Singaporean Talks Money: July 2023

Sunday 30 July 2023

Stealth Wealth and Quiet Luxury

Stealth wealth is the practice of being wealthy without flaunting it. Stealth wealth individuals may drive modest cars, live in modest homes, and wear nondescript clothing. They may also choose to keep their financial status a secret from friends, family, and colleagues.

There are many reasons why someone might choose to live a stealth wealth lifestyle. Some people may do it to avoid unwanted attention from friends, family, or criminals. Others may do it to maintain a sense of humility or to avoid being seen as materialistic. Still others may do it simply because they don't see the need to show off their wealth.

Whatever the reason, stealth wealth is a growing trend. A recent study by Fidelity Investments found that 62% of wealthy Americans are now choosing to live a stealth wealth lifestyle.

Where I first heard it

I read about stealth wealth when I was reading financial samurai and it wrote about how you can stay invisible to the society. Stealth wealth is the act of being wealthy without having to show it off. In Singapore’s context, we have heard of many examples where people with booming businesses were reported to IRAS and not saying that you should not be paying your taxes but not putting yourself out there can reduce the amount of attention that you are getting and live your life peacefully.

Also, we always say that the people who are the richest are those who are wearing singlets and slippers because to them there is no need to flaunt the wealth as they already have everything they need. In a way, if you can dress in a way that elude elegance regardless of the brand that you are wearing then that is the way to go.

The purpose is not to be flashy as you attract unnecessary attention but in today’s world where attention can be monetised, I guess in a way, if you like to be loud about your wealth then go for it. With all that said, I would think that this applies to individuals of a certain wealth level because you don’t want to be evoking other’s hate.

Quiet Luxury

Quiet luxury is a style of living that emphasizes understated elegance and quality over overt displays of wealth. It is often characterized by a minimalist aesthetic, with a focus on timeless pieces that are made from high-quality materials.

Here are some of the key characteristics of quiet luxury:

Understated elegance: Quiet luxury is all about understated elegance. It is not about flashy logos or over-the-top designs. Instead, it is about choosing pieces that are simple and classic, but that still exude a sense of sophistication.
Quality materials: Quiet luxury is also about quality materials. It is important to invest in pieces that are made from high-quality materials, such as cashmere, leather, and silk. These materials will last longer and look better, even if they are more expensive.
Timeless pieces: Quiet luxury is about timeless pieces. These are pieces that will never go out of style. They are the kind of pieces that you can wear for years to come and still look stylish.
Minimalist aesthetic: Quiet luxury is often associated with a minimalist aesthetic. This means that there is a focus on simple, uncluttered lines and designs. There is no need for a lot of bells and whistles when you are trying to achieve a quiet luxury look.

Difference between Stealth Wealth and Quiet Luxury

While these two are easy to confuse, there's one fundamental difference between them. Those who practice stealth wealth dressing are truly trying to hide their affluence, while quiet luxury is just another (albeit, very understated) way to appear wealthy.

Presentation of Wealth

I saw the podcast/video on The Woke Salaryman where they talked to Christopher Tan, CEO of Providend, a fee-only wealth advisory firm in Singapore and he described the high net-worth individuals who engage them usually dress simple and do not flaunt their wealth and in a way, is an example of stealth wealth.

When I was young, I always heard that when we go Orchard Road, the really really rich people are those in their singlet and slippers although I don’t know how true that is, I believe that there is some truth in it. To me, stealth wealth is a good way to live and we can see many examples of it especially in the older generations (eg. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger)

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Monday 24 July 2023

Introducing my sibling to investing

My brother started work mid last year and towards the end of 2022, he was interested in getting into the stock market as he was saving and knew that his friends were investing as well. He knew that I am investing and so came to me to ask on how he could get started. There were definitely some things that I had to tell and let him know before starting.

Remind him that the stock market is volatile and there is the possibility of losing money

He has the basic understanding of the stock market but was clueless about how to start and what suits him best. What I did was to explain to him broadly what investing is and how I do it. I also shared some general information and websites to him to read up. I felt that he needed to be learning and reading up on it since he was the one interested and after he had some understanding, I could help him further with questions that he had.

So of course even after all that reading up, I also told him that the stock market is not like leaving your money in your bank account, it can go down and depending on what you invest in, it can be volatile in bad times. And on having an emergency fund as well as ensuring that he builds a base of index ETFs first before venturing to individual stocks that he was interested in.

Understand your emotions and not be too fixated on the numbers unless you think you need to change your investing strategy

I also wanted to let him know that the stock market is not linear and it could go down for quite some time meaning that you must be in check/control of your emotions and not sell whenever you see a huge dip or buy only when the market is in a bull market.

During a bear market is when you can see how you react, keep to your routine and ensure that you do not stop buying during a bear market. It is crazy experiencing a drop or a change from a bull to bear market market, you really can’t imagine it unless you experience it but you can prepare yourself for it.

When he started investing last year, it was a bear market and I have to admit that he was a little upset when he checked his portfolio monthly and he would tell me that he was losing money but I told him that he knew what he was investing in and believe that those companies would do well in the long term or rather USA as a country would also do well.

Fast forward to now, his portfolio is in the green but he hasn’t really experience a downturn in that he started when it was down but although I have gone through the COVID drop, Ukraine and Russia war that triggered the downturn, I haven’t yet experience something drastic like the 2008-2009 financial crisis which was crazy.

Choosing a brokerage for yourself

I think it was a process of trying out the different brokerages to get a feel of what you want and it is also all right to have a few brokerages to use at the same time which I am doing.

Most of my friends would like to just have one brokerage account and to have everything in there but I do have a google sheet where I manually track and so allow me to have a few brokerage account and if I want to know the total, I can just refer to my google sheet. But it works either way, my brother liked Syfe Trade interface as compared to FSMone. Most of my friends do not like interactive broker’s interface but I am used to it so my main account is interactive brokers.

I recently also started some options (covered calls and cash secured puts) so interactive brokers has been helpful since there are many tutorial videos on it. This really depends but fees and a few other things also play an important part so it’s good to also check and read up before starting.

DCA is the best if you automate it

My brother has saved an emergency fund and knew that he would have excess from his monthly salary coming in, I suggested to him to start an automated monthly buy to ensure it is a hands-free approach for him. I guess he is working well with that as he doesn’t like to manually fixate on the prices although he is slowly dabbling into the individual stocks.

Getting started is the best

When I first started investing, I did have a lot of reservations as I wanted everything to be perfect in that the best brokerage, best timing/period to buy stock and also to ensure that everything was in place. But eventually, getting started and doing something first was the best as you would learn along the way on different things that you thought would be best but turn out otherwise.

It is a journey and a slow buildup especially in the first few years if you do not have a big capital and rely on your main income to supplement your investments but down the years, depending on what you have bought, it should accumulate. Investing has become so easy to access but there are definitely pros and cons to it so if you are interested in investing, read up, learn more and get started!

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Sunday 9 July 2023

Q2 2023 Portfolio Update

This has been a phenomenal quarter for the portfolio in terms of recovery and of course, hoping for the same next quarter although we are expecting 2 more interest rate hikes, I would say the market is still rather bullish although many are expecting a recession but the economy is not the stock market so we shall see how it goes.

Tesla has been on a great run together with QQQ which both have rather substantial positions in my portfolio. Not doing much at the moment so not much to update on. Weather has been crazy, starting with rainy and cooling temperatures in the morning but turns into the vicious sun with sun rays that can kill in the afternoon, I have been staying indoors mostly.

Work has been tense and tough as teams are getting leaner, we do see some tough situations as we have some restructure, turnover rates are pretty high but I am surprised how fast people are able to get a new job? It’s been quiet for me although I have been applying to a few positions just to survey the market and checking out but no interviews came in. Maybe my resume needs some brushing up.

Stock Portfolio

Reaching some great numbers for the total portfolio as the dca-ing into VOO and QQQ over the past few months shows it’s positive effect. Also, I bought some VT to increase my exposure to the world. Not a bad 1H 2023 for the stocks portfolio

Syfe REIT+

Not really adding much into Syfe REIT+ but I added when the market was down although now it's even lower, it will be a sporadic addition. But I would much prefer my funds to be going into the US market. The dividends although not much are re-invested back so I am just leaving it for now and adding small amounts.

Crypto Portfolio

Nice to see Bitcoin going above USD 30,000 and ETH inching closer to USD 2000. No addition and I don’t think I will be adding much in the months to come. Comfortable with my position in crypto and I will just ride it out.

Overall and steps ahead

No change for the DCA-ing into index ETFs but the volatility in prices is something I am liking in that as we near the date of the July FED meeting, we can see more red as more investors are cautious. So nice to buy during those times too although low could go lower.

Whatever it is, main goal is to accumulate as much as I can. So we shall see how Q3 goes!

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Sunday 2 July 2023

building up a system to reaching $100,000 and beyond 🚀

I was watching an interview by The Minimalist that was released about 3 years ago but financial advice doesn’t expire so I still find the conversations in there very relevant and useful. In it, Ramit Sethi who was being interviewed talked about building up a set of systems for his finances. With this systems being done, he spends only about 1 hour per month to manage it so that he has time to do other things that are much more meaningful and fulfilling.

Interestingly, he started out with a blog and wrote about financial topics and treated his blog like a laboratory with experiments. A lot of people asked him questions and so he released a book to answer it all. Another good interview he did was here on Impact theory.

Building your own systems and making sure to stick to it, adjust if needed

His version of setting up a system is to automate everything as much as possible from bills to spending and to investments which you can read more here. In Singapore, we can use standing instructions to set up a monthly or periodically transfer to the other bank accounts/external brokerages from our main account.

In his article, he also wrote about how important it is to match up your dates especially for bills to make sure you are paying them on time. Different schedules can be set up for your bills, investments and savings. For example, if your pay comes in on the 5th, set up schedules to automatically transfer or pay the amount.

Most of us would have a regular income coming in but if you have irregular income then a good amount of buffer cash on the side will be good and you might want to put aside a little more into savings before starting out on investments but this really varies depending on the amount you are getting and frequency.

What I do is that on a google sheet, I put down the exact values of what goes into each of my accounts, making sure that it fits the after CPF amount that I receive each month then start setting up everything in the system/bank accounts. This can be aligned with the financial goals you have set for yourself and you can set up the allocation accordingly. Here is an example of how it might look like. It is just an example for reference and will differ from everyone.

At the beginning, you might realise that it is not working as well, maybe you allocated too little to expenses or too much to a certain part, try to see if you can optimise eg cut out certain spending otherwise make changes accordingly but make sure to stick to it. After you have it on over a certain time, you will realise that you do not need to make much changes unless you have a pay raise coming.

Remember that as you automate your credit card bills, do check the statements by enabling email notifications/sms so that you can look through the bills for any fraudulent transactions and also annual fee charges so that you can waive it as needed.

Your system needs time to accumulate and build, give it time to do so

Just as I have mentioned above, everyone will have different needs or goals and so your system might be different from others but what you want is to set up something for accumulation and to ensure that you are doing it consistently.

It will take some time for the results of the whole system to show as time will allow it to accumulate and you will be able to see the results after a few months or a year. The setting up might be a little tedious as you will need to look through your spending and determine what is a good amount to allocate to it and trying to cut it down so that you can increase or build up more savings.

Once you start the whole system, it will be easier over the long run as it will be automated. This will free up more time to do other times as you will not need to manually transfer the money every month. Everyone’s allocation will differ but you will find a number for each section.

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Sunday 30 July 2023

Stealth Wealth and Quiet Luxury

Where I first heard it

Quiet Luxury

Difference between Stealth Wealth and Quiet Luxury

Presentation of Wealth

Monday 24 July 2023

Introducing my sibling to investing

Getting started is the best

Sunday 9 July 2023

Q2 2023 Portfolio Update

Stock Portfolio

Syfe REIT+

Crypto Portfolio

Overall and steps ahead

Sunday 2 July 2023

building up a system to reaching $100,000 and beyond 🚀

Building your own systems and making sure to stick to it, adjust if needed

Your system needs time to accumulate and build, give it time to do so