On... KEN

Monopoly is a great game that I played as a kid, not realizing how close it mirrors the real world that we live in. According to @GuyImprov ( see figure below ), "Imagine playing Monopoly and never buying any assets or investments that generate income. Imagine you just went around collecting $200, giving your money to the rich, and trying to stay out of jail. That is how most people live their lives". That is indeed very true and exactly what 90% of my education entailed. From the start of school to the day I graduate University - I was trained to be a cog in a machine, as they say. The sole purpose of my education was to train me to be a good worker. There were very few topics on Financial Planning. I'm sure there was; but not at any useful level that would leave a mark on my mind. The pathway ususally looks something like this --> Study Hard --> Graduate from University --> Become a Worker --> Work Hard --> Become a Boss --> Retire. Thing like what is ...

NFT ( Non Fungible Tokens ) shot to the forefront of media in early 2021; although the tech has been around since 2017 with the launch of Crypto Kitties. There are competing sources on what kick started the bubble and bull run of NFT's but I would attribute it to Beeple's $69 million sale at Christie's in early 2021. That is probably the time when I heard about Nft's which later is just called Jpegs by people in the space. I initially shied away from this space because it seemed very speculative and scammy. Several months on, I changed my mind as I got caught in the bull market mania. I've been investing in this area ever since as my perception of this space changed. Jpeg investing is a very unique space - it is the intersection of venture capital and alternative asset class ( watches, fine art, wine, comics, music, etc... ). Normal people like me will never have the chance to participate in a venture capital. This is as close as I get. Betting on new technologies a...

My son had an event at School that celebrates Mental Health Awareness. According to the School Newsletter that we received, the children were supposed to wear their School Uniform ( white shirt ), with a green item as an accessory on Friday. For context, he usually wears his Sports Uniform ( yellow T-shirt ) to school on Fridays. That Friday, I put him on his school uniform instead of his sports uniform, feeling proud that I was a responsible parent - Having read his School Newsletter ( I'm usually too lazy to read it ) and also remembered the instruction that was given on the Newsletter. When we arrived at school, we were met with a surprise. As we were driving into the parking lot, my son saw his classmate walking pass in the distance, and she was wearing her Sports Uniform! My sons first reaction was that we had made a mistake. He was supposed to wear his Sports Uniform as usual and not his School Uniform. He did not want to bring along the green accessory that he had prepared a...

Money is never enough - my friend said. That is very true but not true at the same time. Our relationship with money is a very personal thing and it depends on our personality and philosophy. There are two things I thought about when he said that money is never enough. The first thing that comes to mind is that generally people want what they cant get. I am not sure how true this statement is but I have heard it somewhere and it is very true for me. When we are young, we have more time than money. When we are old, we have more money than time. This is generally speaking of course ( not talking about people who are homeless or living in poverty ). Because my friends and peers are still in the "young" stage ( I would argue that we are already old at the age of 40+ ), we are at the age where we think we still have a lot mileage to go before we expire. In this case, we think we have a lot of time, thats why we crave money. As compared to someone in their sunset days ( 70+ perhaps...

Punk 6529 had a Twitter thread titled " On Making It ". It is a good thread and something that I do think about from time to time. TLDR of the thread is as follows. Live can be divided into 5 levels financially. Level 1 is barely enough to survive. Level 2 is living paycheck to paycheck. Level 3 is living comfortably. Level 4 is Super Rich Level 5 is Nirvana. My personal opinion or net worth range that I apply is as follows. Level 1 - 0 to 1k$. Level 2 - 1k to 100k$. Level 3 - 100K to 10mil$. Level 4 - more than 10mil$. Level 5 is when you're happy with your net worth. This is a very special level because it is not defined by your net worth but defined by your own satisfaction. This is of course a very rough representation of what Punk 6529 is talking about. I have lived my life mostly in Level 3. Grew up in a Level 3 Family when I finally got a job and is pursuing my own career, I was mostly in Level 3. Early in my career, as an ambitious young man, I have considered tha...

They say Beauty is in the Eyes of the Beholder. The same thing can be said about "Value". For someone who is living through Winter, an air-cond is of no Value. Whereas it totally has value for someone who is living through Summer. The opposite is true for a heater unit. Totally of no Value for someone living through Summer but has immense Value for someone living through Winter. People always debate the Value of things. But it is very subjective. One thing can be of value to someone but has no value to someone else. Note that Im talking about Value and not Price. Of course, there is some overlap as we assign the Value of something usually through the Price. The price of a luxury handbag is quite high. This suggests that a luxury handbag has immense value. It can be - for someone who likes the brand a lot. But to me, a luxury handbag does not have value at all. First of all, I do not use a handbag and secondly, even if I do, I would not care very much about the brand.  And the...

Last blog , I wrote about Time Management. One thing that stood out to me when planning my time, was time ROI.  In Finance, we always talk about ROI in terms of monetary value. But money = time. So, in fact when we manage our time, we should consider ROI because we don't want to spend time on things that have low returns ( or no returns in some case ). So, what's time ROI? To me, good time ROI is spending time on things that have good returns. I started to realize this when I started to do a bit of time management and there was just so many things to do. And there is no possibility of fitting all my activities in a 24 hour time span. This is a very rough guideline but it is one that works for me. Generally, I divide my time into three buckets - Fun, Rest and Work. Some activities are non negotiable of course, like sleeping which is 6 hours of my day. So, there is only 18 hours left per day that I can use ( 6 hours is actually too little for me and I plan to increase it in the f...

This blog was created to write about financial matters. This months topic however is about time. Its because time is money. Time is the most important asset any living person can have ( at least until humans figure out immortality ). If we spend so much time on planning financial matters, shouldn't we also spend a lot of time planning how to use our time? Where did all my time go? Isn't that a familiar question? Sometimes I feel like my day passes just like that and I wonder if I have spent my time wisely ( more on this in another blog post ). How can we judge our time usage if we don't have some sort of plan or guideline? So, I set out to map out how my time is spent, made some adjustments and came out on what I think is an acceptable and balanced time management. From my perspective, this pretty is "balanced". With 31% dedicated for rest, 33% dedicated for Work and 35% dedicated for Fun. Of course, it depends on how you classify things but I'm happy with wha...

Cash is Trash. Cash is King. Which one is true? Both actually, but perhaps at a different time frame and depends on the situation. Generally, you don't want to hold cash for a very long term. This is due to inflation. Official number of inflation ranges from 3 - 8%, but if I would guess, I would say its usually closer to 10%. Of course, inflation is a very personal thing and it depends from one individual to the next. Thats where the saying cash is trash comes from. I first heard about it from Ray Dalio. Basically, what it means is if you put your money under the mattress, after a year, it will lose 10% of purchasing power ( or whatever the inflation number you believe it to be ). In the past, this is solved by putting your money in the bank and your bank interest will compensate for the lost of purchasing power. These days, bank interest is very close to 0%. So, you cannot solve the problem of inflation anymore and you're doomed to accept the lost of purchasing power over the ...

 I don't care about the money. I say that sometimes, but do i really not care about the money? Well, I do and I don't. When I say I don't care about the money, it doesn't mean I don't care about money. I just don't care to have a lot of money. You see, a lot of people do things to get a lot of money. But I rather do things because I enjoy doing them, rather to get a lot of money. Am I so rich that I don't care about money? Only rich and wealthy people do things for fun and not because of the money right? Wrong. Whether you care about money doesn't depend on how rich or wealthy you are. It depends on your personality and your philosophy on money. Some people have a few million dollars, but they still strive to have a couple of million more. Heck, give me a million dollars, and I don't have to work anymore in my life ( well, I don't really work anymore but that's a different story ). Look, the reason I don't care about the money is not beca...

I'm always staring at my phone and my laptop, sometimes watching, sometimes listening, sometimes clicking and tapping away. At a recent holiday, my relatives asked me what I was doing in front of my phone and laptop all day. It's really hard to explain to normies.... I'm watching trading podcasts on Youtube, listening to psychology talks, clicking away on the Sandbox Voxel Editor, reading Twitter, grinding away on Discord channels, listening to Twitter Spaces.... etc. It all just sounds like nonsense. Truly, I don't really know how to explain. I just tell them I am fooling around.... and maybe, that's it. I'm just fooling around. Not doing anything productive. And my family thinking I'm just fooling around is actually good, not bad. As we all know, trading and investing, is a very difficult space. If it was easy, everyone would be rich. Your net worth can go up and down like a roller coaster day in and day out. You might be working hard all year ( whatever w...

2022 marks the beginning of my fifth year of investing. 2021 was not a good year for me generally. It started great until the end of April and May onwards was painful for me. Despite the tough environment that I faced, I felt lucky that I ended the year positive for my trading and my overall portfolio. ROI for my overall portfolio is 11.1% ( ROI since inception ). For the latest portfolio updates, see Portfolio Updates .  There are 2 big changes that I had in 2021 compared to previous years. The first one was to pick up crypto trading. I previously just hodled bitcoin as a safe haven asset. I never thought I would start trading altcoins. I was first introduced to Ethereum in 2017 but was not convinced that it is an investable asset. It took me 4 years before I would start to trade it. I guess in 2017, the environment was a lot more speculative. By the start of 2021, crypto had become quite mainstream with lots of institution adoption. The second big change in 2021 was picking up NF...