My CEO Journey

2021 was a year I see learning in a different light. Change the way I learn And it was thanks to my daughter. Let me share my story. My partner and I had been teaching my daughter piano. And the modern way to teach piano is to skip the basics and go to teaching to play songs. This way you raise the motivation level to learn piano. So shortly after my daughter started piano lessons with us, she could play a few simple songs ( with many stops in between). But after some time, she stop advancing. She has weak fingers. She has limited memory to remember the songs we taught her - since she was music illiterate. We took a step back and went back to the boring music theory. And worked on note reading, rhythm, music notation and so on. We also spend more time on hand exercise. This seems to be walking us backwards at first, but once she was able to read music, and had stronger fingers, she could advance forward easily. The improvement was obvious. It reminds me of how I learn things in recent

This is part 4 of 6 of my year in review of 2021. In this post, focus is on family or family stuff. 2021 is a good year for family. Most of the time was spent working from home, when I was home. One thing the pandemic did was to make people more home bound. This may be good or bad depending on a person, and of course your home conditions. I'm glad to say I am in the position where I prefer to be at home than out. While often at home, we still went on some excursions. To use up the Singapore Rediscover Voucher.  Now is a good time to go, where you don't need to squeeze with everyone, unlike pre- pandemic. This  space when I go out is an uplift to my standard of living.  In terms of education, I start relying less on enrichment and more on books/ materials when teaching my kids. I realize what the centre can cover in a month is a fraction of what they can learn if you teach. And you can make teaching a lot easier by buying good materials such as books and follow the book. l come

This is part 2 of 6 of my year in review for 2021. The area of focus here will be health. When we get older, health becomes a greater concern. I did a health checkup mid this year, and one item on the list was a relatively high cholesterol. The good one was ok. The bad one was high.  My weight also ballooned after I stopstop lactation. In a span of half a year, my weight ballooned 10+ kg. The effect of eating the same amount after lactation.  I looked around for diets for reference, and decided on a low carb diet. I really love rice, noodles, and so on. Basically starchy starchy stuff. But they are low in nutrients, and fattening. So I tried a rather low carb diet. I also started putting exercise back to my life. There's a running track near my place, and I started running. I chose running because the track was so near that I could hardly give myself excuse not to. If I chose swimming, I could use the excuse of not being able to book a slot. So I run. It was timely that the new sea

This is part 2 of 6 of my year in review for 2021. The area of focus here will be finance.  Part 1 on a review of my career can be found here .  2021 was a year where I was clearer on what I want to do with my money, and have more intentional planning.  My partner and I did a look at our insurances and net worth to ensure we left sufficient  money for our kids if any happened to us. This was by combining our life insurances and non- property assets, and assuming they are cared for till the youngest is 25 years old. We are in good shape according to the study.Read here for more.  With even lower cheap interest rates now, we repriced our mortgage for our existing flat. This dropped our monthly mortgage by a few hundreds a month with little effort. I talked more about this here . I took a deeper look into my assets. I hadn't been putting much thoughts into my savings and am guilty of letting them lose value through inflation. I ended the year purchasing more ETFs and retail bonds, in

With 2021 coming to an end in a few years, it's time to look back at what I've done in this year. 2021 has been the best year in my life. Not because of career, not because of investment (I didn't invest in any crypto or NFTs). Rather, this is a year where I saw many things in a different light, and decide to live life in a different way. There are some things that I try. There are some stuff that I walked away from, and there are things where I changed my perspective on.  I started this blog more than 5 years ago to talk about 6 aspects, which I want to focus on as a CEO of my own life: - career ( which I referred to as my current business) - new businesses ( simply see it as side hustles) - personal development - health - finance - family This is a year where I've truly thought about all 6 aspects, and made some improvements to them. The changes in all these, are truthfully due to clarity of what I really want.  In part 1 of year in review, I'll review my career f

With 2021 almost coming to an end, it's time to reflect on what I've done this year, and set goals for next year.  2021 has been a wonderful year to date, and I'm grateful for the many things that I have.  1. Being healthy and alive Being alive and having the health to do the things I want is the thing I'm most grateful for. Living is the best gift. There's just so many possibilities as long as you are alive.  2. Being a Singaporean living in Singapore As the pandemic drags on, and worsen in many parts of the world this year, I'm just glad to be in Singapore.  In some of the overseas offices that my colleagues were working at, some were down with COVID, and they shared with me how they had to purchase oxygen tank and treat themselves at home. To them, it's not about getting a bed in the hospital to get treated, but rather to get their hands on the oxygen tank. While we can definitely do better, I'm just glad I'm at home in Singapore. 3. Having a fina

 I realized, I'm too different, and I couldn't understand most people. Neither could others. When this news and  this news came out  years ago, I'm more concerned about myself. If I fall asleep and accidentally drool on a public transport (no chance now since we wear mask. Love masks!), will my video go online? Why are people more concerned about "this girl ah" and "that girl ah" than themselves? When I talked about bins being overfilled at a fast food place to my friends, and lament with us clearing our own table it should free up labour for such things.  My friends tell me - COVID so minimize contact, split team.  It's COVID, you must show more tolerance... Well, that was still during the last phase's restrictions --- Consumers also split team leh. Can they cope when up to 5 can dine in together. Hmmm.... I hate companies that take my photo, and put it in their website. During the pre- COVID days, there are event companies, and event companies

As a parent, my key responsibility to my kids is to provide them till they are big enough to fend for themselves. This would include a roof over their head, necessities and a typical education (i.e. primary/ secondary school and local tertiary education), medical when needed. Whether I will leave them a legacy when they are big enough is not my responsibility. If I've taught them well enough and done my part, they should have the skills to survive and adapt to however the circumstance is when they are adults. Hence, when we plan for our kids, we look at looking after them till an age of 25. Why 25? Most of my kids are boys. And there's national service, which adds 2 years before they could complete their tertiary education. Hence, assuming the JC route, plus 4 years of University, that would be up till age 25. With my youngest being 2 this year, I'll need to ensure they are cared for till 2044. What if I'm not there?  Then at least, I must make sure there's enough f

I shared  my monthly expense  here , and one of the reason for looking at expenses is to see if there are any quick ways to minimize them.  The best way is minimize recurring cost. One of the items that my partner and I were looking at is mortgage. And seems like now is a good time to look at mortgages since interest rates are rock bottom, and I've just received an email from the bank about repricing. As a side note, 2 years back when I was doing a refinance, I thought interest rate was rock bottom at about 1.8%. Today, interest rate has fallen even more, and we are getting a new interest rate at a low 1+% interest rate. It's a no- brainer to do a repricing or refinancing.  We only checked with 1 other bank, and the rates are about the same, so I would really prefer a repricing rather than a refinance. The bank also waived the repricing fees (subjected to some terms of course). You can read more about the differences between refinancing vs repricing of housing loan here .  We n

In October 2021, a study was done by National University of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) which found that in a family of family of four, with parents, a pre-teen and a teenager, needs at least $6,426 a month to afford a basic standard of living. You can read more about the article here . I did a short study on my own household to see whether my family is spending above or below this $6426. My family is quite different from this case study. We have one more person, and the kids' demographics (currently all preschoolers) are different. Also, there are a few differing categories that we have. But I still feel it is a way to see how we fare against this "basic standard of living". We are definitely not living any luxurious life, but the expenditure is way, way, way above  this basic standard of living.  Our Monthly Expenses in detail Here's a breakdown of our expenses: Annual Fixed Expenses ($5090

I am an Engineer by training, and I did consultancy for years doing risk assessments and the like. There are many types of risk assessments that you could do, depending on the complexity, and what you really need. Recently, I did a "What- If" risk assessment for myself if I were to become jobless, and I found some interesting facts.  About What-if risk assessment There's a formula for risk: Risk = consequence x probability A what- if risk assessment is essentially, looking at what will go wrong, determine its probability and consequences, then determine if this is risk is acceptable or unacceptable. For those risks that are unacceptable (consequence x probability is too high), actions need to be taken to minimise or eliminate the risk.  To break down the steps of a what- if risk assessment, it involves first looking at what could go wrong. In the process industry, it could be human error, equipment failure, loss of critical utilities, deviation from planned parameters (e.