The SG Hustle

In my previous post, I wrote about the new SG Child Support Package announced at National Day Rally 2026, and how I have never touched a single dollar of the Baby Bonus Cash Gift my kids received. Every dollar went into ES3, the SPDR Straits Times Index ETF, and was left alone to grow. Today my kids, ages one and three, are sitting on a combined 7,200 shares. That post got me thinking further. The new $2,000 Child Credits, paid annually per child from age one to sixteen, is not a one-time gift like the Baby Bonus. It is fifteen to sixteen separate payments, arriving every single year like clockwork. So I did a calculation and simulation of my children's portfolio, to see what this could actually turn into if I kept doing exactly what I have been doing. Setting the Assumptions I did not want to build a fantasy projection based on the best years of the stock market. I wanted something conservative, a safe margin, so I used these numbers: Starting point: 7,200 shares, current...

Every year, I watch the National Day Rally not because I am particularly patriotic about policy speeches, but because I have kids now, and every announcement about family support means something different to me than it used to. This year, the government unveiled a new SG Child Support Package, and it is, without exaggeration, one of the more generous moves I have seen in a long time. Here is what it looks like, broken down. The New Package Every Singaporean child, from birth to age 17, will now receive close to $70,000 in direct support. It replaces the old Baby Bonus Cash Gift and Large Families Scheme with something flatter and simpler, where the amount your child receives no longer depends on whether they are your first, second, or fourth. The breakdown goes like this: A $10,000 Baby Gift , paid out in two tranches within the child's first year $32,000 in Child Credits , disbursed as $2,000 cash every year from age one to sixteen A $5,000 CDA First Step Grant , with...

I had an intern this year. She came from Singapore Polytechnic, and I was assigned to be her mentor. In the beginning, I did not think much of it. I asked her name, asked about her course, and moved on with the usual first-week routine. Then we went for an onsite visit to a client. One of the clients looked at her and said she looked young, then asked her age. She said eighteen. I did not really process it. I know polytechnic students are usually between seventeen and nineteen, so the number did not register as anything unusual. Then the client asked, out of curiosity, which year she was born. She said 2008. That was the moment it hit me. Not gradually, not gently. All at once. The Math I Was Not Ready For I was still a first year polytechnic student myself that year. I had not even started my working life. And now, without fully realizing how I got here, I am thirty five years old, with almost eight years of work behind me. I could not sleep that night. I kept turning the same...

Why It's Still Here Over the years I've cycled through quite a few SGX-listed names. Some I sold and never looked back, good riddance. Others, like Hafary, I regret letting go of. But there's exactly one stock I bought years ago and have simply held through all of it: OCBC. I got in at around $12 a share. I didn't have a grand thesis, it was affinity as much as analysis. I use the OCBC banking app daily and it's genuinely one of the better-designed banking UIs in Singapore, clean, fast, doesn't feel like it was built in 2009 and never touched since. My insurance is with Great Eastern, which turns out to be OCBC's own insurance arm. So in a roundabout way, I was already a "customer" of the group before I was ever a shareholder. That familiarity is part of why I never felt the urge to trade in and out of it the way I did with other names. Where the Stock Is Now That patience has paid off. OCBC last traded around S$30.92–31.00, and touched a f...

The Strategy My US portfolio on IBKR is no longer getting fresh capital from me. It now funds itself, premiums collected from selling covered calls keep it self-sustaining. But I don't consider that portfolio "passive." Running a covered call strategy takes ongoing effort: analysing positions, picking strikes, managing assignment risk. It's active income dressed up as options theta. What I'm now channelling my savings into is a genuinely passive income portfolio, built entirely from SGX-listed names. The capital is sitting in a warchest, waiting to be deployed. Below is what's on my radar. One deliberate choice: I'm avoiding individual REITs. Most single REITs are yield vehicles with limited growth, you're paid well, but the unit price rarely goes anywhere over the long run. If I want REIT exposure, I'd rather buy a REIT ETF and get the diversification instead of betting on one manager's ability to grow DPU. 1. Haw Par Corporation (SGX: H...

Recently, there has been quite a bit of news about F&B businesses closing down, with rising rental, manpower and raw material costs often being cited as the main reasons. Some of these businesses have been around for decades, and yet eventually they reach a point where they can no longer continue.  I know I might get flamed for saying this, but these are just my honest thoughts after looking at how the F&B landscape has changed over the years. I don't really believe there is such a thing as a truly loyal customer. A customer doesn't keep going back to the same ice cream stall, fish soup stall or coffee shop simply because they are loyal to the owner. They go back because they like the food, the price, the convenience and the overall experience. The moment they feel that another place offers something better, cheaper or more interesting, they will probably give that place a try. At the end of the day, customers don't owe any F&B business their loyalty. They spend...