My Random Thoughts #2

      Regardless of any choices you make, there will always be regrets in life because you forgo other alternatives. Economists called this phenomenon the "opportunity cost". This is part of life because our energy, time and capital are limited. Life is an exchange. If you want something, you got to exchange it with something else. Nothing comes free, there is always a trade-off.

      To me, my vision in life is to retire early without financial worries. I can enjoy finer things in life whenever I want at my own pace and at my own time in peace. However, to retire early means my path will not be rosy as I choose the road less taken.

      First, I will be judged, be criticized and looked down upon because I have given up pursuing social status and symbols which most people valued the most. I don't bother much about these things but since I am still functioning in corporate world, I do receive "advices" and "tips" from bosses, colleagues and friends to often tell me what to do to boost my chances to get promoted and hence better pay raise. Although having pay raise could push my early retirement plan slighly faster, I will have to work overtime more often because of heavier workload and bigger responsibilities, thus diluting my overall hourly salary rate and giving me more stresses in life. In view of this, I think I am better off taking it easy in my career development and take on multiple tuition jobs which has better hourly pay rate. This also means I will be watching my friends and colleagues rise to higher ranks and enjoy better titles and privileges while I become stagnated.

      Second, taking this path of early independence from corporate slavery means I will be embracing singlehood until I achieve my mission. This sounds unusual, especially coming from a guy who is in late 20's where by today's society standards, he is supposed to find a partner, travel around the world  and settle down with her. But I have a dream. To me, freedom is everything. I want to be free from the shackles of the golden handcuffs. I want to bid farewell to my bosses who brought misery to my life once and for all. I want to be able to wake up when the gentle sunlight strikes my face every single day. While having lifelong partner will allow me to share my joy and sorrow with her, she will get in my way because our future requires huge financial commitment. You can save on yourself but you can't save on her. With this in mind, I decided to focus wholeheartedly on building capital in equity markets. This is for her own good as well.

      As the eldest son in my family, I am aware of the expectations my parents have on me. Like typical asian parents, they wish to see that I have a good career ahead and getting married and start a family. But, my life is up to me how I choose to live and I only life once. I understand that I am selfish and there will be a time where I must reveal my grand plan to them and break their hearts in the process. I am not sure whether I still can cope with the pain in my heart on that day.

      I can only hold on to this English poem I learned in secondary school:

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

- The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

      Yes, that has made all the difference. Regardless of any choices you make, there will always be regrets in life because I give up on other choices. I choose the path to freedom because it is an unconventional path to most people and it is all that matters to me. I will seize it!

My resolve for Chinese New Year 2019

      Late 2018 to beginning of 2019 is a difficult period for me. I am forced to take urgent leave to travel back to Ipoh because of some crisis happened to my family. As a result, I have no more annual leave to spend on celebrating Chinese New Year in my hometown this year. This is humiliating because my freedom of making choices in life is now being restrained by my employer. If not for the month end salary, I would have casted the ultimatum and say goodbye to the corporate world once and for all already!

      One good thing about this experience is that it strengthened my resolve to achieve financial independence as early as possible. This will enable me to make choices freely in my life without having to negotiate or yield to anyone else who have the ability to make my life miserable. As for now, I must endure, be patient and work harder to build my passive income portfolio. This is what I can do now.

      I will swallow the pain and remember this humiliation well! I will! This will be the key to my "vengeance" on the corporate world one day!

About Me

Welcome to my blog!

I am The Ipoh Investor, an ordinary man from Ipoh in his late 20s currently working in Singapore & striving to retire early by 40 in Ipoh. I am constantly thinking of ways to earn more, save more and manage my investment portfolio prudently so that I can consistently beat the market. I believe that only through discipline, hard-work & patience, I can achieve the dream of retiring before 40 and I know I can achieve it! Life is not just about compulsory work. It has to be more than that.
Thus, this blog shall exist with the sole purpose to document my investing journey, thoughts and lessons learned along the way for as long as I utilize it.


My background

I graduated with an engineering degree at NUS. Engineering courses trained me to be attentive to details and analyse information from sets of data and charts. But interestingly, I was insensitive to my monthly expenses because either I don't really care about money in the past or I was plain lazy and carefree. However, things changed when I get exposed to the ugly side of human nature in corporate world.


How I got into investing

I had complicated feelings towards my first job as I have learnt some of the most important lessons from corporate world. Just like video games, you need to know how to play the corporate game in order to survive and thrive to the top. All these "wisdom" reduced me from a passionate person to a typical ordinary wage slave, just like the rest of people with emotionless face (perhaps with little frustration) you will expect when squeezing through tiny spaces in MRT every single day.

Despite my relatively young age, I begin to feel sick from playing this kind of game. I can't imagine myself to continue like this for decades. So, I spend quite some time to figure out how to get out of the rat race. It was through reading blogs and self-help books, I realize that I can get out of it through having passive income streams with enough cash flow to at least cover your living expenses. To me, there are two ways to build such income: entrepreneurship or investing. As I am timid, reserved & laid back, entrepreneurship is clearly out of my league. So, I decided to spend more time perfecting my investing skills.

My Investing Styles

There are two ways to earn money from stock market: Capital Gain or Dividend.

I am more inclined towards income investing, meaning I will invest in stocks that provide dividends in cash because the dividends I received do provide me a sense of security. However, I soon learned that one shall not blindly chase after dividend yield alone, especially when the dividend yield is above 8% under un-depressed stock market condition. Such high dividend yield is unsustainable and sooner or later the company will cut its dividend payout, causing its share price to drop further.

So, after researching on multiple books and blogs on investing, I decided that I will go for dividend growth investing - invest in stocks with consistent dividend per share growth over the past 5 to 10 years.

Occasionaly, I will invest in value-growth stocks and asset-play stocks for some capital gains.

My Investment KPI

The word "KPI" surely will stress people out as your employers often use that to access your performance during performance appraisal or career promotion justification. Unfortunately, it is a necessary evil because we need it to quantify and track performance. Even Singapore market itself has Straits Times Index to do the job.

As of now, my current KPI is to achieve the first SGD 100k by 2023. If I commit to save 20k per year, I can achieve this KPI easily.

My end-game KPI: to achieve monthly passive income of at least RM 3500 (I intend to retire in Malaysia) + settle all my student loans before 40 years old. Then, I will settle down in Ipoh to enjoy my life of freedom.

Thanks for reading!