Some overlap is tolerable, benign
English speaking
English writing
k_soul_search k_tectonic
I won’t bother to make the title more /identifiable/. To make this blogpost more unique, we need to be even more specific, perhaps very low-level. The most interesting, memorable items are all highly specific. Let’s avoid the big common items that feature in 30 other lists in my blogs.
Q: which among these items are the most long-lasting?
Q: strength is usually felt relative to other people… is there any exception? See [v]
Q: when do I feel weak? Another blogpost?
t_tectonic requires four domains, including 3 big domains and many minor domains
Hi (name removed for privacy),
I think you are more precise in your estimate than other people, so let me improve my precision of the estimates I shared with you. I was formally trained as an engineer and mathematician, so I appreciate your precision.
— You mentioned a friend aspired to generate enough dividend income to replace salary. I estimated 4% dividend yield for her (or him). That’s too conservative.
I like U.S. stocks. Some reputable U.S. stocks pay higher dividends than 4%. A less pessimistic estimate is 5%. To support SGD 60k/Y family burn rate, SGD 1.2M needs to go into stocks. How many of us can afford to invest SGD 1.2M into stocks , stop working and live on the dividend income indefinitely? I still feel this plan is impractical.
In many stories, a dividend stock can grow in NAV. Your friend may buy at $100 and receive 4% yield, while the stock grows to $150, paying out $6 a year, i.e. 6% yield computed from initial investment. However, based on my observation, I believe such success stories are rare even in the U.S.
High growth and dividend yield seldom co-exist. Your friend must be lucky (or skilled) to hit such a hero stock.
U.S. dividends are taxable incomes, but I’m unfamiliar. I did receive tax return documents from my U.S. broker, showing the dividend incomes. Assuming 20% marginal tax rate, then the 5% dividend yield becomes effectively 4%.
— We discussed cash payout “yield” and You asked about mine in my portfolio. I bought (or in the process of receiving) rental properties, private equities (i.e. high yield debts), stocks, unit trusts … paying above 4%. ( I will exclude those investments paying out below 1%. ) So a more precise average payout is 6-7%. A more conservative estimate is 5-6%.
My “weighted average” calculation is dominated by realized rental income. Realized rental income is much lower than gross rental income, due to vacancy, commission, taxes, FX conversion, condo fees etc.
I think Singapore private residential properties are unlikely to generate 4% realized rental yield. However, Singapore property NAV often grows, so realized rental yield could grow beyond 4%. Not familiar. I don’t think the rental amount grows as fast as NAV.
I used 4% as a benchmark partly because CPF-SA/MA/RA pays 4%, also because the U.S. mainstream view on dividend uses 4% as a criteria for high-dividend.
— I estimated my developer career to end in my 70’s. It might end in my late 60’s, depending on demand and my health.
Some WallSt developer colleague (Shanghai guy in his 50’s or 60’s) told me “If you enjoy coding, then you can work remotely, so colleagues don’t care about your age.” This theory will extend my developer career by a few years, but I don’t look forward to telecommuting.
— My target life span is 95 years. I will not give a more prudent estimate. (Prudent means planning for longer lifespan like 99.) Instead of “more prudent”, here is a more substantiated estimate:
https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/population/death-and-life-expectancy/visualising-data/lifeexpectancy shows that for a male Singaporean of my age, there’s a 11% projected likelihood to live till 95. If I am among the 11% most long-living males in my age group, then I would hit my target.
Q: how many percent of Singapore guys in my age group can work till their 70’s in a white-collar knowlege intensive job?
A: I think it’s below 11%, perhaps mostly in legal, architecture, healthcare(钟南山, same age as my dad), academic/education (like my father and many of his classmates)…
Therefore, my dev-till-70 career longevity goal is harder than my live-till-95 longevity goal. My father said both targets are realistic, if I work towards them. I believe my father and I believe in myself.
https://www.cpf.gov.sg/Members/Schemes/schemes/retirement/cpf-life sayd 1/3 of Singaporeans would live beyond 90. I think this 33% is a conditional probability given that “you are a Singaporean aged 65 now, regardless of health or age”
k_tectonic
See also
The trigger — After revisiting my 2007 email/diary such as big cities more expensive @@ #LS, I wanted to write yet another review of the fundamental factors that Explain (or has Driven) all the major changes in my life. Not to become yet-another review, let’s focus more on the factors, less on the changes.
Am I exaggerating anything? Any acute attachment to beware? Beware of othRisk. Avoid polishing.
My focus continues to be family livelihood, not FOMO, exclub, peerComparison, brank,,, A second focus in this blogpost is my own American dream as of summer 2007.
Now let’s list the major changes since 2007 and try to explain them
k_soul_search
Title is lousy. No point improving it.
I /aced / killed/ many games. Most visible and most profitable game in this list is tech IV, including
The above topic already has many many posts in my blogs. Below are other games I excelled in:
Some domains are not really competitive “games” and beyond the scope of this blogpost, but still I excelled visibly:
It’s instructive to recognize the pattern.
I’m sure some of my unconventional choices backfired, but today’s focus is on the successes.
k_X_power_descriptor k_tectonic
See also
Distinct from those above, this blogpost focuses on big personal “bets” — the big decisions we make throughout our career, with profound long-term impacts esp. on family livelihood. (Singapore government used to make technology bets). A few of my winning bets discussed here relate to ffree, carefree,,
Granted none of these wins is eternal, but they stand out from smaller wins. This Group of bets had a /disproportionate/ contribution to my precious carefree life (in the current phase), and my family long-term security in livelihood [1].
Note the risk of oth. This risk would be acceptable if this list is kept below 5.
Note the pff big bets are now moved to 20-punch card .
— [1] livelihood – 生计
In this context, “livelihood/生计” means … Survival, making ends meet, including those common disasters like job loss (including involuntary retirement ) or medical bills, but there are many derailers too big to protect. See t_ffreeLimitation.
k_tectonic … k_hongkong
See also
Trigger 1 — SG^HK .. this blogpost is triggered by the SG^HK tale of two cities. Keyword is “overtaking”, where the content is nothing new. So I don’t want to spend too much time.
Trigger 2 — immersion .. sitting in the library for another immersion, I recalled my post-NUS self-improvement years.
eg: Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Scandinavian countries used to be the envy of Singapore government and Singaporeans. From the turn of the century to 2020, Singapore quietly overtook Hong Kong and Scandinavian countries in GDP. Singapore overtook Switzerland in PPP-adjusted GDP. I feel Singapore has become stronger, smarter, more competitive on many fronts, due to decades of steadfast focus on the fundamentals (内力).
eg: NUS and NTU overtook many competitors .
eg: Millennium Capital — gradually and quietly overtook many competitors. I think it’s because of consistency
Over the same period, I feel I also overtook many of my (unnamed) peers in my cohort, not only those in financial or IT domains.
Now some obvious, familiar or minor advantages I have created
Those are the things we want. There are also things we don’t want . It’s so easy to forget that I am free of the unwanted “things” below that each afflict a portion of the population in my cohort:
— my effort, choices,,,, or dump luck? See post on locus@control
— mellow?
— detach?
— how do I pass on my success to my kids?
— with some exceptions, virtually all of these “overtaking” successes stem from personal effectiveness, rather than inter-personal effectiveness
exception: marriage required a lot of team work
exception: I could do my professional job reasonably well in 10+ teams.
— Q: Are there some areas where some peers overtook me in stealth?
— Raffles Place reflection .. at raffles place I see lots of young, well-dressed (mostly financial) professionals in their 20s and 30s.
I feel many are spoilt kids. But I think others come from poorer backgrounds perhaps in 3rd-world countries. Many are ambitious and hungry in the rat race. In contrast, when I was their age I was on the sideline, as a manufacturing engineer and later blue-collar programmer. I had excellent burn rate control (unaware), competitive on theoretical domains (unaware) but stuck in the less lucrative domains.
— library immersion .. From my early 20s till early 30’s, probably after NUS, I often felt inferior to some in my cohort — techno-preneurs, the OC-effective young managers, the young MBAs, CFAs, the finance professionals on the street of Raffles Place, sales/trading professionals in rEstate or Prudential,,,, In SG, the blue-collar engineer has a low status compared to in the U.S. I felt like an ugly duckling, esp. in the dating game. None of the role models in the media or in the community was a blue-collar programmer.
In NUS (more so in China universities), library immersion is a long tradition, but after we leave the campus, how many and who would keep the habit? Remember Alina.Zhao .. In the national library, I would read tech books all day long, and those young men don’t need to read that much. They would read business or magazines, even newspapers. Some of them read about rEstate or stocks, as they have an early start on personal finance. I could only watch on the sideline. (Now I am ahead of my cohort on personal finance.)
I think my 5-10 years of self-study in the library was slowly charging my batteries, or building my infrastructure like China did, or building the system like SG did.
Since then, technology industry, esp. software dev profession has grown more important, more valuable in the national economies not only of the U.S. but notably in China. U.S. tech profession offers excellent market depth, better than many of those professions listed earlier, esp. the sales profession.
* I underestimated the $value of my QQ capacity, absorbency, continuous/inquisitive/integrative learning,,, the qualities of the growing swan. These qualities were once associated with the ugly duckling.
* I overestimated tech churn, out-sourcing. (I didn’t underestimate the younger competitors.)
* I overestimated the $value of their professional qualifications, experience and people skills.
Q: When did I quietly overtake the bulk of “them” in terms of pff + career longevity prospect? (Clearly, some are still ahead but at my age I don’t strive to close the gap.)
A: perhaps during q3sg
Library immersion provides a defining example of FOLB. In my 2021 assessment I still follow the same rat-race criteria, the same midlife timetable . In this blogpost, I have not mellowed up or grown wiser.
During NUS years, one valuable harbor was the fast-food restaurants in shopping malls such as Ginza plaza. I used to stay until mall closing time. For many years after NUS, my #1 favorite harbor was the library. I also used fast-food restaurants and MRT trains. I always brought study material + other reading materials.
Nowadays I worry less about opening hours because I could sit in bus interchange with A/C + free wifi. I fee lucky to have the library, the free wifi in various locations, the laptop, git-blogg infrastructure. Adaptation (see the blogpost) and resilience. Nowadays I mostly use therapeutic blogging to recover, restore, calm down, regain focus.
Maybe I should start using more study materials for zqbx, for burn. Get on the offensive?
k_tectonic k_mellow .. k_X_FOMO_v_livelihood
See also not left-behind on Any front: real feat. I will keep these two blogposts separate for now. This blogpost is more about a list of big battles. Every battle is a peer competition! In each battle, I had no choice but fight (I think my son may not want to fight). In 2019, I told grandpa that I felt having won the war so my fear of left-behind has /subsided/died down/ but not dead.
FOMO is an alias for kiasu and FOLB i.e. fear-of-left-behind, but for ease of searching I will keep FOMO unless FOLB is clearly less ambiguous.
[w=won or gone completely]
— In Singapore, the “kiasu” mentality is similar, as most of the battles are about peer-comparison or about “limited resources” such as education resources.
— [w] battle of 自己考进名校 — throughout my pre-U years, I shared the common fear that I might fail to get into a good-enough school
— [w] battle of mate-selection — For more than a decade in my younger days, I shared the fear (common among young men) that I might fail to find a good enough women… Consequence is quite serious.
I nearly lost this battle and was ready to live and die a bachelor. My winning chance on this battle dropped progressively to 20%.
— battle of start-up or tech career — fought in my 20’s and 30’s. XR still feels the FOMO vs the web2.0 guys.
— battle of body-building — QQ, CIV etc
— [w] battle of leadership career — either as architect or mgr. Until my 40’s, I have dreaded I might fail to climb up the management career high enough
One of the few battles I have lost and given up. Now I’m /mellow/.
— battle of academic kids — Now I still worry about my kids not growing up “academic” enough, or achieving enough.
This particular FOMO drives the (heavy-weight) housing decisions, esp. in the U.S. context.
— [w] battle of asset accumulation — From my 20’s till mid-forties, when I hear of other people’s property assets, I experience a FOMO anxiety.
Now I realize I have more than enough passive income.
— [w] battle of early retirement — including college funding + medical costs till twilight years.
— [w] battle against rising home price — mostly in China. I feel the pressure on the Chinese young professionals.
— [w] No battle of wellness — Somehow, I never needed to fight a battle of wellness. This real priority never rose high enough to become a visible battlefield.
— [w] No battle of dev-till-70 — my personal “endeavor”. No peer comparison
k_tectonic
For a background on my current carefree status, see
see also ##lifelong Habits i wish to pass to next generation
In contrast to G4 PERSONAL advantages: Revealed over15Y #byHalf, this current blogpost explores a (hopefully) diverse range of “traits”.
Q: The attachment question — am I holding on to these “things” too tight?
A: yes to financial assets, health
If I must name top 3 (personal/non-personal) factors for my ffree relative to my peers, then 1) citizenship 2) burn 3) credit risk taking. However, this blogpost is more about personal traits for my self-made carefree status (I didn’t say “ffree”). In other words,
Q: Look at my (no-mean) achievements over the last 20Y in terms of “carefree”, what personal qualities, not external factors, do I attribute them to?
Shorter and specific answers best. Roughly ranked
Now, below are some of the personal qualities that I would not include in the heavy-hitter list. Some don’t contribute to ‘carefree‘ exactly. Some don’t qualify as ‘personal‘ qualities.