I Can Model My Sons' Portfolio to 2046. I Never Once Modeled My Own Health.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the AI simulation I built for my sons' investment portfolios, ang bao money, baby bonus, STI ETF, dividend reinvestment, projected out year by year all the way to 2046, when they'll be 21 and 23.

I could tell you, with real historical data behind it, roughly what their portfolios might be worth in twenty years. I had a spreadsheet. I had assumptions. I had a plan.

I could not tell you, six months ago, whether I'd be alive and well enough to see any of it.

That's not a dramatic exaggeration. It's just what happens when you spend your evenings projecting compound interest for your children and zero minutes projecting anything for yourself.

The gap I didn't notice I sit with numbers for a living, in some sense. I like modelling things out, contribution schedules, expected returns, what a portfolio looks like at year 8 versus year 20. It's satisfying to turn a vague hope, "I want my kids to be okay financially" into something concrete I can track and adjust.

But my own health had no model at all. No target. No timeline. No number I was working toward. Just a vague, permanent intention to "start eating better" and "get back into shape," the same intention I'd been carrying for years without ever running the numbers on it.

It's a strange kind of blindness. I could tell you the implied price-growth rate on the STI ETF after backing out the dividend yield. I could not have told you my own weight trend over the past two years, only that it was going in one direction.

What changed About six months ago I actually started. Not a program, not a diet plan, nothing dramatic. Just one rule I decided not to negotiate with myself on: workout, at least 30 minutes, Monday through Saturday, every night.

That's it. That was the whole system.

Six months later, I'm down 9kg.

Here's the part I think matters more than the number: I did not do an extreme diet. Lunch is still, most days, what I'd call a sinful meal, whatever I feel like eating, no tracking, no guilt. Dinner is home cooked, and that's the one place I hold the line. Everything else in my day stays normal. Imperfect, even.

The same principle, in two very different places When I look at what actually worked with the portfolio modelling and what actually worked with the 9kg, it's the same mechanism wearing two different outfits.

With the portfolio, I didn't need to optimize every dollar. I didn't need to time the market, chase the hottest stock, or get every contribution perfect. I needed one consistent, boring input, a fixed amount, on a fixed schedule, into a fixed instrument, and I let compounding do the rest over years.

With my body, I didn't need to optimize every meal. I didn't need to track macros, cut out rice, or turn food into a spreadsheet of guilt. I needed one consistent, boring input, 30 minutes, six nights a week, one controlled meal, and I let consistency do the rest over months.

In both cases, the win wasn't intensity. It was that I stopped negotiating with myself on the one thing that mattered, and let everything else stay imperfect.

The uncomfortable question this raises You've probably automated a bill payment. Maybe you've set up a standing instruction into an investment account, the way I did for my sons. Most of us, if we're honest, have at least one financial decision we've made non-negotiable, something that happens whether we feel like it or not.

Now ask yourself: do you have a single health decision you've made that non-negotiable?

Not a New Year's resolution. Not a "starting Monday." An actual standing instruction to yourself, that runs regardless of mood, workload, or how the week went.

For most of us, the honest answer is no. We'll build a twenty-year model for our children's money before we build a six-month plan for our own body. We'll research expense ratios and dividend yields, but we won't spend ten minutes deciding what "good enough" looks like for our own health.

I don't think that's because we don't care. I think it's because money feels like it has a spreadsheet and health feels like it doesn't. Money has clean numbers, so we're drawn to model it. Health feels vague, so we let it stay vague, right up until it isn't.

Why this actually matters for the portfolio, too Here's the part I keep coming back to. All that modelling I did, the year-by-year projections, the dividend reinvestment, the 2046 target, none of it means anything if I'm not around, or not well, to see it through, guide them through it, and eventually hand it over with the reasoning intact.

A portfolio compounding quietly in the background doesn't need me healthy. But being the father I actually want to be when they're 21 and 23, present, capable, still teaching them, that does.

I'd modelled the money. I hadn't modelled the man who was supposed to hand it over.

Where I've landed I'm not writing this because 9kg is some remarkable achievement. It isn't. Plenty of people have done more, faster, with harder rules than mine.

I'm writing it because the method is the same method I already trust with money, and I only just realized I hadn't been applying it to myself.

One non-negotiable input. Everything else allowed to stay imperfect. Let time and consistency do the compounding.

You don't need a perfect diet any more than you need to pick the perfect stock. You need one rule you actually keep, for long enough that it stops being a rule and starts being who you are.

I already know how to build that plan. I've built one for my sons' money that runs to 2046.

It just took me a lot longer to build one for myself.