Starting Our Second Property Cycle

In Singapore, most people do not make many property moves in their lifetime. This weekend, we finally made our second one, in which we made our decision to buy a 3 bedroom new launch condo right after the completion of the sale of our BTO. (Our first property move was almost a decade ago when …

SA Shielding Hack Closed

Since the Budget 2024 announcement that CPF SA would be closed for members aged 55 and above, the 1M65 community and many other financial bloggers have been lamenting the move. Seedly has an article on the breakdown of the impact on different individuals because of this change, and so I won't dwell too much on …

We Got Scammed

One recent phenomena that has constantly plagued our lives are the ubiquity of scams. Where in the past, they were a lot more obvious to spot ala Nigerian prince email (also known as advance-fee scam), today they can be a lot more nuanced and believable. I'm sure we have all seen something similar at least …

The STEPN Gift that Keeps on Giving

Back in 2022, I was hooked on cryptos' move-to-earn (M2E) movement with STEPN and even wrote two posts ( first post and second post) on it. I haven't written much about it partly because the hype around NFT has died down quite drastically, but that didn't mean I stopped running. I was definitely not doing …

2023 Year in Review and Looking Ahead to 2024

I've written past two editions of Year in Review (2021 and 2022) and this year's will be no different. Before I dive into my portfolio and the numbers, I'll quickly give some highlights for 2023: Passed all 3 levels of the CFA on the first attempt, with CFA Level passed in February 2023 Ran my …

Decathlon’s Return Policy

I'm sure we have some Kalenjis or Kipstas gathering dust somewhere in the house. If you haven't heard of these brands before, then perhaps you can give this post a miss. Otherwise, it means you're very familiar with Decathlon popularity over the years. But there's one little known fact about Decathlon which I recently learnt …

Relocation Costs

In an earlier post on making the case for moving to Johor, I mentioned two categories of expenditures - upfront capital, and monthly outlay. I showed that in our situation, we were able to drop our monthly outlay while maintaining a similar or even higher standard of living in Johor as compared to Singapore. Numbeo …

The Case For Moving To Johor

I just realised the last time I wrote a post, it was at the beginning of the month. So much has changed since. In particular, we have reached our MOP and completed our moving plans to Malaysia.It may not have come as a surprise to regular readers, because I had posted about geographical arbitrage here …

A Glimpse into the Luxury Goods Market

I'm not one for fanciful purchases, but I think there are many those around me who are. So while we were expecting to visit Galleries La Fayette in Paris and Harrods in London, I certainly did not expect to make multiple trips nor to bring back a number of luxury bags, amongst other luxury items. …

Going Cashless in Europe

It's been a long hiatus since my last post, mainly because I've been away on holiday for the past 3 weeks. To make up for it, I will be writing a few money-related posts in relation to observations I've made based on our holiday, with this being the first one. I planned to go the …