On... KEN

Tell someone that you bought a property and he replies “It’s good that you’re investing and thinking about the future”. Tell someone that you bought some stocks and he replies “Why are you gambling with your hard earned money?”. Not always, but most of the time.       So why is buying property considered as investing; but buying stocks considered as gambling? I guess it depends on the definition of gambling. Ask ten different people and most probably you will get ten different answers. Personally, I think as long as your action has an uncertainty in its outcome, it should be somewhat considered gambling ( and its not only financial terms that we should consider ).   You drive your car to work. There’s always a probability that you end up in an accident. You’re gambling with your life. You start a business. There’s always a probability you go bankrupt. You’re gambling with your money. You take an airplane to travel for vacation. There’s always a pro...

Recently my wife asked me how my investing is going and how much I am earning. It is a straightforward question but the answer is anything but simple. Why? Because investing is not like opening a lemonade stall where you can report your monthly sales/profit or a regular job where there is a monthly income ( unless you’re doing trading which is similar-to but not the same as investing ).       So I could go into the details of investing but that’s not the simple answer that she is looking for. And if I just reported the dividends I received as my investment earnings, it would not do investing justice. I thought a little more about the question because I was sure it would not be the last time I will hear of it. Sure enough, a month later, when I met up with an old friend he asked me the exact question. This time around, I was kind of ready. Most people understand property investing ( most people that I know at least ) and I thought that would be one way for me t...

Early on in my career, a senior geologist told me over breakfast, “If you want to get rich, then you have to maintain your lifestyle”. Lifestyle creep is what he is referring to and everyone is guilty of that. Basically, when you age, you spend more to upgrade your life quality. Isn’t that the definition of success? To earn more so that you can spend more to live better.    When I was a student, I was contented to share a 2 bed room house with 3 other person . When I started working, I was contented to share a 2 bed room house with 1 other person. After working a couple of years, I had to have the whole 2 bed room house to myself. Pretty soon, 2 rooms isn't even enough for me. The same goes for clothes, food, electronic equipment…etc. You get the idea. Now I’m not suggesting that there is anything wrong with improving your quality of life, but where or when does it stop? When is enough actually enough? When do we realise that we have exceeded a decent level of comfo...

Last blog , I was sharing about the amount of passive income generating Asset I require to retire comfortably (in 20 years’ time), which is a million dollars. Now the question is, how are we going to get there? Lets explore the options (These options are of course not holistic, as they say there are more than 1 way to skin a cat).  Option 1 - SAVE. If we can save 42, 00$ every month. It will be 50,400$ of savings per year and 1,008,000$ in 20 years. That’s easy if we earn a combined income of 42,000$ every month and we just have to save 10 percent of that income. Unfortunately, we don’t earn that kind of money. Option 2 – COMPOUND. Mr Warren Buffett compounds his investment at roughly 30% annually. If we can compound like Buffett, we would just need a modest starting capital of 5,500$ and with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 30%, we will hit 1,045,273$ in 20 years’ time. That’s sweet, unfortunately we’re not Buffett and will not even come close to his performance of a 30% C...

FIRE – Financial Independence Retire Early. The popularity of the movement is largely due to the efforts of Mr. Money Moustache. Of course, financial independence and early retirement is nothing new, I have (and many before me) been thinking about financial independence ever since I started working more than 10 years ago. I must admit by just thinking and without concrete actions, I am not there yet with this ‘FIRE’ thing. Mr Money Moustache retired at 30, therefore I’m definitely too old to beat that record. It won’t be possible for me to retire at 30 (although I consider myself semi-retired at this point); realistically financial independence in 15 to 20 years’ time would be a viable target. Financial independence and early retirement can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For me, it would mean paying off our mortgage and to have enough in the nest egg generating passive income. So how much would I need? I would refer to the 25x Rule. Of course, circu...

Starting to invest in the market at 40 seems too late and the bus has departed a long time ago. So why have I never started? Was it because I had never heard of the market? No money to invest? Don't know where to start? All possible reasons. However, none of them close. On the contrary, there was never a lack of opportunity for me to start investing especially during the early days of my career. Conversation with close friends occasionally drifted off to discussion about investing in the stock market and due to my lack of interest, it could sometimes be annoying.   So, if there was no lack of introduction, what was it that kept me out of the game? This go back a long way... to the late eighties (when I was less than 10 years old). At that time, my family members were actually 'investing' in the stock market. I never knew how my family members did in their venture, but I don’t recall them being too successful. If they had been, I would have known. What I do know though...

This is my first post ever and I’m pumped. At a late age of 39 (not that late if you agree with the adage that life starts at 40), I decided to start investing in the stock market and write a blog to go with it.   Why now and not 20 years earlier? As most would know, Warren Buffett started investing at the age of ten/eleven. So, it looks like I’m thirty years late to the party. I would like to cover the ‘why’ in another post but for now as this is my first post, I would like to cover the ‘what’. This blog will mostly be about investing and financial planning, with occasional random rants. I intend to post 1 blog every month. I intend to post the companies/stocks of interest monthly. I intend to post my Rate of Return annually and possibly a Quarterly update of the companies I invested in. So, I guess the question is – with so many stock and financial planning blogs online, will another one be of additional value to anyone?   It might, and it might not, but I feel...