Where there’s lots of blood on the streets and fear in the hearts of many. Many lost a lot of money, such as in
Terra Luna’s catastrophic meltdown
3AC liquidation
Celsius bankruptcy
and there are scores more of such exchanges, tokens, coins and projects being killed or rugging people.
The last time I went through this, was when bitcoin (BTC) went into high of $19,000+ before crashing as low as $3,000+ (about 80%+ crash). Yep, that was AFTER I pumped more to buy more BTC at USD 18,000+.
Crydieme.
But it is what it is, I can see similarities today. Bitcoin as high as $69K, and been hovering around $19K (about 75% drop) for a long time now. It’s been wave after wave of negative events and news.
Should we be afraid?
It’s rationale and smart to be cautious and even afraid – it’s not a bad word.
Be cautious, but at the same time, I do not shun or look badly upon blockchain projects. If anything, I still hold onto my conviction that blockchain as well as cryptocurrency will change the world for the better. But there’s an important caveat:
Only the good ones will do that.
At least 90-97% of the blockchain projects and crypto are scams and rugpulls; and the okay-to-good ones, may be poorly managed due to insufficient regulatory measures in place. It is kinda like a wild wild west world of venture capitalism (or downright gambling, anyone?), but if you choose the right project and at the right time, you may be able to sit on a rocket to earn some delicious gains.
What to do now?
In crypto winter, it’s literally the best time to DCA, or dollar-cost-average into good projects.
Lot’s of fear to hold back that FOMO, and market moving sideways to give you time to research, speak to the team and participate in the project and community. Invest month-on-month amounts that you’re okay to lose (I dont like to lose money, but crypto can be really volatile and unpredictable) for the middle to long term basis.
Go with deep research and conversations, so that you will develop convictions beyond market swings.
I’ve been in crypto space since 2017-ish, and I’m more convinced that blockchain will change the world for the better, and I’ll be patient to continue to participate and invest for the long term.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Recognize market crashes as one thing: awesome sales season
I’ve always wondered how interesting it was, that when share prices drop, “investors panic”…
Funnily, I think if my favorite phone maker’s phone prices drop, I would scoop up a new one and enjoy it at a discount, rather than sell my existing phone at a loss…correct?
I think investors who panic and quickly sell, aren’t really investors. They probably are either
speculators + day traders who “always want quick profits”
inexperienced investors who dont have an investing strategy and philosophy
Go back to fundamentals as an investor
Keep saving up extra money every month from your career, business or investments
Keep a close eye on a bunch of company shares whose business will likely be around for a long time and is profitable
Ask yourself is the newly discounted price accurate or not? If it’s a good price and good company, then wont it be a buy decision?
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
The #1 biggest money mistake young men make…is simply not having a plan for their money.
This is the first and foundational problem, which leads to:
wanting to impress others, so they spend lots of money on branded clothing, saving for fast cars and watchs
wanting to fit in, they spend all they have to hangout at “cool” places
etc
These are really bad money moves that young men make, which will haunt them till they’re in their 30s or even 40s, because debt can and will snowball, and if you just pay the bare minimum, it can take you years and years.
Don’t do that bros.
Instead, you have something that many of us “old ones” (I’m 40 this year) dont have, which is time. Herein, many young ones start to roll their eyes and tell me “so what?”
Man, if I could trade you all my money to get my youth back, I would. Because the truth is that time is the only thing you cant buy. You can save time by outsourcing and delegating, but you can NEVER buy time back. And that’s why I value time so much, and tell those younger than me that they have so much they can look forward to.
That special thing that young ones have that we oldies dont have is this thing called compound interest. This itself will blow so many things out of the water, not to mention living long enough to see new technologies.
Now, back to compound interest.
If you can get a standard return on investment of 7% per year, that’s mean that you can double your money in 10 years. Now lets run a case study, say that you invest $100,000 once off when you’re 20.
If you double that every 10 years, that’d mean:
$200,000 when you’re 30
$400,000 when you’re 40
$800,000 when you’re 50
$1.6M when you’re 60
$3.2M when you’re 70
etc
And that’s “just” a once-off $100K investment. Imagine every year you can invest $100K, and every year the amount grows – this is the superpower of the young, which is time, with a
BIGGGGG BUT (two of them)
#1 Earning more
Of course no one has $100K lying around, especially when you’re young right?
WRONG!
Go out there and freaking hustle and work. There are so many opportunities available, the catch is you have to freaking do the work.
I could list down hundreds of examples, the crux of it is that you have to work, course correct with feedback and improve, and keep going forward in earning more and serving others.
#2 Saving and investing more
Now with the additional income, if you dont save and invest the surplus, then it’s not gonna compound and grow. You got to actively and manually take out a budget, pull out the fund, research whatever investment that works and rocks your boat, and pull the trigger.
And you keep on repeating again and again and again.
Retire earlier and richer than you thought possible
I know I threw out some bigger numbers out there, say $100K investing per year. Some people will have sparkly eyes and gleam and say “that’s what I want” – if that’s you, go out there and get it done. And let me know when you get there.
Some of you dont need so much. Some of you “just” need $50K a year. Sure, do that then. It doesnt matter to me if you’re wanting to aim for $50K, $100K or $1M – what matters to me is that you dream and you freaking do what it takes to get you closer and closer to your dreams.
Don’t just close your eyes and dream without doing, that’s just foolish dreaming. If you wanna dream, then do it right – map it out, break down the large tasks to smaller subtasks, and keep trucking on.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Haters. Some people call them trolls, but these haters…they’re everywhere.
many hide anonymously behind their keyboards, and shoot lines after lines of poisonous text on social media and websites
others speak anonymously and venomously behind closed doors and other people’s backs, talking bad, shit and lies about other people
Overall, these people slander others in private spaces, because they dont have the ability to share it publicly with the world, where the truth can come to light.
I take them like vermin or roaches – which can be found everywhere.
Do not engage haters
Ramit Sethi loves to engage the trolls (maybe cos he has fun doing so), but mostly I go by ignoring the trolls because of one thing: I dont like to waste time.
For whatever reasons, these people’s character seems to enjoy to hide in shadows as they tell lies and scandalize others, and I do not foresee engaging with them will be productive at all.
Check if their points have any substance
Of course, before I ignore and write off these scums, I will take some time to pay attention to what they say. What I’m looking out for is constructive feedback where there is utility, where I can improve or fix something on.
Examples:
if we take too long to reply clients, say we average 2 hours before we reply, sure, we can shorten the wait time to less than an hour
if the business waiting area or lobby is too dusty, and the cleaner only comes in once a week, sure, we can get the cleaner to come in at least twice a week
if we made a mistake and delivered the wrong product, we can fix it by sending the right one and letting them keep the other wrongly sent one for free
These are clear lines where we can improve.
However, knowing trolls, they will come up with all kind of cock-and-bull stories, with lots of added seasoning of their own crack mind. You may have experienced how trolls:
attack your personal character eg “I wonder why her husband loves her, she’s no good at all”
bring in social/family members (example above)
find examples to cause you personal hurt, grief and anguish
These kinds, I immediately fire if they’re clients or employees – toxic behaviours are not permitted
Trolls enjoy hurting others and causing grief
Often these trolls troll because they’re sadists, and when I deem they’re just out to cause mischief and grief, I disengage so as to
not waste time
not feed trolls the dopamine they get when they see their victims in hurt or pain
That’s how I deal with hating haters, lying asses and detractors.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
After 3-4 years of not visiting family, me and my family finally got a chance to travel to them in Kuala Lumper (KL) and Seremban in September 2022. And it was truly nice to meet them again – met my grandma who’s already 86, and 2 families of uncles and aunties and some of their kids.
What stood out to me during this time is chancing across personal regrets from a couple of friends and families – interestingly, they were similar:
regret going back to their home country in Malaysia, whatever the reasons then
I got a little reflective on this and how preventing regret is a big part of my psyche and adventuring in passive income, personal finance and financial independence.
Here are some takeaways:
You gotta choose the value you believe in.
I feel that that this is something that’s often ignored or overlooked, and not discussed enough.
Maybe it’s because it’s “in the air”, kinda airy-fairy, and maybe your parents or culturally you may not cover these kind of topics. I understand, I grew up in a stoic kind-of-grit-and-pivot as it comes. Which is an okay approach to float, but the problem with this is that it’s a coasting/floating without directions.
You need to choose which values (and principles) that are important to you and let these values help you make life and money decisions. It’d bring clarity and even happiness.
When you understand the values you choose, you can align with decisions you make. Let me give you an example of how I set values in my head and heart, when it comes to finance and money:
#1: My time and freedom is greater than money, so I dont want to keep actively working or being locked into a situation long term for money. My money needs to be generated passively and work harder for me.
#2: I dont want bloody or shady money. My money that is made needs to be made with the regular work and through investments that are clean. I do not want to make dirty money. This leaves plenty of money on the table but I sleep well and I am comfortable to meet my Maker.
These 2 money values drives the way I do business and spend my money, so it’s commonplace to see me prioritize decisions:
that make money for me passively, such as being pre-occupied with dividend stock investing and eventual property investing
decrease taking on expense-generating activities unless its a true need, such as expensive cars and watches and phones, which bring me zero joy
teaching my kids about business and money and ethics
See, there’s a lot of societal pressures (be it family, friends, advertisements) which can be huge – when you don’t know or hadnt chosen your values, you can be easily affected and swayed. That’s why you need to know what’s important to you.
Of course it comes with sacrifices – I have to follow my values of not buying those swanky cars even if I can afford them. It just doesnt make sense to me. My friends who want to migrate will have to live with the pains and perhaps some loneliness; especially seeing their loved ones in medical conditions or even passing on, without being there by their side.
You’ve gotta know and decide what’s important to you, be it for money, life, love, career – define them clearly and these value will help you avoid big regrets down the road later.
Plan in advance and execute consistently based on the values you believe in.
This is a continuationof the values point I shared above.
It’s one thing to know and choose the values you prefer; it’s an entirely different thing to plan in advance and execute consistently based on the values you say you believe in.
Talking and thinking isn’t enough, you gotta do what you say and keep doing UNTIL it’s done.
Again, I will use my example of my financial and money values:
#1: My time and freedom is greater than money, so I dont want to keep actively working or being locked into a situation long term for money. My money needs to be generated passively and work harder for me.
#2: I dont want bloody or shady money. My money that is made needs to be made with the regular work and through investments that are clean. I do not want to make dirty money. This leaves plenty of money on the table but I sleep well and I am comfortable to meet my Maker.
For me to live the passive income lifestyle where my investments will pay for my lifestyles and expenses, I will definitely need much more than I can invest right now.
From a very conservative standpoint, say I want to have $10,000 to spend every single money so that I dont have to worry about money, assuming a 5% return on investment, that would mean I will need $2,400,000 (This number is derived by annual amount ($10,000 x 12 = $120,000) divided by 5%).
Two problems:
I dont have that large sum of money lying around: I need to think of how to break that down into bite-size-chunks where I need to earn and invest X amount over a Y period of time
I need to consider the possibility of adding a buffer, say 20-50%, in case things change down the road (who knows right?)
How to amass $2,400,000 in the least time possible
Perhaps, I can consider moving to a cheaper cost of living space. Maybe a cheaper country, or a cut down from $10,000 to $5,000 (this will decrease the amount to a much more easily $1,200,000).
If that can’t be done or I’m not willing to, then the next thing if I want speed, then I need to answer this question:
How much can I earn and invest per month/year?
The more I can invest, naturally the timeline decreases. Here, let me show you.
The more money you can invest, the faster you can accumulate (kinda straightforward).
How can you improve on this?
Earn + save + invest more. This is the easiest in my opinion and is the #1 focus of mine, because I enjoy business so much. Why? Because business can grow. This year I may have $50K profits, but next year with improvements, we may earn $75K, and the extra $25K can be invested. The year after that maybe more and so on so forth. Business also can be sold for a sweet multiple that can accelerate my personal finance amount target too (I sold my first business for a sweet 7 figure deal after hustling like madlad for 10+ years).
More time (I dont like this because time is the only resource we cannot replace or earn back; but this will work great for someone really young eg your kids/family/newgrads) but not suitable for me who’s 40 at this time of writing.
Improve on your ability to research and invest. The calculations above are based on 5% returns. What if you can find something that can give you 10% per year? That changes everything. Let me show you:
Look at the difference – it’s massive. 2% vs 3% vs 5% vs 7.5% vs 10% etc can have startling differences. But investing can be hard and choosing the right steps can be hard, and I dont want to monitor the market too much or have too much volatility.
I take the approach of
earn more building and growing business which pays for my living expenses
dont spend unnecessarily
invest as much as possible into relatively stable dividend stocks, investment properties and even vanguard (not dividends, but been 8-9% last 10 years)
That’s it.
Regardless, can you be patient for 20 years? It may be earlier if my business profits grows exponentially and I can invest more and more.
I can and I will, to prevent as much regrets as possible.
Resisting influece, the joneses and lifestyle creep
You may have come a long way from being that broke student living off instant noodles. I know and remember those days.
Maybe nowadays you earn a lot more, and can now afford to enjoy a much more expensive lifestyle because
you worked hard for it
you deserve it
you wanna catch up on lost time
These are what I call “lifestyle creep”, and they’re like addictive feel-good-drugs that does make you feel powerful and good…but only for a while. The more you earn, the more you spend.
Maybe your neighbour bought a swanky 4 wheel drive and you like it and thinking of buying a 2nd or 3rd car
Or your parents are bugging you to refinance their home for them or telling you to buy a bigger house
Maybe your close friends are planning to go on an expensive trip
Or your spouse wants an expensive gift
etc
And then after, nothing changes. Sure, you have more expenses and things to pay for. If anything, your bank account is smaller, and you’re further from your passive income lifestyle.
The longer you can live on a small budget with minimal expenses, the more you can save and invest — and the easier it will be to have more choice, freedom, and flexibility in the future.
Yes, it’s sometimes tough to cut back when you’re used to spending more or to a certain lifestyle. By practicing more frugal habits now, you can invest more and have more than enough to “play” with the extras later.
Save and invest as early as possible
When you’re young (20s or 30s), you have a big advantage that older people dont have: time.
Time is a very powerful tool that helps to compound your money, and the longer time you have, the more it can compound your investment returns and be increasingly profitable. I’ve shared this earlier so I wont go too much into this.
Person A who invests $1K/month upon graduation at 22 years old, and continues all the way till they retire at 62 (total 40 years) with 5% returns will have $1,449,597.29
Person B who invests $1K/month for 10 years with 5% returns will have $150,934.71
See the big difference when time is involved? Time plays a very big role especially when it comes to personal finance and financial independence.
Regret prevention
After hearing the personal stories of the regrets, I am doubling down on my efforts to
build even more passive income streams and portfolio
carving out more time to spend with people I care about including praying/time with God
I dont want to regret when I’m old, because when I’m old, I cant catch up; so this means I need to anticipate as much as I can to go in the direction of where and who I want to be in 10++ years time.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
One very important concept I want to share with you today is that you can figure out your passive income and financial independence game, as well as achieve it. It takes patience and some thinking and planning, which will take at most 1-2 hours if done quickly.
Of course, if you’re doing it for the first time, it can be overwhelming because you may just not know when and where to start…but that’s what happens with all new projects isnt it?
Like if you decide to go on a holiday, you’ve gotta plan, research what to do, weather, and buy the tickets and accomodations and go.
Eat that elephant one bite a time
I like to use this example because personal finance, financial independence and passive income matters can seem so big and daunting, like an elephant. So take it bite-by-bite, aka one step a time.
First, how much do you need to retire? What are you spending money on? Is it $1000/month? $2000/month? Take a look at your last 3-6 months of expenses and calculate from there.
Is there anything you can cut out from your spending? Perhaps you’d been spending on stuff that you dont really care about? Cut out the largest 1-3 expenses that you dont care about. More or less? This is very dependent on where you live (cost of living place) and your spending habits.
Then average out your monthly expenses last 3-6 months. From here, you can extrapolate how much you’d need average on a year. Say you need around $2000/month, which is $24000/year.
Then, figure out how much you need invested to get $24000/year. Of course that’d mean you can get a simple $2000/month job too, but that’s active working.
If you want to retire, then like me, you will need to build or purchase assets that will pay you regularly, such as dividend stocks or rental properties or even online business. Choose ONE that works best for you. The easiest for me is dividend stocks. So assuming I need $2000/month to retire, that’d mean I’d need $24000/year to retire. Assuming I like dividend stocks and that my dividend stock portfolio pay me 5% per year in dividends, that’d mean I’d need $24000/5% = $480000 in dividend stocks that pays me 5% in dividends
Working on your passive income portfolio. Choose one that you’re comfortable with. Is it dividend stocks? Is it crypto? Is it financial instruments like insurance? Or rental properties? Whatever it is, choose just one to learn, practice and master.
Then I’ll have to figure out how am I to amass $480K? The most logical would then be to slowly work, save and invest as much as possible. If I can save $18K/year and I can reinvest every single dividend, that’d take me 17.5 years. If I throw in bonuses and side hustle to a total of say $30K/year, and reinvest every single dividend, it’d take me just slightly more than 12 years to achieve my $480K target.
I’d layer some buffer, just in case. To me, this can mean increasing my portfolio by at least 25-100++%, depending on how much risk tolerance I have or how bored I am
Rinse and repeat.
Then what?
I dont know bout you man, but there’s so much you can do or not do.
Maybe retire your spouse if you’re married.
Or travel.
Maybe move to another country.
Or do philantropy works and volunteer. Teach and mentor.
Maybe pursue something you’re interested in, be it obscure or “useless” skills or fun stuff.
Learn a different language, even cryptocurrency.
Start a new project.
Become a preacher to serve God’s calling in your life.
Do deep work that you care deeply about, be it changing the world or climate change etc.
Whatever.
What financial freedom is
Financial freedom is hard to understand by itself, because not many people think about it, much less take consistent action or had achieved financial freedom.
Let’s talk about what financial freedom is not – most people are actually in financial bondage or financially stuck. They HAVE to work to pay bills, or keep the hedonistic treadmill going. They have debts which are either not going away or keeps growing in size. They don’t have the freedom to stop work at all.
Conversely, financial freedom…is about having the option to choose to work or not. Pursue something interesting or not. Create or not. Sleep in or not.
The hard thing about financial freedom
There’s a few hard things about this concept of financial freedom, which is
It’s too far away. Many people take the “I’ll cross that bridge when I get there” because they can’t grasp the concept of “saving and investing for 10-20 years to retire by 40”. It’s hard to envision, so many people just work and keep money in the bank. They fear they save for 10 years and then they die so it’s all for nothing.
It’s scary. It can be hard when the price of dividend stocks go down during corrections and crashes (funny, I take it as good stuff on sale) so they prefer to avoid this pain of losing value though it’s short term. This point is linked to point #1, where people tend to be short term.
Not many people do it. So it makes it unusual, which makes it hard for people who prefer to follow the herd. This means that most people cant achieve financial freedom.
It’s not taught in schools or most families. That’s why most people are broke and struggling. People (are) try to be nice, but the world and market doesn’t work on that – there are very specific principles to become and grow richer, which is to accumulate more assets. In fact, people are taught to be poor eg concepts such as “living below your means”, “save”, “dont take risks” and the most common “the rich are wicked” causes many to have conflicted thoughts about money.
Honestly there’s a lot more of this which I will cover in another post, that’s all for today. Food for thought.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
My friends shared this article and I wanted to discuss this case study with you.
So according to the article, he earns $12500/month and he says:
he lives paycheck to paycheck as there are lots of things to pay for
when compared to his school mates, he’s doing well but in the tech industry, he’s at the lower end
he thinks most jobs are going to be the same: stressful and fast paced
thought about dying but dont want to be irresponsible for aging parents
What I will do if I am in his shoes earning $12500/month
I’m gonna put myself in his shoes and make some assumptions (I am NOT a psychologist) and this is based on what I’d do from a personal finance standpoint:
Hardcap spending to max $5000/month
He said that he lives paycheck to paycheck because of
mortgage loans
insurance bills
medical expenses
rising cost of living eg food
etc
I will revise all the expenses, and cut down aggressively.
If I live in a condo that takes a big chunk of my pay, I’ll downgrade. A HDB is fine. If I live by myself, co-living is not bad too.
If I have insurance that I dont need, I’ll cut back and downgrade
Medical expenses may need to be refinanced
If I eat out $2000/month, surely I can cut back to $1000/month?
I dont know the details, but that’s some rough idea.
The budget will be $5000 all in so that…
$7500/month to be invested into dividend paying stocks
Assuming
invest $7500/month
dividend stocks pay 8% per year
reinvest every single dollar
In 5 short years, I will have $570,233.61. At 8% dividend yield, that’s $45,618.68 in dividends a year, or $3,800 a month of decent dividend passive income. I can live comfortably in a cheaper country such as Malaysia or live a bit more frugally in SG.
In 10 short-ish years, I will have $1,408,093.87. 8% per year is $112,647.51 which is $9,387.29. Based on hardcap $5000/month spending, I can retire on $6000/month and still have $3,387 “spare” to reinvest.
Note: it is likely when we stop working, we spend significantly lesser because we spend lesser on conveniences and transportation. Think about it.
Food in town hawker is about $8-10 a meal, with drinks; cafes around $20 and restaurants between $30-50. Watching a movie $15+. If we work part time or are retired, we’d likely be lessed stressed, which means less inclined to spend on conveniences like paying for food outside.
We may cook more at home.
Go for long walks or enjoy activities in an unrushed manner that doesn’t cost much.
We may even watch shows on computers.
We wont need to rush around in taxis or paying to rush food delivery.
I’m not saying to be a recluse when we retire, but I anticipate our costs just goes down significantly, and we may need less than we currently spend.
Burnout, stress and mental health
He probably
is stressed from the fast paced work and pressure
comparing to others down and up of him
feels stuck
Like I said earlier, I’m no psychologist or mental health therapist.
I’m also not going to say the cliche thing of “ah, you just gotta stop comparing” – it’s not so easy to stop that. It’s human nature.
I do think that he feels lost and that “it’d be like this forever”…because he doesnt have a personal finance and early retirement plan. That’s why , I’m pushing for you and me to do something that we can do:
save more (flat amount OR percentage) of income including bonuses
chuck all those into dividend passive income stocks
spend some dividends BUT reinvest most of those delicious dividends until your yearly dividends is significant enough to retire on
The reasons why I focus on this
Happiness not included in office/work
I dont assume that work or being in office will make me happy. If it does, great. But I assume work may never make me happy (who dies thinking of “I should have worked more…?” anyway). So I will not link happiness to work.
Optimize for dividend passive income
I assume happiness and contentment may be outside of work, so what I will need to do is to build a passive income portfolio that will pay me continuously, so I can choose to not work and instead, pursue projects and people that may be of interest to me.
Will it bring me happiness? I dont know. I can just explore and find out.
Regardless, once my dividends are more than my living expenses, I can then choose to work less, retire, change job or pursue other stuff that I may be interested in. Maybe draw, travel, marry, who knows? Maybe even when I’m financially independent and free, I’ll still be working, just that I’ll be more selective of the people and projects I want to be involved in and with much less stress.
The key here is I want you to take the steps to continue building streams and streams of passive dividend income from your salary. And reinvest all the dividends until the dividends are good enough for you to have more life options.
PS: dont consider or commit suicide, ever. That’s like choosing a permanent solution to a temporary problem…plus there’s so much things to do, places to go, people to visit…or even things to discover in life.
What do you think? Share you ideas in the comment below.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
It was a crazy, crazy weekend in crypto when Luna and Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin depegged from $1 and couldn’t keep the massive selldown from happening.
I never held UST or Luna before this meltdown, and I decided to gamble and catch falling knives, thinking that Luna’s CEO will save the day…but alas! I speculated with $6500-ish, and I think strongly believe that amount has gone for good.
I’ve been reading and listening on how so many people lost their entire life savings, some even their family money and it’s just been so heart breaking. Cry and grieve. It’s brutal. Just brutal.
But pick yourself up again, and start over.
For those who are still grieving, take a look at this from thewokesalaryman.
I was mulling over the events (as well as losing of some money), and was reminded of 6 important lessons in crypto investing:
Crypto is volatile AF
I believe crypto is an emerging sector in the S&P and economy, but right now, it’s not yet regulated. So it can be cowboy town with more than 90% shitcoins, rugpulls and scams left right center.
If you wanna enter crypto, please please please:
DYOR = do your own research
Don’t borrow money you dont have to speculate and gamble (you can win big, yes, but you also can lose big).
Diversify
I dont recommending going balls-deep and all-into crypto.
At most up to 20% of your total networth can be crypto, but even then, I wont put all this into one or two coins. It’d be diversified within crypto to a bunch of coins to spread out risks.
Yes, the rewards may be lower, but the #1 rule of investing is to not lose money.
Take profits** (rule of 2-5X)
This is a very, very important skill, rule and decision you need to learn and execute.
I learnt this when I entered crypto in 2017, doubled my paper gains, and refused to sell. It came crashing down more than 80% of my original amount (profits wiped out as well as principal — cry me).
Multiple similar experiences happened since then, and I learnt that I cannot always sell at highest and neither can I buy at lowest. The best solution for me was the Rule of 2-5X.
The most conservative approach is Rule of 2X, which means that once I double my money, I pull out my original investment. Eg if I invested $100 and it becomes $200, then I need to pull out $100. I can leave the remaining $100 to run and grow as house money. And take the $100 to invest in another. This is the most basic and conservative approach.
What I prefer is rule of 3X, where I can pull out 1.5X and leave another 1.5X to run. This means that I pull out both original invested amount AND profits already. And leave whatever balance to grow more.
Stable, regulated assets
Stable, regulated assets includes stuff like
rental properties
index funds
ETFs / individual stocks
These may not give the crazy growth like crypto, but they aren’t crazy volatile either lol – rental properties can be great for regular cashflow. Index funds are pretty standard returns, and great especially if you have time on your side.
Bitcoin and Ethereum
I think that in the end, whatever I budget for speculation and investment in crypto (say 20% of my networth), a big bulk of that will be in the blue chip of crypto ie Bitcoin and Ethereum.
These two seem to be the gold and silver equivalent, and maintain their value fairly well, despite market volatility and up downs. So if I have $1000 budget for crypto, what I will do is allocate $800 to Bitcoin and Ethereum; and the balance $200 to higher-risk-higher-return speculative crypto projects.
Diversifying and increasing your income is my answer
Learning to earn more income outside your main job continues to be my focus moving forward.
There are just so many benefits to building a profitable side hustle, from
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
Disclaimer: crypto is volatile and there are lots of scams out there – you can make a lot or you can lose a lot (or everything). Do your own research – this is not financial advice. I’m just showing what I’m doing, and I’m taking risks on my end too. I’ve been both right and wrong before, so do your research.
How I started in crypto
I entered crypto speculation in late 2017 when my best friend introduced me to it, and of course I was freaking skeptical when I first saw it. I was very cautious of it being a scam as I hadnt really heard of bitcoin or crypto before that (I’m in the offline physical therapy world).
I pored over whitepapers, got involved with different crypto and blockchain projects.
Of course, I definitely got rugpulled a number of times across different projects (the highest risks are with new projects with lots of hype and fluff and promises of high returns).
At the end of 2018, there was a massive crash (or correction?) as bitcoin went I sat on a paper loss of 80%++ – I was so sad and guilty when I told my wife, but I stayed for both the tech and adoption, which I believe will increase the price.
True enough, in 2021, my speculations in crypto sits currently at 300%+ of my original investment amount, and I’m sensing that it should have another good run as governments and regulations on board and after it gets regulated, the returns should be “normal like financial markets”.
Note #:1 regulations usually means that financial institutions, sovereign/wealth funds, pension plans etc will have more exposure to crypto as a whole.
I chanced upon some videos/articles and wanted to share this with you:
I believe that crypto including bitcoin, ethereum, solana, ripple and other crypto/blockchain projects would be regulated soon enough, and that itself will lead to a global increase of crypto market cap value as a whole.
No dang crystal ball
Of course, I dont have a crystal ball though that’d be nice lol, but I am ready to hodl my crypto speculations for a good 5-10+ years and longer. Why this is the case is as crypto becomes mainstream, it’d become “normal” to have, own and use crypto as methods of making and receiving payment =)
Note #2 I made a mistake – I thought the global financial market is worth 105M (see link #7), but it’s actually closer to $460 trillion in 2021. And I hadnt factored in other types of investments such as real estate.
For reference, crypto market cap April 2022 is $1.9T. That’s a conservative 230X comparatively.
What you can consider
For those who want to dip their toes / speculate into crypto but unsure, you can consider
speculating into the top 10 / 50 / 100 of listed coins on coingecko
ask your employer/side hustle jobs to pay you in crypto/btc
invest into companies that have crypto exposure such as Tesla, MicroStrategy, NVidia etc
Remember, direct crypto speculation can be very volatile though is an emerging asset class – do your research and assume you can lose your invested amounts.
I’ll be holding onto my crypto and 5-10 years plus and equally as important, is to cash out (take out principal invested and profits) regularly – makes me sleep like a baby because my loss-related stress levels go down significantly =)
As Kevin o’Leary said in one of his videos: buy the dip and chill.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
My preferred way to saving $1000 a month is the “pre-paid expenses” (including investments FIRST) ie I will set aside $1K and chuck that into investments, and then pay bills/mortgage/utilities/necessities, and then just use the rest without guilt.
Because I’ve “sorted” the core financial work and stuff that I want done.
But if you wanna squeeze out $1K or more for an upcoming large expense, or to invest more, here are 4 simple tactics you can do:
#1 Retire unused or under-used monthly subscriptions
Such as streaming media such as NetFlix, Disney+, Hulu, Spotify – there are just so many streaming services out there. Kill off the ones you use least/lesser. This can save you around $20-$50+ depending on how much you have.
#2 Slice your underused phone and internet bills.
For your phone bills, you can make more whatsapp/messenger calls (calls over internet), change carriers and even downgrade your plan if you find that you’re not using as much data/voice/SMS.
The same goes for your internet bills.
#3 Plan your meals**
This is one of the biggest movers in terms of savings.
An average meal in US is $20+, so if you can eat home or pack meals during workdays (assuming 5 workdays a week), that’s a saving of $20 x 3 meals a day x 5 weekdays per week x 4 weeks a month = $1200 (if you eat 2 meals a day, that’s a savings of $800 a month).
Of course, have your social meals on weekends with family and friends too (which becomes more special when it’s weekends out eheh) =)
#4 Plan and limit your “silly spending”
We all have impulse purchases and silly spendings, so instead of buying impulse stuff on an as-when basis, which has no limits, why not set aside a budget and a day a month to spend on “silly buying”, without guilt or grief?
This makes me look forward to these silly spending days.
These are just 4 tactics as part of your financial education and money saving tactics that you can do this month to save $1K or more, based on reducing expenses that you dont use in the first place. Explore which expenses are unnecessary to you, and adapt accordingly.
What to do with the $1K savings?
Invest it in safe investments, and set aside a portion to upgrade yourself with more skills and maybe open a business too.
Or treat yourself or your loved ones to a holiday – whatever rocks your boat.
I’m the founder and writer here at NigelChua.com; as well as serial entrepreneur, therapy business entrepreneur, digital entrepreneur, investor and also happy husband, father and Christian.
Started and sold off a business for 7-figures; built another 7-figure one and growing it further, plus building/investing into other businesses and investments as well as advisory works.
Nowadays I share and teach entrepreneurship, financial independence, retiring early as well as building and living a life you love.
Thank you so much for your time and I hope it’s helpful for you.
