I mean I do posts like how to optimize your credit cards, or which bank accounts to use or how to save money on your phone bills.
But I haven't really focused on early retirement very much or even talked about early retirement.
I've just been kinda talking about a lot of other stuff.
Reason for this is really that early retirement or retirement is such a simple concept.
Simply, spend less than your income.
Where income can be in the form of passive or active.
Active income is like when you are working.
So you spend less than what your job pays you. Then save the rest and invest.
When you are investing, you get passive income in the form of capital returns or dividends.
When you invest enough, your passive income gets to a point where it is higher than your spending.
So you can stop active income and your spending will still be less than your passive income.
Then continue to save your excess and invest more.
Repeat.
Many people can make decisions to spend less. It's whether they are willing to make such a decision.
Not many people can make decisions to earn more. It's not that easy.
So recently, I've posted about life and taking it easy and enjoying the ride.
Cos I think that the journey is important. And there are a lot of things in life which can't be controlled.
So rather I like to discuss things which can be impacted, things which people can do to make their lives better. Like how to save more, spend less, be happy, etc.
As I keep reading other blogs about retirement in Singapore, I keep reading more or less the same stuff.
Earn more, spend less.
Investments.
HDB/Condo/Properties.
Insurance.
Credit card promos.
Handphone decisions.
Essentially, the Singapore retirement bloggers are typically posting about the same topics just written differently. But the principles are the same.
Now, what's different about the various blogs are things like:
What is retirement.
- Some might think retirement is doing nothing, some think doing stuff that you like and yet don't need the money, financial independence.
What/how to invest
- Different bloggers write about them differently. Some like passive, some like property, some like active stock picking.
Handphone decisions
- Most retirement bloggers don't like buying a new phone (duh), they will capitalize on the optimum plan for their own purposes. Some use more data than others so they get different plans.
Besides these, most points are similar.
Now this is without any form of disrespect for any of the bloggers.
We all live our lives differently. And place different priorities on different things. We have different hobbies. We have different risk profiles and prefer different asset types.
But what most of us agree on is:
Spending needs to be decreased and be lower than income.
More often than not, we decide on term insurance. Buy term and invest the rest.
Optimize credit card promos and bank accounts.
I assume most don't smoke. (Literally burning money)
The thing about this is with everyone writing about the same thing where's the interesting factors?
I think potentially, the interesting factors is the differences.
Some bloggers provide investment advice,
some bloggers share their own investment details and expenses,
etc.
So what I think makes each blog unique is really the human factor. What each of us does on this journey. The principles are all the same. But the actions we take might be different. The stuff each of us are willing to sacrifice, reprioritize, etc. The different things that worry us. These differentiating factors between the blogs are the things that make each blog unique and fun to read.
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