I had about 18 days of leave to clear. And they all end up in a way that I could only clear them at the end of the year.
Don’t ask me why.
So I ended up taking almost the whole of December off.
I ended up thinking of going through a list of things that were on my mind to settle. If you have “so much time” only your hands, you be tempted not to waste them and go overseas.
I touch my heart and felt that I would end the month feeling better if I was able to arranged enough things mentally.
December was the most reclusive period of my life as well with the least human interaction. I ended up most of the day doing the most standard things. Wake up, arrange something at home, make simple coffee, air-fry food, de-frost and marinate chicken, then code or read up on things.
I wanted partly to see… how does it feel to be uninterrupted. Just how boring this kind of life can get.
I went Bangkok and did a lot of the work coding a personal Safe Withdrawal Rate calculator that is able to consider the market returns of more asset classes and provide more insights. I spend some time cleaning it up and arranging it. I ended up changing the graphing component because the existing one just don’t feel too right.
I wanted to figure out if there is a way to compute XIRR without using a spreadsheet. In my mind, it feels like we are always limited by doing things on Excel or Google Sheets but it is more efficient if we can calculate off it. This can be done, and I tested with some data from my personal portfolio to observe if I get the same results.
I was personally immensely unsatisfied with something at work but I felt that it offers so much value when discussing planning. So I took on and off 5 days to code it into something workable and usable. I already figured out the deeper logic at work in the middle of the year and most of that is translating to code. But the most challenging part is that… user interface inputs takes time to code.
Somewhere along the way, I thought that one of the FXXK problem at work is to parse a bunch of shield policy premiums, evolving over the years, from a bunch of insurance companies. The challenge is that we always been doing in Excel. Questions about shield plans come not always in the most well formed ways and this is actually the advantage of LLMs. But the challenge is how do you make the data relatable.
So I coded something so that next time we have a better scalable way to create a relationship with the shield plans so that we can query with LLMs better.
I think the user interface is what A.I can help speed up not by coding it but that many of what we need are just queries and the output are answers. LLM chat circumvent the need for interface.
I took just a while to think through how much of Daedalus Income portfolio that I wish to shift around. I reviewed where I am with the STOXX World Equity Multifactor, GGRA, JPGL and AVGC mainly. I asked myself again about the balance of USSC and AVGS.
I try my best to review a lot of the wild junk in Crystalys and also did some reading. The idea to try and be 100% invested for Crystalys leaving probably S$50.000-60,000 in cash.
Living 2025 with Daedalus Income taught me that it can be emotionally hair raising when volatility picks up, and you live through the usual emotions that come with it. But not needing to think about the most opportune time to invest cash, what to pivot to as I have pre-committed not to shift (because the portfolio is a strategically allocated already) frees you up mentally to function as a person better.
I think being able to understand how to discern between what is short term information, worries against a long term investment strategy helps but it is something that may helped me sit more invested better.
I didn’t get round to deploying all mostly because I asked myself how much I want this mental freedom and the answer that ping back is that I don’t have to go all the way because I have already done alot.
Secondly, turns out I also don’t have time to read so much!
I threw away a bunch of things. Some of these things… they might be functional still like a 450W power supply, or some glasses. I threw away a lot of excess computer power cables.
If Kyith can spend less than S$6,000 to get it next time… throw.
I just felt that not having too much of something reduces mental decisions on it. I have like 10 power cables and two old power supply. When will I ever use them again?
Before December I threw away 85% of my 35-year old Sofa that we brought over from our 3-room HDB flat. I threw away the metal bed that have been us since 25-years ago.
I basically cleared the two rooms to be more empty [Not to rent out].
I decide to shift my stuff so that I stayed mainly in the living room. I thought about getting a Sofa after throwing away that one, but could not nailed down what to get. But then when I get tired there was no where to laze around. So fxxk lets shift the bed out.
It was also an opportunity for me to see just how much stuff, how much space that I need so that mentally the option of selling off the 5-room HDB is open because I actually need less.
I gutted our 25-year old Kitchen Hood. We have not used it for the longest time but it just look so ugly and slimy. Every day I go past it I just could not stand the sight of it. But it is so challenging to take out. People will advise me: Kyith, get a new hood then the person will dispose it.
But I fxxking don’t want a new Hood.
I watched a bunch of videos for months but I was not confident. Then step by step I removed some parts, have a bunch how the screws held the hood up. I spend the earlier months remapping how I think the electric areas were segmented so I thought I could switch off just the specific area.
Then I just try to tear it apart. Could not unscrew the thing so I thought of getting an electric screw driver but then because I met up with Nataly for pickleball they lent me a ratchet screw drive and that was enough. I broke the whole fxxk thing out but I don’t know how to disconnect the cables because the whole thing was wired up. I thought of just taking a scissors to cut the whole damn thing off. Lucky I didn’t because I soon discovered where the connection was (it was so greasy that I cannot see if panels have screws so I thought I could not open some parts) and upon disconnecting the whole kitchen’s light went off.
Turns out there is still power running through things!
Fxxk I nearly potentially execute myself.
I think some of you would tell Kyith, don’t fxxk around with these things but you mean to tell me every time a light bulb spoil, you call and ask a handyman to change your light bulb? No right?
There are levels to what you DIY and in hindsight I would have agreed with you. I guess the line for some of these stuff is fine. Experience hopefully helps us learn better rules of thumb to manage ourselves and where to ask for help.
Kitchen hoods is fxxking nonsense.
I didn’t meet much people.
I went to play pickleball with Nataly and our coffee Aunty.
My friend Samuel came back from Taiwan so I met up with him. You can read his guess post on Investment Moats here. Samuel is one of the more introspective and emotionally honest person in my life. He intro me to this Mee Rebus at Haig Road market (this is freaking dope for $4) and we eventually went around to see Joo Chiat.
We discussed about how everything along our way was shaped to tell the world that we made it. Be it progression in work, in business, in wealth. In a way, some of us didn’t realize that we were hurt because someone told us we were not good enough when we were little kids.
We didn’t realize that specific money stories like that of our past made us just keep chasing.
And even today when money is less of an issue, we feel that we are chasing validation even when we put out content.
And in a way if we don’t like that version of Kyith, and want to run far from that version of Kyith, we become very afraid to go all in even in the most standard things in life. I think understand our intent is pretty important. There are actions where our actual intent is because we are curious and discovering. It is also possible that the reward for doing better is saving us time. But it is also personal achievements are… pretty satisfying. Where we might want to avoid is looking for external validation.
The challenge is able to see what is our true intent and what we want to do with it.
If our aim is to master something to show that we are good enough without letting too many people know, that is pretty good.
We end up spending a lot of time at this very, very popular Big Short Coffee.
Samuel shared how he sees is credit card bills and just gave up on it when he came back. The old Samuel would consider carefully to the point that a $6-7 coffee would not happen.
Sometimes we wonder what is the right thing to tell that younger Samuel or Kyith. In part, we might not have been able to reach a stage where we can just fight to treat each other and mentally, truly not think about the cost.
We cannot dispute that learning and understand how much our wealth buys us allowed us to spend without mentally think about it. If we reprogram that old Samuel and Kyith, would we be in the current situation?
I think partly we got to thank the young Samuel or Kyith for what we have today.
But it would be much better if there is a way to show that younger Samuel or Kyith that if you loosen a little, things will still be fxxking great.
So like that… we ended December.
And I realize there is still a bunch of things not done:
- Haven’t cleared everything.
- No time to code something.
- There are books that were suppose to read that have not been read.
And it kind of tells me, 1 month of no work is also not too long.
Happy New Year.
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Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.
Readers also follow Kyith to learn how to plan well for Financial Security and Financial Independence.
Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Insurance Start-up Havend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.
You can view Kyith’s current portfolio here, which uses his Free Google Stock Portfolio Tracker.
His investment broker of choice is Interactive Brokers, which allows him to invest in securities from different exchanges all over the world, at very low commission rates, without custodian fees, near spot currency rates.
You can read more about Kyith here.
