It is the last day of 2024.
I wonder if I should write a reflective post about the year. Things come in bits and pieces but I thought penning things down is a good idea. Every time I say I will keep it short and most often, I will fail at it but I guess if I keep at it, one day I might succeed.
I will write about some 2024 reflections and some areas I should do better in 2025.
On Investing
Two main things came to my mind the most.
There will always be something uncomfortable that you have to deal with in investing.
Investing is never without uncertainty. Many investor seek out the strategy that avoids it but I think it is unavoidable.
- If you invest in something that have done very well, you be thinking about whether this can continue.
- If you invest in something that have done very well, you run into the dilemma what to do with the capital that just came in.
- If you invest in something that have not done well, you be wonder if you have err in your judgement, or whether this time, it is really different.
- If you earn a good yield on no-volatility cash-like investments, you be thinking about what to do with them when the yield goes down, or when the investments mature.
While we want our investment to be passive, there would always be something that can cause some sort of anxiety. The simpler and passive the strategy for you, the less you use your brain, the more questions will eventually come about.
My journey as an investor lead me from trying to find the strategy that can avoid risk or uncertainty that is very safe to eventually accept that there will always be uncertainty. There are uncertainty that we best avoid and there are uncertainty that we have to accept.
An investor will have to untangle or seek clarity in some ways, else they cannot “sit” with this strategy.
It may be more healthy to realize that there will always be uncertainty when you want returns and invest in risk assets. Find out how to manage your money in a world where uncertainty is present.
Be Mindful of What You Conclude
I watched this very good Investing YouTuber Chi Keng’s 2024 investment reflection and Chi Keng brought up a point that I agree with (7 min onwards):
Chi Keng shared his investment into Meta Platforms and Adobe. His experience with Meta in hindsight would lead him to conclude that if you manage to invest in really quality companies, you should hold on to them because the longer you hold, the more likely they will compound. His experience with Adobe in hindsight would lead him to conclude that it is always better to take profits.
If the process is the same, how is it that there will be two different reflective conclusions?
Chi Keng’s warning is that it can be dangerous if we easily feel convicted by our recent investment experience in hindsight. I think many can easily conclude based on recency bias the wrong thing.
- This strategy doesn’t work because my experience was poor.
- Investing in this country and region doesn’t work.
- You should not invest in dividend stocks but only high quality companies.
I wonder if investors would make the same conclusion if they see things through other people’s lenses. The people who have invested in a different time period, in a different region, or someone who have a deeper sophistication in the strategy.
Shaking off recency bias, with extreme confidence or lack of confidence is pretty challenging but I think if one cannot critically learn the deeper lesson, they would end up going in circles from one investment to another until one day they wonder what is the real truth.
Achieving Better Focus, Going Deeper, to Gain Greater Satisfaction.
I find myself losing focus easily for the past few years. If I were to do something, either at work or personal, I feel like I take a longer than normal time to do it.
I could have easily blame that on old-age but I think it is the lack of focus.
A large part may be disinterest in the things that I am doing, more than I care to admit. Another is that whenever I go and find music on YouTube, I always get hijack by the YouTube algorithm to watch some stuff.
The more I don’t get stuff done, the more anxiety builds, the more I thought I have less time, and the panic eventually made things worse.
I think the way to solve this is to quiet down the brain, don’t search for music, be more focus on thinking about one thing. If I manage to brainstorm something, or did enough significant research that tells me we should be able to deliver something, or an article of tremendous value to readers, or clear off a personal problem, I think that achievement can increase the degree of life satisfaction.
Deeper work has the same effect as deeper relationships. They lead to higher life satisfaction.
A Few Colleagues that Parted Ways With This Year
I have a few colleagues I want to share some personal thoughts and paid tribute to because they have helped me over the years. I deliberately left one out for privacy reasons (since I know the person probably values that enough).
Mike
Our former insurance lead Mike left us for greener pastures.
Mike was the one who really level me up the insurance gaps that I had less experience with. I was interested in a few areas that have always bugged me. In case this is new to you, I don’t handle the insurance stuff at Havend. My scope of work deals more with the parent company.
Whenever I have weird questions about insurance, Mike and later Jiamin always spare their time to help me understand, give their perspective. Give Mike a topic and he will run wild with it.
I always value someone giving me not just the orthodox perspective but all the alternative perspectives available. You got to fully explore things so that you can sequence and structure things.
Mike even help me come up with wacky housing ideas for me, including drawing up potential dual-key home layout for my place.
Choong Hwee
Choong Hwee and I work in the same team. When his contract ended and was not renewed, it was not a pleasant feeling for me.
I get a lot of energy whenever I discuss planning and investment problems and ideas with Choong Hwee. Choong Hwee used to trade a lot but have since shifted his investment approach. Experience will tell us there are positives and challenges to each strategy. I find it tough to find someone who knows enough in both areas to explain the nuances.
Choong Hwee identifies with the philosophy that we share with our clients and tries his best to mould that into his own life philosophy.
I always appreciate someone who shows genuine care for me and I am pretty glad our paths crossed.
Chee Kian
Chee Kian retired from Providend in the middle of this year as a client adviser.
The first couple of staff that I ever talk with was Chee Kian and he ended up being my roommate in one of the retreat. We hit it off well most likely because of our technical background in the past. There were countless of times Chee Kian send me back home and we will chat about life, about the day to day planning and investment stuff. Chee Kian ended up listening to enough about my weird ideas because he cannot get out of the car.
Chee Kian would always tell me that I should go see a skin doctor and would get me a few of these stuff that he thinks would work for me. These gestures always show me that there are people that care enough about people around them.
Mei Kuen
Like Chee Kian, Mei Kuen will be retiring from Providend after serving as a client adviser for the past two decades. Mei Kuen is one of the founding members of Providend and like Chee Kian, happens to be the first few Providend staff that welcome me.
If I were to find one word to describe Mei Kuen, that would possibly be grit.
I think every founding member of Providend has some sort of raw grit but Mei Kuen is on a whole different level given her personal circumstances. You look at Mei Kuen work silently, you will get that “if she is doing it, I have no excuses” vibe.
Her thoroughness about things also stood out for me. I can recall don’t know how many “I need to get my shxt together” moments when she ask me something. In a way, that has helped me grow in a different way as well.
Living with the Title of Being Financial Independent
Being financial independent like any role like a father, a boss, may make you confront the questions about what you SHOULD be doing since you reach this status.
The people around you may make you confront this question but you may ask yourself these questions personally as well.
i had to deal with these questions on and off over the years but I felt myself dealing with this question more this year.
There is a pressure that when money is less of an issue, you should travel more. If you don’t, then are you doing things wrong?
Sometimes there is a question about what you should do with your money. It’s like you need to have a plan for every dollar that you have. This one is for your spending, that one is for this sinking fund, what are you going to do with this money (give away? how much?).
Perhaps the biggest question is we have to figure out what to do with the second part of our lives.
I think most likely someone will say everyone is different and you should not care so much what others think. But sometimes, you got to admit that you are asking these questions yourself and you probably cared enough to figure it out.
Maybe I should admit that dealing with some of these questions are important but that the answers might not come immediately if your wealth manages to accumulate faster than the answers come about.
On Work
I cannot say too much here since enough people will read about it here. My work changes year by year depending on what min-project that I am tasked with.
This year, one of the main mini-project is a project that continue from last year. I have probably dealt with this project for like three years straight. We managed to roll out what we want to deliver this year. This project has a sort of direct touchpoint with the clients.
I don’t know how others feel about what we delivered but personally I am very proud of what we managed to do. I reflected upon how this thing started in 2021, recall the shxt that we have to deal with along the way, I think it rank quite high among the things that I ever accomplished.
Think my team lead Bryan and me lost enough brain cells on this. The job is not done yet and the next phase is probably the trickiest. If we managed to pull it off… whoa… I think we are the only wealth advisory firm that bothered to, spend money on, and managed to do it for our clients.
You know there is always those projects that you will end up discussing next time when you meet up with your ex-teammates when you all left but are relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme of things? I think this might be one of those. While a job’s a job, and we should not compromise too much of our self to die for it, not finding any meaning in the day to day things I do sounds just as questionable to me.
Need to Progressively Have More Hip Mobility
It started with me feeling challenging to stand upright on the train without supporting myself against the wall. Then I realize that when I walk, i will feel some tingling effect on the knee cap.
Something just don’t feel right about that.
I seem to be losing mobility at the lower back and hip area. I think if I don’t get my shxt together and stop being a lazy ass, I might not have a good quality of life as I grow older.
Somehow, I have a hunch that my niggling discomfort in my left bottom whenever I sit down is all related.
When I focus on slowly moving that area more, I can feel improvement. I hope that I can improve my lower body mobility in the new year, just as how well my upper body strength is.
Spending and Giving
I think I evolved in how I look at spending.
I would still compartmentalize this spending to belong to this major spending category or that major spending category. I don’t think it is so easily rid that as an individual that has been planning all my life. I think that structure is always critical to help us maintain financial order and sanity.
I learn from Peng (Dr Peng Chen our Senior Adviser at Providend) to create structures that are high-level so that we have enough room to maneuver within the confines of each sub-unit. Grouping spending by Goals, by the Degree of Flexibility/Inflexibility, and Degree of Duration (Fixed/Perpetual) is high level enough so that we can keep an eye on some spending and be less mindful about other spending.
I think a change in financial status affects your spending pattern but sometimes it is not so simple. By right, we can enjoy the finer things in life if money is less of a problem but I cannot run away the fact that some food looks horrendously overpriced if I don’t value the finer things. And the main reason might be the finer things might degrade my health if I eat it too much.
When I spend, I also don’t want to think so much, but I would find it difficult to spend sometimes. You would think that is because I have stayed frugal for so long and find it difficult to spend. That was last time. Now.. I run into the problem that if money is not a problem and I want to eat a peanut Waffle + red bean Waffle three or four times a week, i would probably fxxked up the health. Chances that things that taste nice are over seasoned and I wonder eating more of those are good things.
Spending decisions are hard to consider right or wrong because they often make up not just because you can afford to or not.
This is why sometimes we see people trying to check with a wider audience whether they are making sound spending decisions if they spend on this or that, in this way or that. There exist different degree of societal pressure.
If there is a real struggle, taking sometime to try and unpack whether there are other reasons that cause you to have resistance/lack of resistance to spending might help you make it easier for you to spend with less thoughts and not feel guilty about it.
Giving things, money and time away rewires the brain. It comes easily to some not easily to others. Giving for the sake of giving might be a lack of respect if you are thinking only for yourself but sometimes your therapy has to start somewhere.
I think a significant reason why people cannot give money away and spend while they are alive and give only when they are dead is because people struggle to figure out how much is enough and feel convicted over it. Some might say they have enough but you look at their actions and you wonder if they are really convicted enough.
One of my goals to dive deep into income planning, or wealth planning in general is to make sure what i suggested is well thought out so that people can feel more convicted that they have enough so that they can spend with a greater peace of mind and sometimes resources can be better allocated in this world.
I would be very disappointed with myself if I end up as the folks who said they have enough but have no conviction to spend. Yet I have to acknowledge that unlocking things is both a mental and physical process for everyone at their own pace.
Projects or Research Topics on Investment Moats
I can only spend more effort on Investment Moats if I am more focus. So this kind of link to one of the goal on top. How much I can write also depends on how hectic or mentally draining work gets.
I cannot predict that.
This is probably the year end where I have absolutely no idea what I am suppose to do at work next year.
Over the past few years, I been spending less time doing any investments and insurance stuff at work. Perhaps Investment Moats will be my only outlet where I can get fulfillment in exploring these things.
I have some initial ideas for where I land in some things:
- I have a lot of thoughts regarding the potential boiling health insurance problem. But I think there are too many shxtty moving parts that i would not want to touch too much on.
- I would like to write about some high level framework how to think about your estate to help you arrange the problems and the subsequent solutions to solve it. This is purely from an engineering perspective and should not be construed as what we are developing inhouse.
- The Telegram bot to log spending transactions to Google Spreadsheet doesn’t turn out to be the most well rounded idea. The idea is to code something native on Android to pipe the transactions to Google Spreadsheet. I think ActualBudget (Check out my YouTube playlist on ActualBudget) remains the cheapest, most polished, envelope-budgeting system for me.
- I will take some time to add more rolling returns of different risk assets into my Financial Returns in One Page.
- I bought 20 second-hand monitors this year and countless monitor arm. I think I will slow down that pace in 2025 unless there is an absolute need (or when a fxxking ridiculous value one) to.
- There may be a travel router VPN repeater article in the works.
- A review of the GMKTec G5 along the way.
- A review of the Dell Optiplex 7040.
- A UK-listed stock that I been meaning to write about.
Let’s hope that I can be more productive in 2025.
Last Words
I hope that 2024 has been kind to your family and you.
Thank you for reading Investment Moats for the past year. Special thanks to the long time readers who have been supporting and giving me feedbacks.
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- Building Your Wealth Foundation – If you know and apply these simple financial concepts, your long term wealth should be pretty well managed. Find out what they are
- Active Investing – For active stock investors. My deeper thoughts from my stock investing experience
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- Providend – Where I used to work doing research. Fee-Only Advisory. No Commissions. Financial Independence Advisers and Retirement Specialists. No charge for the first meeting to understand how it works
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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.
