping you from reading the blogs of my fellow financial bloggers to figure out a combination of stocks, REITs and business trusts to yield about 8% a year. 

At 8% a year, you can get an annual income of $24,000 or $2,000 a month. And if managed carefully, in perpetuity.

[[ Note that at this point 8% is achievable but considered a risky target ]]

$2,000 a month is enough to pay for all your expenses as a single person.

With the exception of countries like the UAE, no society can provide a welfare payment of $2,000 a month making this jet-pack a viable metaphor on how powerful our low tax regime is.

Which brings me to the second part of the argument about the question Tharman fielded on creativity and freedom. At least from my personal experience, even having dividend payments exceeding your monthly earned income would not necessarily lead to laziness. 

The beauty of dividends is that they are not guaranteed over the long term, your jetpack may run out of fuel. 

I am always in the lookout for more personal security for myself and my family, hence the hours spent poring over legal cases in SMU today. In time, most of us will take the time out to improve ourselves or even run a small business to produce jobs. I still have my dream of leaving a big dent in the legal industry with my programming knowledge.

In short, folks with jetpacks don't just cruise around in the skies. We earned our jetpacks the hard way and is always concerned that we'll run out of fuel. 

I also like Tharman's allusion to the folks in the Bay Area. 

Singapore's tribe of financially savvy can bring its own brand of creativity. It takes knowledge and discipline to build up a portfolio to allow one to retire and stop work. This knowledge and discipline would be useful if we can be unshackled to pursue our ambitions in ways which is not limited to the confines of a normal workplace. 

What kind of thosai does your degree resemble ?

For this weekend, I wanted to write an article on treating a degree as an investment just like a portfolio of stock and bonds. Fortunately for everyone, I was also ordering my thosai while thinking about this idea so I thought I could write an article on choosing degrees and eating thosai.

Let's start with some fundamentals.

Degrees serve two purposes :

a) Equipping you with the skills to take on the modern workplace.

Skills are a degree's secondary purpose, in spite of what a minister tells you. If degrees genuinely equip someone with actual skills, then the university ranking would not be important when considering a new hire, management consulting firms would not fixate on just the Ivy League and Oxbridge qualifications.

In practice, there is simply too much domain knowledge that needs to be absorbed on the job before you can become a useful member of your company.

So get real about degrees. You get a degree in Engineering. You do not get a degree in Engineering in General Electric.

b) Signalling to the employer that you have the intelligence and intensity to be turned into a company asset.

This is the true purpose of a degree. It signals to the employer that you have what it takes to get the job done even if the industry changes.

The degree makes you solve complicated problems you will never see in real life, write horribly convoluted essays on arcane concepts and throw  group dynamic issues at you when you form project teams. If you survive, it tells the employer that you are a very safe option as a new hire into a management associate program.

I suppose this is the hardest truth that a savvy Singaporean has to grasp.

Now we talk about Thosais, degrees can be classified based on the Thosai they resemble.

a) Professional degrees are like Thosai Masala

Professional degrees are like Thosai masala. Thosai masala costs twice as much as plain thosai but is packed with potatoes and other goodies. Thosai masala is filling and robust.

The cut-off to get into these programs are high but the investment returns are also high. Survival is based on both the skills actually developed and the degree's signalling value.

Doctors must be able to cut someone up with great proficiency. Lawyers must understand the law. Engineers risk killing thousands if the bridges they design collapses.

My advice, that you do not need to agree, is that if possible, always eat Thosai Masala. It is high skill and high signalling. It is also exclusive.

b) General degrees are like Plain Thosai

Local general degrees are like plain thosai. Plain thosai is an institution and can be paired with different kinds of sauces for great taste. General degrees equip someone will skills which depreciate slower than professional degrees so they last longer and flexibility is a valuable trait.

Degrees like Arts, Sciences and Business Administration are high in signalling but the skills are not directly required by the industry. If you analyse a job which requires a general degree, the skills requirements is normally no higher than that of a job which requires O levels. You can talk, operate email and present yourself, your skills qualify.

But things are not that simple.   You will need to understand that the degree that you are getting is more signalling than skill. You will need to write well, speak well and network like an ace.   Inevitably, HR practitioners will look at your honours classification and "provenance" to determine whether they should you, so grades will still matter.At the end of the day, such jobs pay well and continue to have their fair pick of top degree holders.

Over time, plain thosai can beat thosai masala. Plain thosai blends better with the sauces and sometimes thosai masala makes you full too quickly and you don't really enjoy your meal.

You need to signal well after graduation and then develop the domain knowledge with your general intelligence after entering your first job.

Ruthless Tip : Go for prestige. Don't try to pao kao liao in a SME. That's a decision for gimps. Wanna work for an SME, start one of your own.

c) Private qualifications are like Paper Thosai.

Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with paper thosai, but what drives me crazy is that they cost twice as much as plain thosai but it's creation is very wasteful. To make paper thosai, the cook actually scrapes some flour off to create the paper-like texture. It takes lot of effort and sad waste of money to make a paper thosai. It is also very oily.

This is the main issue with Singaporeans and private degrees.

The Singaporean's insist that a degree equips someone with relevant skill and is the key to a better life in Singapore, so they invest more money into private degrees. Private institutions exploit our kiasuism and see us as goldmines.

Problem is that HR practitioners and MNCs continue to see degrees as a signalling mechanism, so they continue to review these private degree brands to be stacked against local universities and expensive overseas elite universities.

This is the rub,

If you invest in a private university, you need to look at your resume and ask yourself the brutal question: What am I signalling to an employer when I show the company my academic history ?

The issue is not that you now have the skills of a graduate.

The issue is whether you can be elevated above the plain thosai and thosai masalas to qualify for the competitive job.

Maybe it's time to consider label this the "Paper Thosai" problem.

If a private institution takes on anyone who can afford the fees and lack quality control, they damage the signalling value of their degree even if their graduates leave with the proper skills.

A degree without signalling value is no better than a piece of paper thosai.

Our government does not want Singaporeans to waste resources getting paper thosais in their resumes, it is unhealthy and the economy cannot have so many people spending so much time in school.

In conclusion, I think ASPIRE is the right move for our government to adopt. Think like an investor. Maybe getting a job is better than buying  a paper thosai qualification. As you will be younger, there will be more years to compound your savings. You can get into sales where your qualifications would not matter at all and may get your first million you are thirty.

P.S. The missing un-named thosai which is all skill and no signalling has not been invented in Singapore yet. It is either the apprenticeship system the government is trying to build on the German model or the idea of development bootcamps. Pray that this idea succeeds and we get a new thosai to munch on.

On IDA, fake degrees, and investing in human capital.

It looks like a previous employer of mine is unable to get itself out of the limelight. First it was Alan Ramos, then xenophobes decided to take issue with the Deputy Chairman's FT status and now there's an issue with IDA hiring folks with dubious qualifications.

As Singaporeans, we need to be fair to IDA.

Thanks to IDA, we have relatively fast internet connections, just try logging in in parts of the US if you do not believe me. As a foot soldier when the hackers attacked government websites, I was proud of the defence we made. I am also fairly pleased with some changes IDA made after I left which gave technologists and geeks a decent functional specialist track.

But this issue of fake degrees is not something alumni like myself would be proud of, but for reasons which has yet been shared on the Internet.

Follow my train of thought here :

a) Society rewards those with the greater success intelligence.

You have to agree with my assumption before I proceed.

I apologise if it sounds elitist.

I define success intelligence as a combination of intelligence, conscientiousness and intensity independent of paper qualifications. This blend of factors allows someone to draw the highest pay and reap the biggest rewards of society.

Unfortunately, companies can only reward a certain percentage of folks with the highest success intelligence.

b) Increasing local university intake cannot broaden the number of great jobs for more citizens.

There are limits to what increasing local university intake can do. If we are lucky, a new cluster of industries can form and generate fresh jobs for graduates for most graduates but otherwise, the number of great jobs remain the same, and the bar will be lifted to admit only graduates with a special honours or cum laude classification.

My first job was with Procter and Gamble, the number 1 employer in Singapore today. They conduct their own entrance exam.

c) This create a problems for Singaporeans who cannot ordinary get into a local university.

Local employers simply do not have great jobs for these Singaporeans who have mid-range success intelligence. But there are plenty of decent or good jobs.

d) Majority of citizens mistakenly associate a degree as the sole requirement to getting a great job.

Once you see another citizen obtain a great job because he went to NUS, NTU or SMU, you start to think how your life would be different had you obtained a degree.

You mistake the degree as key to getting a great job, when in fact, MNCs have only these limited jobs and are looking for the best people regardless of paper qualifications.

e) Getting an overseas or private degree will not resolve your problem.

HR departments were very willing to accept overseas or private degrees in the past when only 15% of the population can get local degrees. These days with 25% local intake for universities, HR departments have plenty of local graduates to choose from, so instead folks with private degrees get treated as non-degree holders in the 1980s with a poorer starting pay or 6 month contract offers.

f) The government wishes to prevent over-investment in education.

Diploma holders getting private or overseas degrees are a huge strain on the economy. They delay getting a decent income for a qualification which makes a little difference to their human capital.

This is an investment mistake. It is tantamount to buying a bond that defaults on its coupons.

The government launches ASPIRE to try to create better jobs for everyone regardless of paper qualifications to provide options to Singaporeans who do not make that "investment mistake".

g) This is where IDA opens a huge can of worms which can erode public trust for the whole of Government.

This explains why IDA has so much to answer for.

Singaporeans are already very upset that they have to settle for second best.

Our polytechnics have higher standards compared to many universities in emerging economies. It does not feel right that a Singaporean who plays by the rules have to contend with foreigners even with unaccredited qualifications, if anything the role of Application Consultant should have gone to a Polytechnic diploma holder with some added industrial training from ISS.

Why ?

Because IDA is a seen as part of the public service which in turn is driving for ASPIRE and wants it reduce instances of poor investment in our human capital assets.

h) The good faith argument is invalid.

The fact that an agency worker took an unaccredited degree in good faith is no defence.

Singaporeans also have good faith in our local institutions.  We want to believe that our local ITE and diploma qualifications can entitle us to local jobs as well.

i) Smart City should start acting Smart.

There is nothing stopping MOE from creating a list of degree mills and unaccredited institutions and placing it in a dataset for hackers to play around with. After all, we are very clear as to what universities our lawyers can come from before they can practice.

We pay taxes, why leave this to the private sector ?

At the moment, I think IDA has to beyond proving that Nisha took an unaccredited qualification in good faith.

What Singaporeans want to see is this:

IDA needs to prove that Nisha's original degree from the University of Mumbai which got her into the organisation in the first place, is better than a top flight computer science diploma student in our local Polytechnics.

If IDA thinks that her degree is better than our local polytechnics, it should be a public declaration so that MOE can reconsider the way we educate our diploma students.

Of course, most folks do not care about personal financial planning !

The financial blogosphere is suddenly abuzz when Cheerful Egg wrote about the indifferent attitude to personal finance.  Upon reading the article. I wanted to throw my hat into the ring as the article may become quite viral over the next few days.

I have only one real point to make.

Why is this a bad thing ?

Almost all value and yield investors know that the profits they extract come either from collecting rentals or exploiting inefficiencies of the market. The reason why we have a comfortable lifestyle without needing to report to a horrible boss or defer to a tyrant is because our investment profits provide that kind of lifestyle for us, and that we spent years honing our investment abilities to provide that level of security for our loved ones.

Of course, if we do not give a damn about the investing public, the existence of financial bloggers who share their insights for free would be paradoxical and a contradiction in terms.

So why do I care ?

It's simple.

I grew up as a geek.

Many of the rich kids in my landed estate and even my secondary school used to bully me because I was socially awkward, rode imitation BMX bikes, and played Dungeons and Dragons. I probably wasn't hip right until graduation.

The fear we geeks have is this - If society does not find a way to reward knowledge and skilled application of theories, we geeks will find our adulthood as unwelcoming as our childhood.  

My blog and the books I publish is not easy to read because I believe that knowledge is power.

Financial independence should not be bought from private bankers simply because somebody comes from a dynastic line of billionaires. I certainly know my childhood bullies will be using their wealth to gain an edge and make the rich-poor gap wider. That idea makes me absolutely furious and I need to find ways to fight back.

For financial independence, from a geek perspective, you must pay the iron price.

You pick up the arcane equations, set up your own brokerage accounts and risk your capital. In the meantime, you learn about the world around you and what kinds of loopholes exist in this universe.

If we apply this geek vision to the rest of the world, not everyone deserves finance independence.

Some deserve to max out their credit cards so that the folks who invest in the banks can have a shot at early retirement. At the end of the day, the conscientious and hardworking folks should rightfully triumph over the lazy poseurs who lack the willpower to save.

It is these folks that us pro-bono financial bloggers want to share our ideas with. For me, I don't care what rich kid snob school you come from - save 50% of your income and invest it and odds are good you'll be a free man before you hit 45. Along the way, we bloggers will provide you guidance from social sciences, the humanities to make your transition to wealth as smooth as possible.

And to the rest of the blogosphere, I have one piece of advice.

People do care - When you succeed, it generates so much cognitive dissonance that they want to know why you won the money game when they haven't.

When I got featured in the Straits Times for becoming financially independent in my thirties, you should have seen the kind of hate that was directed at me in the local message forums. Many of these guys don't even know me as person. But I know that ultimately, as a geek, I knew that I succeeded in getting under their skin by using my rigorous engineering skills in developing my personal finances.

So don't say that people do not care about financial planning.

People do care and they will hate you when you finally reach the point where you don't have to work voluntarily for anyone anymore.

So my final message to financial bloggers is this :

Be a Troll !

Misappropriate the cultural norm of your audience. Find a way to subvert their morality on what is success and happiness.

A cultural norm is that a man in his thirties and forties should be struggling under the heels of a tyrannical boss and paying mortgages.

Now subvert that.

Become financial independent yourself.

Be no one's slave.

Next, you challenge their very notions of hard work and offer them a means to be exactly like you.

Rich is karma neutral.

The whole world will have no choice but to listen to what you have to say.

Getai Ethnica : Beware of the Hipster Agenda !

I tried to let my hair down yesterday after a round of giving tuition to my girls, so I let my friend suggest that I go Chinatown to an event known as Getai Ethnica at this carpark. I normally find such events boring, as I am more interested in ideas, money, lifehacking and current affairs but the prospect of $10 for 4 live bands and beer is irresistible to me so I decided to go have a look.

The crowd was very cozy, these guys would definitely fall under the category of hipsters. The bands are local and unheard of and they play their own brand of music which is not mainstream at all ( But you guys should check out Hubba Bubba, their sings are self-written but fairly radio-friendly).

The highlight of the evening was that I was very surprised to find 3 of my classmates at the event to which I remarked to my friend that isn't it ironic that I have more friends than him there.

Anyway, the point I want to make is that I think Getai Ethnica is dangerous to frugal people.

My expenses turned out as follows :

a) Entrance fee : $10
b) Eating the stuff hipsters eat like Soft-shelled crab mantou burger : $25
c) They don't have my favourite gin and 7-up but they have this hipster equivalent called #88 which tastes exactly like Gin and 7-Up but more deck at a ridiculous $15

The total damage for my short episode was $50 !

But in their defence, if I did not go home, I would have watched a hipster movie called Moonlight in Malaya and heard four local bands live.

Anyway, in spite of the $50 spent, I think I enjoyed myself overall. Getai Ethnica answers a lot of questions which suits and businessmen struggle with, which is how to market to millenials. There is a certain subversive appeal in the guerilla marketing and the use of carparks with great views in an ethnic area in Singapore. I still think it's a sad waste that the carpark was not sublet to more stalls which sell hipster goods. I certainly would have paid $3 for handful of kacang puteh to accompany the movie.

On an unrelated note, I would like to talk about music. This week's The Economist talked about the efforts of data scientists to work on various songs and using this statistical approach know as principal component analysis, scientists narrowed down three major revolutions in music :

a) The first is during the time of the Beatles is the 60s which heralded the arrival of rock and roll.
b) The second if New Wave in the 1980s. This explains why people still get Rick rolled.
c) The last is in 1991 when hip-hop was unleashed.

I was trying to understand why there is apparently no generation between my classmates and myself. I kinda like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Daft Punk even more than Phil Collins, which my generation loves, but I just can't hack the Teresa Teng and Abba crap which my parents love.

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that, based on statistical analysis, music has not really changed since 1991. There is little difference between the K-POP hits by Son Dambi and Lee Hyori and the music I liked when I was an undergrad.

Happiness is a Strategy !

I thought I share some of my thoughts with reader John Smith on my views on happiness as he has commented that I seem happy even though I have a fairly busy schedule.

a) Positive Psychology guides Happiness

For a start, I think I have gone beyond subjective notions and feelings towards happiness, Folks bandy about terms like YOLO and "I just wanna be happy." don't seem to just cut it on the happiness front for me. The same goes for the food and travel photographers who are really good at creating this impression of a happy and carefree life on FB.

Instead, I view happiness  in a relatively cold, calculated manner as someone who manages a finance portfolio. Based on Martin Seligman's ideas on positive positive psychology, our happiness is divided into five parts.

Pleasure - The same kind of happiness hipsters tend to inflict on us.
Engagement - Flow addressing challenging and interesting problems at work.
Relationships - The quality of your relationships.
Meaning - How aware one is of one's role in this world.
Accomplishments - Meeting actual goals and getting things society cares about.

If I can employ this framework, I might be able to shed some light into why I seem happy to a reader.

b) My life is not all that pleasurable.

I would fail in the first measure. I don't derive much pleasure left from consumption. These days, I try to collect games which give me a sense of nostalgia. I have managed to bring in Up Front by Avalon Hill, which is a card based war game based on Squad Leader.

If you understand the Bookcase war games played by grognards in the 80s, it is virtually impossible to find someone who is willing to play these games with you today. Rulebooks are harder to read than legal cases and many games are computerized. I mainly buy games to place them in  a cabinet to conjure memories of my childhood days going Leisure Craft are Orchard Point. I have a nice collection of old school D&D books but my group plays the newer 5th Edition system.

As such, I don't really travel or eat great food. At my state of attending summer lectures in SMU, being able to got to KL to spend my money ringgit is awesome enough but I'm fully booked for all my courses.

Of course my troubles and pain arising from law school deserves another article this holidays. It was certainly not pleasurable engaging in the Machiavellian games of group formation and getting hit with guilt trips and complains from various parties.

c) I am fully engaged at law school and life.

Things rapidly improve once pleasure gets written off. Law school means full engagement in legal problem not just from tutorials but also from news events and ideas. Law school gives me the ability to appreciate the deeper game played by Amos Yee's counsel so it's interesting to see the arguments being played out in courts.

Flow comes from solving problems, taking exams, scheming group formation for the next semester, projecting the work load from the combination of classmates and managing the risk within a semester.

d) My relationships are stable.

Stable relationships are good. Nothing amuses me more then reading about "basic bitches" who eat Eggs Benedict and then engaged in relationships which become "complicated". As for me, my daughter is becoming more interactive and is starting to take an interest in my toys and computer games.

As I don't work, I have a fair amount of interaction with my family which I think many working men would envy.

e) I am in the process of finding my life more meaningful

I think this area is where I benefit most compared to other Singaporeans,

Financial independence is not easy for most people. Turning financial independence into something which adds meaning into your life is even harder because I did spend 6 months in a retired zombied state. My JD program is like a liberal arts program for mid career hires, a lot of encounters and concerns actually make you rethink about how you fit into the world at large and the resolution of these dilemmas is done at a safe zone.

I think that in this sense, my community service to help two girls with their E maths gives me the deepest sense of meaning and personal satisfaction, although it is not as saintly as I would position to the readers. Of late, I've been noticing the hypocrisy of these so-called liberals and progressives. If there is a genuine need to help others, volunteering of one's time and money is eminently doable. Why misappropriate the hard earned money from other taxpayers?

f) I continue to be a slave to my accomplishments

Of all the areas of happiness, my largest allocation is in the area of accomplishments. It is the largest source of frustration in my life right now, your financial independence can't really insulate you from that feeling of wanting to sink to the ground when your lecturer believes that your essay is full of shit. To compound my misery, I have been signing up for moots where I will likely argue and get my ass kicked by kids half my age.

I try to think of what I am trying to do relative to middle aged men of my age because if I peg it to my really smart and motivated classmates, depression is going to set in pretty quickly. These kids might kick my ass, but next time some asshole talks me down with well-meaning but pedestrian advice on "Living life with Passion" or "Just try to be Happy", I have know the technique to ruin their day.

With Martin Seligman's framework, I welcome readers to employ this framework to audit their own personal lives and determine whether they are smugly satisfied with their personal outcomes.

It should be noted that a certain component of happiness is genetic and not influenced by actions or your environment. It is entirely valid to argue that my general extraversion and openness to new experience makes it easier for me to happy but my very obvious disagreeableness might detract from it.

A Modern Interpretation of "The Best is Yet To Be"

I am sorry if I'm a little bit late to the game as the fracas on ACS donations took place while I was preparing for my exams.

But first, a little background on myself.

I got fairly average grades for my PSLE but a 255 t-score could have landed me in most schools of my choice along Bukit Timah road so like most kids grew up in upper-middle class landed estates, I had a choice of getting into ACS.

And ACS was a natural choice. I was virtually monolingual, grew up with Ang Moh and Peranakan pals who studied in International schools, and I was a geek who's sole religion involved worshipping Cthulhu, Demogorgon and Asmodeus from my Dungeons and Dragons game manuals.

But two things led me to choose Swiss Cottage, a poorer but humbler school next door, instead.

The first was the ACS donation drive, which I really didn't want to be part of. The second were the church sessions, which was against my religion of Dungeons and Dragons. Between Gary Gygax and Jesus, I can only profess to one faith.

But as I got older, I began to regret some choices I made when I was 13 ( And unlike Gen-Y kids,  we Gen-X kids did choose our schools and professions without consulting our parents ). After all, you only begin to appreciate the accumulated wealth and power of the ACS Alumni as a full working adult.

I do sometimes ask myself how rich and wealthy I would be if I chose the school next door.

In one alternative universe, choosing ACS would have given me different values on spending and consumerism. Depending on which clique I joined, I could have become a materialistic creature of conspicuous comsumption, this blog would have been about luxury watches like Vacheron or Patek Phillipe instead.

In another universe, I could have kept my frugal values and employed the alumni to get into the best jobs in banking and finance. This blog would have articles on my latest frugal purchase using the dividends derived from my dividends - a luxury yacht.

Unlike the Flash in the DC Universe, we cannot create Flash Point moments and ask ourselves how would things turn out if we made a different choice. But we can channel focus our minds to create new insights, like Batman.

My Eureka moment is this :

The founders of ACS are geniuses who are centuries ahead of their time !

"The Best is Yet To Be" encapsulates the wisdom from modern economic thinking which would not even have been contemplated 2 years ago.

It puts everything Singapore elite schools do in the modern context.

Now follow my logic :

a) Everyone who goes to a school like ACS is concerned about how to preserve wealth over the generations. No matter what you seem to do, wealth inevitably fades after 3 generations. This is a primary problem of nepotistic succession.

b) Enter  a school which has a policy of enforcing or at least applying a lot of peer pressure to make students seek donations. The rich families will just write a cheque so would be unfazed by the requirement. The poorer families will do exactly what I did - find a school of similar standards and go somewhere else. Every school is a good school. Some good schools do not ask for donations.

c) The school which enforces donations eventually concentrates the richest scions of the dynastic families which builds close collegiate ties with each other. Bonds are built over rugby games and swimming competitions.

d) Now enter modern economic theory.

e) Thomas Piketty hypothesizes that (r > g). Investment returns trump return on human capital over time. Wealth inequality can only increase over time if Piketty is right. So dynastic families already have accumulated wealth and will use it to gain access to the better schools.

f) ACS becomes unstoppable. Rich families stick to it's brand and alumni, inadvertedly concentrating investment wealth to generate more income inequality between the haves and the have nots.

g) Ministry of Education makes it worse. If every school is a good school, then only the alumni will make a difference and distinguish the good schools from bad.

<< Reality stops here. What follows is my prediction on what will happen next >>

h) Soon, the smartest kids who figured out what I did start enrolling into the schools with the richest Alumni. The advantages of a wealthy alumni outweighs the hassle of donations.

i) Which is exactly what the dynastic families want. Superior intelligence in their descendants to perpetuate their wealth further.

j) Assortative mating will start to take place which has already widened the income gap further in countries like the US and the UK. ACS marries MGS. RI marries RGS.

k) Everything comes full circle. Unification of mind and wealth. Wealth can perpetuate for generations if it is powered by intelligence and conscientiousness. And the most intelligent and conscientious will be smart to enroll in a school with the richest alumni.

This is why "The Best is Yet to Be", the founders foresaw the events which would happen up till today and built a capitalistic superpower on this small island.

And the signs are already there...

Economic indicators with Singapore's wealth gap support this idea of mine.

In other parts of the Internet, some female bloggers would only date ACS boys.

I don't think I lost the game of life because I did not choose ACS. I do have great friends amongst them who are noble, generous and would never support widening income inequality.

But this is a valid concern about future generations of Singaporeans.

I hope my daughter will not be too late for the game. I can't choose my daughter but I can certainly choose my son-in-law.

No prizes for guessing which school gets first choice.

What can we learn from Albert, Bernard and Cheryl ?

By now, most readers would have heard of the maths problem which went viral two weeks ago.

You can access the information about the original problem here.

This blog article is not about the mathematics behind the problem but about the behaviours of the folks who attempted to tackle the problem on social media which I think can teach us a thing or two about failure and living lives of mediocrity.

I'd like to address two behaviours in this article :

a) The behaviour of blaming the folks who set the question.

The first behaviour is that some folks get bitter when they fail to get the correct answer to the problem. The question has been set by the folks who run the Math's Olympiad and its original purpose is to test the logic of a 16 year old competition participant. Although the question was designed with an answer in mind, some folks came up with a fairly credible second answer and then proceeded to start a campaign blaming the question setter for introducing ambiguities into the question.

b) The behaviour of rallying others to be indifferent to questions of logic as they have no significance in practical life. 

The other group of folks are those who needed to get into a discussion just to highlight how pointless the question is in daily life. This behaviour is baffling to me as it would be a lot more economical to simply ignore the entire discussion thread, but no, these crusaders of practical living are proud of their failure to provide the answer to the problem. They want more people to do the same because this question does not reflect the daily challenges of real living.

Both groups of people miss the point behind Mathematics.

I think the Spirit of Mathematics is about curiosity and the willingness to confront complicated problems. You might not get a problem right the first time round, but if you examine how answer is arrived at, you get access to a heuristic, a procedure for solving all similar problems. Knowing the heuristic allows you to crack the problem in seconds instead of hours. This heuristic can be then be applied to other problems you face at work or in your relationships.

Complex numbers which involves the mathematics of imaginary numbers is almost worthless when you study it at your 'A' levels. But in engineering school, it is used in the modelling of alternating currents which powers all our homes.

Regression mathematics does not amount to very much, until you realise that psychologists have found a strong correlation between conscientiousness, health and stable marriages so you might want to look out for a conscientious person to be your life partner.

And don't even get me started on retirement planning. Logic and mathematics is the first step to financial planning.

What do you need to cut out of your budget so that you can you can invest it in a portfolio which would maximise the probability of you becoming a millionaire before you reach your 40s ? These problems are way more complex than just finding out when Cheryl's birthday is.

I'm going to go out on a limb and present a hypothesis to the readers.

The folks who blame the question setters are the same kind of folks who cannot take ownership for their own problems. When they fail, a lot of folks are going to be blamed for their own personal disasters.

As for the 'practical' folks who think that the problem is irrelevant will fall prey easily to get rich quick schemes. Expect them to use a TA when positioning their portfolios.

 

Survived another round of exams...

Yipppeeeee ! I just finished my last paper yesterday...

The sad thing is that my summer term starts next Monday so I have about 4 days to take it easy and then the intensive reading assignments start all over again. I have signed up for two summer terms, which mean about 9 hours of seminars for 8 consecutive weeks.

There is some perverse logic to spending as much time having active lessons every week during the holiday season. The most important reason is that I save more money when am actively engaged in school, I just have to pay for bus rides and eat at the cheap hipster cafe that gives SMU students a discount.  School then throws legal problems at me to solve which I thoroughly enjoy so I will not find have to pay for any other distraction to keep my mind occupied.

Anyway, I have many things to talk about over the next few days so here's a quick update.

a) Markets seem too good to be true.

I have no idea why the STI index has punched through the 3500 mark. There seems to be no resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war. There is a fair chance of a Greek default and China is facing slower growth. Even more illogical to me is that my REITs are doing well when supply is inching up for industrial properties. Maybe it's the low oil prices behind the optimism.

I have not been buying any more counters and have been carefully socking my dividends away to pay for my final instalment of my school fees, with some luck, I would be able to sock away all my planned 2015 expenses in a separate account before end-June. This means that I can start accumulating wealth again in September. I just hope that the market will not be above 3600 by then.

Finance-wise, so far so good, I'm still in a better financial position today than my last day of paid employment. This is my insurance against workplace agism when I finally graduate from SMU.

b) Not reading very much. Reading The Economist just takes up all my reading time. 

I finally took the plunge to take up a long-term subscription on the Economist and it is replacing the usual non-fiction readings I normally have for the holiday season.

The Economist is now a fairly credible source of ideas for me these days. My legal training now allows me to absorb the material with a new pair of cognitive lenses. My finance training has always made reading the Schumpeter and Free Exchange section with ease and my engineering background makes the Science sections a breeze to digest.

My readings have, thus,  slowed down dramatically.

I am only reading one book right now, The Rich by John Kampfner, a history book which documents how rich folks accumulate their wealth across the centuries. After this, I'm going to read The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, kinda like a Game of Thrones in fantasy China.

c) Not gaming much either

Summer term is not a good time to game as my schedule is packed. Instead, I'm just taking it slow and indulging in a bit of nostalgia. I am slowly getting into vintage games and managed to get myself a copy of Up Front, an Avalon Hill wargame of squad level combat.

I also managed to order a battered copy of Squad Leader from the same company.

These games are not playable because you can easily write a piece of software incorporating game rules these days.

On the RPG I am getting pretty hyped up on the Fantasy AGE system by Green Ronin games. I am also fairly excited by the work to reinvent the Pathfinder RPG through the Pathfinder Unchained book. While I do not play these systems, they will influence I am doing to create some house rules for D&D5E campaigns.

d) My community service work

I have been working with my girls on their maths for close to two months. I think this deserves it's own blog article at a later time.

Anyway, this is what's been happening to me.

There'll be more articles over the weekend.

Passing of a Giant...

I am writing this article from SMU Labs as I'm in a middle of hell week where I would need to make two group presentations this week.  Ordinarily, there would not be a blog update until I am done with all my work.

But today is a very sad day and I think a blog post dedicated to Lee Kuan Yew would be appropriate. 

I did not start out as a huge fan of our government policies. In Young PAP BBS, you can find traces of me complaining about the foreign talent policies about a decade ago, but as I got older and started building my portfolio, it became blindingly obvious that Singapore does reward hard work, frugality, study and astute planning. Income taxes have been slowly displaced by GST and we can experience a high standard of living if we can make do with not owning a car. 

As with all dividend income investors who find that they can stop work in their late-30 ( And there's not much of folks like me around in Singapore right now ), we owe a great debt to the policies which makes all this possible. Single digit income taxes and no expropriation of capital gains by the government goes a long way towards a prosperous investor class.  If I were an American, I think I would still be paying off my student loans from my first degree, much less paying off my JD with my investment income and enjoying my second lease of life as a student. 

I think of late,  a lot of anti-LKY people are speculating whether it is time to loosen up after his death. I do not know what kind of Singapore they ultimately want. I think that no matter how they articulate their desires, ultimately their fondest wish is to be on top of everybody else in this society over the long term. But in the short term, they want to enjoy the welfare which our ancestors worked hard for after independence. 

I think LKY's death should lead us to think twice about the value of reforms and change. After all, the hardcore pragmatism which took us here got us from third world to first world status. 

Singapore needs to take this opportunity to go back to good old fashioned values of hard work, savings and self-reliance. 

Not hand-outs or welfare misappropriated from tax payers. 

Update : Chinese New Year is over !

It has been two Chinese New Year holidays since I have left the workforce.

Here's a quick update and some thoughts about life  in general.

a) Starting community service tomorrow.

As a JD student, SMU mandates 30 hours of service to the community service which must be done in order to graduate with a law degree. The Sikh Welfare Council has very kindly given me two students to provide tuition for the rest of 2015.

So beginning tomorrow, I will be teaching E Maths to these two students, I look forward to making friends with this family and would like see myself as a life coach rather than a maths tutor.

This is the first time I'm doing some serious good in my life. At the back of my mind, I keep telling myself that complete acts of altruism are rare. I should do a good job for myself - if my students succeed, it's a great way for me to re-skill myself as a tutor while studying just in case things don't really work out after 3 years.

b) My classmates just upped their human capital over 2 weeks of mid-term holidays.

When school reopened this week, everyone looked a bit despondent but I felt that they shouldn't be. Immediately after announcing the budget, the Government gave all my classmates a big bonus by restricting the list of universities with recognized law degrees by 8. Many argued that the impact to my batch would be minimal as students currently studying in those Universities would not be impacted.

On the whole, I think it bodes well for my classmates as firms begin to form rational expectations about a crunch in lawyer supply in the future and ramp up hiring for the present. But this is just the amateur economist in me talking.

c) Consolidated my portfolio for the new year.

On the financial front, I have finally decided to break my portfolio down into three parts so that it can be managed separately. Currently my 31-counter portfolio breakdown is Equity/REITS/Business Trusts at a ratio of 30%/40%/30%.

My overall yields last year did not meet expectations as it ended at about 7.2% but it's still a decent figure which paid my mortgages, school fees and family expenses. This year, I'm ramping up my yields to my desired 8%. I think the weaker SGD may help in this regard.

Overall portfolio went up about 3%  in spite of minimal reinvestment of my dividends.

d) Why I feel like I am GIC or Temasek. 

I'd just like to share one final thought about the politics of employing reserves to create an inclusive society.

Just like Temasek or GIC, I struggle with my finances in spite of the margin of safety that I have built for myself. If I were to employ half of my capital gains since I left the workforce, I would not have to struggle with kopitiam yong tao fu everyday because my hefty law school fees would be resolved at the snap of my finger. It also does not help that I have recently installed Carousell on my Android phone and have been hunting for vintage RPGs and Avalon Hill War games.

I think fiscal prudence and frugality is an important part of Singapore's pioneering spirit which made us what we are today. Spending should not be a trivial case of opening the floodgates and then justifying to oneself that we can afford something or whether its sustainable over the long term.

There is value in thinking that money that is not spent can provide as much utility as money which was used to make lives better over the short term. With high reserves, currency raiders would think twice before attacking our economy. In the event of huge recession like that in 2009, permission from the President can be sought to unlock the reserves to help us recover faster.

Wealth is confidence, you don't need to spend it for it to make you feel good.

As such, while Tharman remains my favorite minister. I don't agree with the shift to the left even though we can afford it and it's sustainable because we've always been conservatively fiscally.

We should simply continue to be frugal and not allow that entitlement mentality to creep into this nation that we've been building for the past 50 years.

The problem with skills-based education.

One of the more populist changes made to the education is skills-based education.

Skills-based education is a very attractive idea. If a person is skilled or qualified enough to do the job, he should be entitled to it. The middle class, middle income voter is more likely to support it if it subtly promises to overhaul the perceived unhappiness about the education system or 'meritocracy'.

One idea which is repeatedly flashed on my FB feed is the idea that our best students are exam smart, lack emotional intelligence and practical skills. Our top students are just simply sponges who rely on memory to get ahead of the curve.

I don't think a skills-based education and associated ideas can resolve the problems of the middle class. If you are in your late thirties or early forties like me and harbor fantasies that you are a unique snowflake with awesome technical skills but is constantly brought low by the education system and the elites, you probably need to take a good look at your own life-choices before casting blame at the government or the policy makers.

That being said, here are some brutal hard truths which some readers might find hard to swallow.

a) An education system not only has to train citizens, it also has to sort citizens based on conscientiousness and general intelligence, traits which are useful in nation building.

The first hard truth is that even if someone is skilled enough to do something that pays well, the fact that many people with the minimal skill-set are available just means that some folks with the skills cannot be matched with the job. The employer can choose an employee with better communication skills and is more conscientious ( with higher paper qualifications ) to pick up the job.

The case in IT is simple, there are many systems engineers who have the NCC Diploma and can run a script or administer a server. The one who gets to become a senior systems engineer can track his servers on spreadsheet without being told  and can communicate well with the customer.

The hard truth is that another role of the education system has to sort citizens based on their conscientiousness and general intelligence independent of actual technical skills. This sorting mechanism has been refined over the years to target individuals who 'deserve' the highest paying jobs in society.

Bad news for most folks is that this sorting mechanism is actually improving, exams are getting so hard that you need to be a pretty talented person to balance school with CCA activities. Just look at the PSLE maths questions these days, I bet even teachers need guidance on how to solve them.  

b) A skills based education does not mean that rote learning is defunct. 

When I was managing operations in SGX, I had an incident that the counter M41 was down, When discussing the incident, I was able to explain to the customer that some folks cannot buy or sell the MIIF counter. The SGX staff were impressed that I did not need to refer to the ISIN file to know what a stock counter refers to, but they are not aware that I am a dividends investor who know my codes due to time I spent monitoring my portfolio.

As someone back in the education system studying to become a lawyer, there is a misconception that we rely a lot on memorizing the code of laws to do our work. Nothing can be further from the truth,

The objective of professional mastery ( and I should be qualified to say this as I am trained to be an engineer, investment analyst and now trying to be a lawyer ) is met by creating a knowledge framework. This requires the ability to sort information and engineer some form of hierarchy to store them in a logical manner to assist in problem solving and recall.

In software engineering, it can be understanding data structures in a framework of classes and knowing how instantiate the right object to solve a engineering problem. The solution requires an assembly of the database, business logic layer and a presentation layer. No solution is workable without consideration for user friendliness and ergonomics.

In finance, various asset classes can be commonly described by statistical properties like the mean, variance, skew and kurtosis. These assets are then assembled into portfolios, which ultimately are aligned with a person's life goals.

In law, offer, acceptance, consideration and intention to create legal relations form the contract, which are vitiated by factors like mistake, misrepresentation, illegality and duress which are then broken down into further sub-categories. Chunking up from contracts is the notion that some promises need to be enforced by society.

Regardless of what field we are in, general intelligence picks up  the concept, generates the hierarchical trees in the form of Mind-maps and then commits the resultant chunks into memory.

Learning cannot be distanced from rote learning. But with a high general intelligence you can chunk your knowledge into components that make rote learning possible and effortless.

c) Even if skills-based education is properly implemented, it would not resolve a person's unhappiness with the system. 

I think this is the most brutal part of my essay.

I'm starting to see patterns in some of my anti-government friends and their own frustrations that would lead them to do horrible things like curse an old man on his hospital bed and spread news about his death even when it has not been confirmed by the press. Worse, they delight on seeing the son get diagnosed with cancer. My dad has a stroke about 3 years ago, even if I disagree with PM Lee's policies I should be human enough to acknowledge his pain at the prospect of losing his dad.

Back to my philistine friends, the change they want is neither fairness nor equality. The change they want is something that will put them on top. On top means big flashy cars, branded watches and effortless living ( via wining Toto ! ).

With ASPIRE and a skills-based education system, what would happen is that ITEs, Polys and JCs will be given more or less equal standing within 20 years, all of which would provide a reasonable chance of getting into a university. The effect is that the pool of talent in the top 20% of the cohort will then redistribute themselves evenly between the three institutions. The top 25% will continue into University and still take on the best paying jobs the market.

But regardless of how the education change, hierarchies remain the same.

Some stigmatization would end, but the corporate will develop new forms of discrimination. In the future, companies in Singapore may refuse to hire Australian graduates or local graduates with no honors classification.

In conclusion no government, PAP, WP, SFP or NSP can put my Phillistine friends on top of hierarchy.

Hope you've enjoyed this brutal essay.

Gong Xi Fa Cai !

Some thoughts on career management for the New Year !

Happy new year of the Goat !

Gong Xi Fatt Cai !

The financial bloggers were goading me to write something pretty hardcore about Confucius today, but I decided to hold it off until a few weeks later as I think I've got something better to share today.

As it turns out, I was quite fortunate to be exposed to some ideas when SMU conducted its networking sessions for the folks in the JD Program. My first experience was with a tape recording of Davinder Singh's talk and I benefitted immensely from the only tip I got from him which was to read the Economist.

Last week was my first networking student as a law student. My first networking session was with a law firm called TSMP, a pretty awesome looking setup at 6 Battery Road. Once again I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a very short discussion with their head honcho Thio Shen Yi which was also very insightful and very applicable to folks in other industries.

The idea he shared briefly with Law students is that there generally three kinds of workers :

Grinders - These guys do the heavy lifting and analysis in any organisation.
Minders - These guys handle the grinders and they get them to work towards a common goal.
Finders - These guys are the rainmakers who bring business to the company.

Thio's central idea is that his workers start out as grinders before they are ready to become minders, but the guys who ultimately make partners have to be the kind of the workers who are finders. These people develop the core business and sustain the other workers in the business. Naturally, I asked him how can a minder develope the skills to become finders, to which he said that the trick to becoming a finder is to learn to make friends.

I was reflecting about the usefulness of the Grinder-Finder-Minder model and realise that it's a powerful way to look at anyone's career. It also explains why so many tech workers in their forties start to struggle with maintaining a good career.

Here are some on my insights :

a) Jobs which pay grinders well are rare.

Why does your stupid boss who worked in the mainframe era earn more than you even when you know so much about Ruby on Rails or functional programming ? Good paying jobs for grinders are rare because a grinder can at best be an optimal producer. A good minder who can squeeze 10% more work from his grinders can be worth 10 engineers if he leads a a team of 100 men.

Engineering does not pays grinders well. And unless you work a great MNC or a consulting firm like Accenture, it does not have a structured process to turn you into a minder. This explains why the smartest engineers try to do an MBA as quickly as they can.

Rare exceptions do exists : Specialist doctors like plastic surgeons are highly paid grinders.

b) Most knowledge workers typically start as Grinders but need to evolve to sustain their success.

Successful career management is not about looking at problems at work, which can your minder manager very happy, but to find ways to evolve into a minder role. The technology industry is full of grinder engineers who are very competent with machines and technology and fail to develop the EQ and work coordination skills to move into a supervisory role.

This is the essence of why an engineering career fails - you become so confident in your problem solving skills but lack the communication skills to project confidence and lead a team of grinders.

When you reach your 40s, the massive paradigm shifts in IT makes your grinding skills obsolete, so you either run to the government agencies if you have a decent Honours degree or pick up a taxi license otherwise. This sad career tragedy is played out on all engineers I bet there's one in your family.

c) Being a Minder is unsustainable unless you can transform into a Finder.

While being minder is better than a being a grinder, it comes with many disadvantages too. Management jobs are highly political in nature and you are always fighting for resources. Paradigm shifts are slower but typically result in massive restructuring exercises like IBM's Project Chrome.

Another problem is the isolated nature of a minder's domain expertise. A great manager in an organization has gathered a lot of social capital within one organisation. There is no guarantee that this capital can be retained, when the manager gets promoted, moves to a new department or a new company. Most minders are not particularly mobile in their careers and stuck to the organizations they work for.

Minder managers don't get it easier as well. I've seen so many management career when an executive from a tech firm jump into the government and can't carry their social capital with them and drastically under-perform the folks who have been with the agencies all their lives.

d) Being a finder is a talent and tied to your social economic status

Actually, I would have really appreciated a spirited debate with Thio Shen Yi over this issue.

IMHO, being a finder is not as simple as making friends as described by Shen Yi. It is a complicated talent to be at the right place at the right time. A consummate finder does not need to lift a finger if he has a taste for fine wine, art, and can operate in a network of individuals who may have legal work for him.

This level of ease and cultural sophistication is not cultivated within our school system although SMU's career office tries hard to instil this in its graduates. There is no PSLE subject called Charisma, English Literature may help as an O level subject but it's largely incidental and based on how much you apply yourself. An ACS kid can exude this cultural sophistication even if he gets 25 point for his O levels. A Bukit Batok Secondary school student who has hawker parents will not even know what a Cabernet Savignon even if he gets 6 points.

Making matters harder is that the great schools like ACS, RI and HCI have great alumni movements which dramatically increase the social capital of any knowledge worker.

If I were a business man, I would choose someone from such a network to be my finder to maximise my revenue earning potential. This practically locks B-Graders like me to be at best a Minder even if I work my butt out.

I have a small dream, at least for the industry which I am trying to get into in a few years time.

I think Law School has become so elite that finding someone with no ties to the Raffles, ACS or Chinese High mega-brands is so rare that it may even be possible to start a small association or sub-division for mutual benefit, it would be like a small gathering to just shore up our social capital and find businesses for each other.  ( We'll be like the NTUC Fair Price housebrands who have to fight against P&G and Unilever in the supermarkets everyday ! )

Maybe some of us will get that shot to become a finder.

Dating and Mating strategies for single men !

I finally managed to have a short date with the missus after writing my last article since my daughter had just fallen asleep. When I came back to the console after going for a late night Har Cheong Gai, there seems to be demand for an article for men on Valentine's Day

May God have mercy on your souls !

Initially, I felt that a men's article is unnecessary as I would consider this entire blog advice on how to live life for all men.

The other reason concerns how I feel about the guys in my JD class in SMU which makes a request for advice absurd. While it might sound silly, I have unearthed pseudo-mathematical evidence that the younger guys in my class are Masters of the Universe. 15 years ago, when I was in NUS, I had known girls who come to the Toastmasters to stalk the more eloquent male law students. They would go all the way from the science faculty to ogle at the guy, who is normally an NUS debater or king of the mooting competitions. This guy who was stalked once asked me what to do hoping that some troll would rub off on him, I told him to enjoy it because we engineering students want it but can't get that kind of attention even if we tried.  In conclusion, my classmates, who would likely be worth half a million after 13 of work at a 25% savings rate, don't need my help.

This advice is for the rest of the dudes :

a) Heads you win, tails you also win.

The world of male privilege is very simple. If you get married, congratulations. If you don't, congratulations to you as well.

The malaise of the 21st century is that there are too many sources of entertainment for men starved for sex and self-esteem. For pleasure, you can torrent porn into your system. For accomplishment, you can take out your level 100 Death Knight for a spin and organize a raid where doctors, lawyers, CEOs and high flying professionals may follow your orders to take out the Prince Arthas on WOW.

The only time you might not feel so WIN is when you crave for companionship.

This generally only happens on Valentine's Day.

b) Target 70% percentile in total income before you settle down.

At this stage you might be wondering why I was fixated at 70% percentile or $80,000 a year in annual income. The answer lies in an article I wrote for the Intelligent Singaporean 8 years ago on the night before I went for my ROM.   The article caused quite a stir and prompted some angry lady journalists from the Chinese papers wrote to me to get me to clarify my points.

Basically most women only 30% of the male population good marriage material. Of course, a lot men do get married in the end, but always be reminded that you are a compromise choice. She married you because are a good person who asked her.

The rest of my blog will show you how to generate income towards that end.

c) Go for women who can give you a stable marriage.

As it turns out, Mother nature can be a hypocrite when it comes to relationships.

Stable marriages need conscientious husbands but divorces generally come from neurotic wives. Neurotic women are negative, get anxious over small things and are emotionally of the high maintenance variety. Unfortunately, I suspect that evolution has also made neurotic women hotter because no guy would want them otherwise.

For your parent's and future children's sake, don't do neurotic women. Some possible markers of neuroticism are their propensity towards Goth gear, depressing Evanescence music and black clothing.

Set up a test. Travel with your girlfriend to a third world country and see if she gives you hell in a place without clean toilets or air conditioning. If she does, drop her like a ton of bricks and go back to your Playstation 4.

Your imaginary children will thank you for saving them years of psychological therapy.

d) Take your time and use your age to your advantage

Be thankful that your sperm will stay healthy well into your forties !

Men don't need Apple to freeze their sperm. They just need Google to find more porn.

The lesson for men is that they can wait. Old age and treachery will always triumph against youth and speed. For one thing, you need build up your income to reach 70% percentile, but access to the hotter women comes with higher socio-economic status.

But once again, don't make the mistake Millenials make with their lives.  Do not throw away your twenties, work hard and upgrade continuously and take steps to rise in this world. You can travel round the world in your 40s with your 18 year old wife once you make a million bucks following the advice from the rest of the Singapore Financial blogosphere.

But leave the intellectual masturbation to the 40 year old uncles.

e) Choose your venue with care

My advice for men and women are similar. I think bars and lounges are hot beds for crazy neurotic women to hang out, you are better off finding someone who is into self-improvement and some religious organizations.

Good luck if you go SDN.

f) Guys cannot fail in the relationship game

Personally, I think while marriage and children are great, single men run the risk of divorce, which can be so painful, it makes staying single so much more comfortable.

So what happens if no woman wants to marry you ?

Worst case, you travel to Europe so that you can avoid relatives on CNY. You might be depressed on Valentine's Day. You become a life-time member of the Geylang Community Club.

Of special note is that as single men get older and older, their bitterness grows and cynicism takes root. But that's also not your problem, its the problem of your friends who have to cope with you and self-righteousness. 

As such, unlike women, who have live in a world of glass ceilings and double standards built by men.

Guys cannot lose the relationship game.

Just don't be too fixated with wanting companionship.

Dating and Mating strategies for single women !

First off, happy Valentine's day to everyone.

A lady classmate asked me to do an article which summarises how I view the current dating climate in Singapore. I promised that I will do something to the best of my ability but first off - May God have mercy on her soul !

Some of the ideas I have today are based on how little I know about social science and evolutionary psychology. To temper my propensity to troll, I would have to consider whether this article would be practical if I were to instead give this advice to my daughter. So far, I think it passes that test.

So here are some of my pointers:

a) There aren't a lot of eligible of men to go by.

Men may fail to be marriage material quite easily. A small proportion are not interested in women at all. A larger number are stuck in jail. Even more struggle to support themselves because the world economy is slowly but surely destroying the middle class. Even the category of men who have decent jobs may not marry because technology has provided many alternatives through game consoles and social media.

So the first point is that this is not a good time for an eligible Bachelorette. 

b) Men in the 70th income bracket should be good enough.

I think women are not out to spend men's money. Their men's income is a signal of their own self-worth. It would be hard to justify their boyfriend's salary to their relatives, parents and colleagues, if it is significantly below their own. This is a significant defect in Asian society. Women are not fully liberated yet but they are starting to outperform men in schools and the workplace.  

As my classmate will be a lady lawyer in the future, she would expect a fairly high salary on her own. My concern is that she may reject many men who make less money than she does.

My advice is not to look for a guy who can match her income, but to find someone who can hold his own at 70th percentile on the income scale which is about $80,000 a year. I also think that men at above $80,000 a year can look after themselves and should not have a psychological hangup if their lawyer wives make several times more than they do ( Just go for better holidays lor ! ). 

c) Go for the men who can give you a stable marriage

Personality science has given some pointers on how to choose men for the most stable marriages.

The most important trait if you cannot assess a man's career potential is his conscientiousness. Conscientious men are neat and orderly. They are ambitious, have a set of goals for themselves and can plan for the future. You can see hints on how conscientious a guy is from his icon arrangement on his home PC but you need a certain level of conscientiousness to get into higher education and the highest-paid professional jobs.

The second trait is agreeableness. Whenever possible, go for a guy who is friendly and warm. I know some women find jerks and trolls irresistable, but you should try to avoid men who put you down.

But the economy makes this a difficult bargain - the most financially successful men are conscientious and disagreeable, so good luck sorting this one out as most divorces occur over money issues !

d) Play for keeps while you are young

Despite what feminists say, men remain stubbornly visual creatures. You will need to do something to ensure that you look presentable, but more importantly, as looks depreciate over time, you need to aggressively play for keeps in your twenties and early thirties.

Biologically, it does not make any sense for women to delay marriage if the right guy comes along ( That is, itself, a rare event these days ). Shows like Sex and the City send out the wrong message to women that there is a Mr.Big waiting for time when they hit their 40s. Mr Big will probably go after his hot secretary who is 15 years younger than him.

Worse, there is a train of thought started by Apple that a woman can freeze her eggs to be used the future so that she can work. I would agree that the technology can work, but do ensure that you freeze your appearance as well unless you are only looking for a donor and not anything else.

A Milennial's biggest mistake is thinking that there is a period of their lives in their 20s that they can dedicate for self-reflection and intellectual masturbation. They are wrong - they need to get their career's right, save for retirement and start a family if they can find the right person.

Leave the intellectual masturbation to uncles in their 40s who study in SMU and run financial blogs.

Your time will come later.

e) Choose the venue for your battles

I can't emphasize this more but choosing a venue to find a conscientious and agreeable man can itself be a science rather than an art. I never understood why some folks in my generation think that they can settle down with someone they meet in a discotheque or a bar. These places are not exactly the kind of place you will find guys who are conscientious. And sadly, neither are organized dating events, many guys are there because they lack the conscientiousness in the first place !

In that sense, the ladies in my class have come to the right place. Places of higher learning has plenty of conscientious guys who are out there charting a better future for themselves. I would also like to add that religious organizations are also full of guys who are high on the agreeable scale. 

f) Prepare to fail. And maybe win big as a result of that.

My heart goes out to my lady classmates. I worked with them  and confirm that they are no more neurotic and disagreeable than other women I worked with.

I think female lawyers may face some discrimination in the dating world. Asian men are intimidated by their intelligence and one or two neurotic women may inadvertedly tar the entire profession. So it is entire possible that some professional women may not find the right person in their lifetime which is not their fault.

Maybe that is is why they may have won the game of love. Their married peers have diapers to change and husbands who refuse to share in the house work. They can make their own money and travel several times a year.

At the end of the day, professional women in Singapore have a tough juggling act. Eligible men are getting distracted by technology and find it impractical to start families with so many viable alternatives. Society still have a traditional view on marriage and gender roles in the household while women's incomes and career potential speed ahead as the economy becomes more globalized.

That is why, in the end, with better education and economic prospects, professional women are stuck in the role of being daughters of a better age.

It is so much tougher to be  wives and mothers in this better age as a consequence of this.

Huzzah !!! Time for guys to spend NOTHING on Singaporean women !!!

I would like to build on Budget Babe's very interesting rant on The Real Singapore.

In this very exciting article Budget Babe extends the idea that it is not prudent to for Singaporean men to spend too much money to impress women.

As a financial blogger of the Income Investing school of thought, I want to take Budget babe's ideas further and insist that guys pay NOTHING when dating Singapore women.

Ok... That's not very honest of me... I'm proposing that guys pay nothing out of their salaries on Singapore women because dating can be free if you employ your investing income to pay for all dates, FOREVER !

The current market is pretty conducive to dividends investors, an investor can build a portfolio that has three components :

• Large Blue-chips like Venture can give about 5-6% yields.
• REITs like AIMS REIT which can give up to 7-8% yields.
• Business Trusts one of which can be Rickmers Maritime which can give from 9-11% yields with corresponding risks.

Suppose by selecting equal asset allocations in each category you can create a portfolio which yields 6%-8%. Let's call it your Valentine's Day Portfolio.

Now let's move on to calculate the cost of a simple weekly dinner date :

a) Dinner for two -  $70
b) Movie for two  - $30
b) Transport          - $50
c) Gift                   - $30

A month of dates with different women would cost $720 a month or $8,640 a year.

A portfolio like the one above would cover all dating expenses would need to be $145,000 if you yield 6%

If you are fairly good investor who can stomach bigger risks you only need $108,000 if you yield 8%.

Of course saving enough money to generate this portfolio is not part of this article, there are plenty of bloggers who can show you how to accumulate $100,000 before you hit 30 years old, most fresh graduates who are diligent can do this before 33 years old.

This particular model of employing investments to impress your Singaporean women can lead to some more interesting insights about how single men can plan their love lives better using financial securities and why many men fail.

• When in your twenties and building your career, you might what to be cheaper or have fewer dates. 
• Your bargaining position as a good life partner improves after you hit more than $85,000 a year when you hit 70% percentile within the male population.

Another way of looking at the dating game is this : Use Social Science and Evolutionary Psychology to your biggest advantage. When your position is weak, another words, when you are young and struggling in your career, the last thing you should do is to blow your assets on a sweet young thing. All the bargaining chips are in her hands.

The only thing you have at your end of the bargaining table is your small erection.

Build your asset base, start scoping your lady friends to determine who is a good candidate for a life partner - someone agreeable, non-neurotic and conscientious, when you have a more stable career and cash flow, women your age will find that your relative position has risen compared to other males in your age group.

Only then do you make your move.

Downside of financial independence.

Initially, I wanted to put up a piece on who the Child in the Basement really is. I wanted to talk about the problems of trying to frame social ills by telling a story and how it distorts the issue for everyone, Then I became so tired that perhaps I should blog about something much simpler that more people can relate to.

So this will be short post.

A lot of people speculate about what happens when someone reaches financial independence.

Does the person turn good and end up doing a lot of charity work ? Or does the person turn and start bullying other people with their new-found freedom ?

Increasingly based on what I've observed, it is none of the above.

Financial Freedom takes away all pretense of who a person is.

In the past someone may have to get up early and show up at work on time. Once they get cash-flow every month, there will no longer be a need to hold a job. Similarly, a financially free person may not be all that reliant on the people around them because free-markets will now be responsible for putting food on the table, so expect many folks to become more anti-social.

There is definitely a good reason to conclude that all financial freedom does is remove the mask that we put on to cope with the challenges society throws at us everyday, the net effect is that your life after reaching your financial target will reflect who you really are in essence. In my case, I always wanted to recapture my happy days  in NUS when I was an undergraduate. It therefore comes with no surprise that I am once again back in school.

That being said, I am slowly learning that have a cash-flow may not work out for everyone.

Some people can be by nature lazy and lethargic. Others are anti-intellectual. A steady cash-flow will kill off every motivation to improve themselves and cripple their ability to ultimately find happiness in life.

As it turns out that beyond pleasure, happiness is a sum of person's relationships, accomplishments, ability to attain flow and how meaningful their life is. Without a job, goals, motivation or need to interact with people, financial freedom will sound their death knell and they soon find themselves in a limbo.

I've read a lot of books on self-help and personal development and as much as I know, I could not find a cure for someone who sets a low standard for their own lives.

What are the first principles in Investing ?

The awesome thing about the finance blogosphere in Singapore is that bloggers can build on each other's ideas.

BigFatPurse has put up a really good article on first principles and why it can often be better than just employing analogies. 

While it does not apply to every domain I know, analogies are not particularly good in investing. Many investors like to talk about Warren Buffett but forget that he can takeover entire companies and fire managers which destroy value, this has the effect of unlocking value from the stocks that he buys.

Retail investors like us will not be that lucky. A value stock can be undervalued for decades tying our money down for years before they can be put to better use elsewhere.

Of course the other problem of analogizing success is that we often come across successful relatives who brag about their investments becoming multi-baggers. This is a terrible fallacy which is often committed after Chinese New Year - If a cousin or uncle sports a fine piece of luxury watch or drives a Maserati, we automatically think that we can copy what they are trying to do. There is no framework which guides how we look at finances.

While I do not have the answers as to what all the First Principles of Investing are, I can share what can be conveniently written in one blog article.

a) Compounding is greatest thing known to mankind.

The first principle is simply that compounding allows you to create wealth exponentially. The theory is obvious even though the practice is not. If compounding is the 8th Wonder of the world, the savings you make in your 20s are a whole lot more important than the savings you make in your 40s, so why are so many young Singaporeans fabulous and broke ?

Similarly, return of 8% are astronomical compared with returns of 6%.

b) Your profits are your raw returns from your investments minus costs.

Another obvious theory which is seldom seen in practice. If profits are raw returns minus costs, you should be aggressively managing your investment costs by pruning out investment vehicles which pay too large a commission to the salesman or fund manager.

The superiority of ETFs over actively managed funds over the long term should be something to concerned about. You should be trimming your personal expenses as well, if only to channel more money into your savings.

c) Asset allocation can be a free lunch if you re-balance your portfolio.

This is more complicated. Asset classes do not move in tandem and complicated mathematics shows that by mixing up these key asset classes, you can improve your risk-adjusted returns. Another words, diversify your investments to cover different market situations. Buy a mix of equities ( STI ETF), bonds ( CPF-SA ) and commodities ( Commodity ETF from SGX ).

Rebalance your asset mix every year. Your human capital or unearned income is also an asset and should taken into consideration.

d) Performance of an asset class is a question of statistics and probability.

Generally speaking the best asset class over the long term are equities with a return 8% and a standard deviation of about 20%. While proponents can argue about the fallacious assumption about markets being normally distributed. We know with a simple understanding of statistics that promising returns over 7% a risky proposition for anyone selling an investment product. This allows an investor to immediately filter out deals which guarantee 12% a year - the deal is too good to be true.

In summary, there is a broader reason why we need to turn to first principles instead of merely analogizing from the investment success of others. First principles sets the boundaries between common sense and salesman bullshit, allowing you to avoid paying hefty commission and scams. With the right foundation, a person can craft a plan to make his first million without looking for a guru or role-model.

An obstacle towards understanding these first principle is that the study of finance is inherently difficult which costs may years of a person's life. It is difficult to get started in investing using first principles without a strong grounding in statistics, economics and accounting.

Which alludes to an bigger question : Is theory that worthless in a society that is now trying to turn to competence and skill ?