Tag: money
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A basic guide to financial planning
There is only one job of a financial plan. It is to make sure you have the money you need when you need it. And there are 4 simple steps to complete. Step 1: Spend less than you earn A financial plan cannot work if you don’t have money left over. For the plan to…
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A Singaporean retired at 35. What can we learn from him?
As I was writing another blog post, I saw that someone shared a CNA video. I was stunned. If you haven’t seen the video, you can watch it here: Colin Lau retired at 35. He has financial freedom. And he is not rich. How did he get here? Should we follow him? And what can…
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AI made me a retirement plan…with some problems
I asked AI if it could make me a retirement plan. Gemini concluded I could retire at 65 with $8560 a month. Was it right? The starting line I gave it an age of 31, a starting amount of $100k, a monthly contribution of $500, and a retirement age of 65. Oh, and I told…
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Don’t worry about things outside of your control
There’s a lot to worry about. Interest rates. Market returns. Global geopolitical uncertainty. Death. The problem is that a lot of these aren’t within your control. And if they’re not within your control, there’s no point worrying about them. Our financial goals and plans cannot foresee all that the world holds in store. So it…
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The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. Morgan Housel Do you know what social class is the largest? It’s the upper middle class. It stretches from the rich, to the richer, to the richest. Yet everyone in this group thinks they are upper middle class. People who are classified as Ultra…
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What do financial advisors do for you?
Investing is solved. Low cost, globally diversified index funds can meet the investing needs of the general public. If you’re not a member of the 1%, what could financial advisors offer you? A great question, and one that isn’t just a flat rejection of financial advisory. Yes, I would recommend treating what financial advisors say…
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Mistakes that real Singaporean investors make
The Straits Times recently ran an article about young Singaporean investors using AI to make stock picks. They make many mistakes in their investment choices. Or if they are aware that they are mistakes, perhaps they are expressing their own desires through their choices, To be sure, I am not against people making their own…
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We don’t know what to buy to make us happy
We commonly come across advice to spend on the things that make us happy. Great advice. But it suffers from one fatal flaw. We aren’t very good at spending on the things that make us happy. This ability is called affective forecasting, or predicting what makes us happy in the future. A paper by Dunn,…
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You’re sacrificing your life without realising it
My wife recently asked me a question, and I don’t have a good answer to it. “How is it that we are expected to be a good worker, a good partner, a good pet owner, a good friend, a good son/parent, and take care of our health, all at once?” I don’t know. At the…
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The biggest personal finance lessons from 2025
2025 has come and gone. There are many things that have changed. There are many lessons to be learnt. But if we don’t learn from our history, we are doomed to repeat it. Here are the most important personal finance lessons from my 2025. 1. One-off expenses will keep coming I have a house and…