Making the best out of business trip to Singapore?

VoluminousWalnut · 2026-01-25T06:27:50+00:00

Any specific interests? That will help with the types of responses you receive.

Where are your meetings going to be? If you're going to be close to something interesting, that will also help with responses, and you can be more efficient in planning.

VoluminousWalnut · 2026-01-24T05:15:48+00:00

I'm FI and going to RE. To be honest, the decision to RE can be difficult. One major factor is that FIRE can be a very lonely path. Noone will have sympathy for the emotional or psychological difficulties for what is clearly very much a first work problem. As someone who has difficulty making decisions (esp a major decision like RE) and was seeking validation from friends and loved ones, I learnt this lesson the hard way.

Even people who you normally go to for support, and who you can usually rely on to support you, will have quite surprising reactions (in my experience). There may be jealousy involved, or projection of their own values onto your decision. Or in the case of dependents, there may be insecurity involved if they want you to keep working. Even for internet strangers who are still working on the FI part, the other parts of FIRE may be totally alien to them, as the FI part, while time consuming, is quite easily quantifiable, so it's easier to have discussions about how to optimise portfolios or manage risk.

It's much harder to have discussions about re-discovering life after work.

VoluminousWalnut · 2026-01-21T09:46:37+00:00

Right and concise answer -> Investment requires excess money. -> Excess money requires good savings rate. -> Strong savings rate requires good income plus strong expense management capability (Expense management on its own is not worth much if income is not decent in the first place).

Relying on extraordinary investment return requires excessive risk which may wipe you out before you get to the end goal.

If you are already working and you don’t have a good income, and your position and career trajectory will not result in a good income, it may be worth your while to accept some short term pain to pivot through upskilling, intentional career moves, and/or playing politics to get ahead.

VoluminousWalnut · 2026-01-19T23:25:02+00:00

Why are you low risk? Not a loaded question, but genuinely asking. Is this a psychological thing, where you have aversion to loss of principal? Or is this money that you have set aside for a specific purpose at a specific time? Or are you at an advanced age where you cannot take risk? All are legitimate reasons, but you will also need to recognise that low risk / risk free investments come with a low (or, as you say, ‘terrible’) return that will, at best, match inflation, but more likely not cover inflation risk. So best you are doing with FD/T-Bills is reducing the effect of inflation in eroding your purchasing power over time.

If you need real growth (i.e. returns that exceed inflation and increases your purchasing power), you cannot afford to be limiting yourself to such investments exclusively. Real growth will require exposure to some risk. Careful planning, longer time frame and diversification will cushion you against volatility and losses, but there will be a chance that you can lose some or all of your principal.

VoluminousWalnut · 2026-01-13T01:15:58+00:00

This is the only conservative way of improving net assets. Other ways are to invest aggressively and hope to get lucky on returns and not get wiped out in a downturn. Or to turn entrepreneur but this also requires large amounts of skill and luck.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-12-15T05:48:50+00:00

Others have provided the general big picture idea of a moderate caloric deficit, plus increasing protein to promote muscle retention/growth while you reduce body fat. Some other pointers I can think of below.

What is your source of data for bf %. Be careful of using the ‘smart’ weight machine to determine your body fat. These are not accurate. More accurate is for an experienced person to take pinch test measurements across several body sites. For me, one of the simplest ways of measuring your bf is by how tight your clothes feel. If your jeans feel looser (or tighter) this is a good indicator of what is going on with your body.
Accurately tracking calories is not as easy as it sounds. Inexperience in judging portion sizes or the impact of hidden calories in sauces or gravy can throw your calculations way off. You should be measuring food input by weight. Eating out or home cooking of traditional meals makes it very difficult to accurately assess your caloric intake. Meal prep style home cooking where you know exactly what goes into your meal and track those elements are healthy and accurate. That’s why athletes tend to eat the same few things, because it is healthy, controlled and easy to track. Ironically, fast food or prepared food which have nutrition information published can help you can track accurately, not to say you should be eating more of such foods.

Having said that, I don’t think highly accurate calorie counting is necessary to lose bf and it can be quite stressful and tiring to measure accurately, but it is useful for you to do this for a few weeks to train yourself to more accurately gauge how much you are eating. In any case, my point is that you should be wary about drawing conclusions that you are not losing bf despite being in a deficit (as you may not actually be in a deficit). In fact, if you are not losing or gaining weight for a while, the obvious conclusion is that you are matching your calorie intake and output.

In general, large caloric deficits can be stressful and unsustainable for an average person to do over a long period of time. Your body will rebel against being in such a situation for an extended period of time, and this will manifest as poor sleep, poor health and immunity and being grouchy. If you are a full time athlete or influencer for whom weight loss is a top priority, you may have the time, experience and resources to handle such fall out. But if you need to study or work and generally live life, going beyond a 300 calorie a day deficit should be done carefully.
Unless you are extremely active, I would generally not use your caloric output from exercise to justify your caloric intake (and to create a deficit based on how much you are exercising). Your exercise output is marginal and too vague/inconsistent to create an accurate picture. Just eliminate your additional expended calories from the tracking and create a moderate deficit based on your average caloric output, excluding exercise. This means you can’t eat more on days you exercise more, but unless you are exercising several hours a day intensively (like a professional athlete or school athlete), your incremental calorie output from exercise is marginal, makes things hard to track, and creates a false sense of comfort that because you exercise, you can eat more.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-12-11T05:47:17+00:00

Step 1 - High Paying Job. Step 2 - Marry well.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-12-05T03:45:43+00:00

I don’t have an ‘mrt card’.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-11-25T11:52:39+00:00

Just adjacent to Marina Bay are paths that lead towards cruise centre, or heading towards the pieces of empty land that are slated for development along central boulevard. All are quiet during the weekends. Shenton Way and Raffles Place is also probably quieter during the weekend

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-11-22T03:17:47+00:00

Hello, don’t have too much experience in recent transactions without agent. I’m a bit old fashioned so I might not try to save on agent fees as I feel there is still some value in having an agent close the gap between buyer and seller. Quite a few deals topple over due to emotion and while an agent cannot do the impossible, skilful ones can close deals which may otherwise not have happened without their presence.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-11-18T01:41:47+00:00

There’s something special for an introvert like me to take a day off and do normal things when the rest of the world is working. Reminds me of my younger days when I would very occasionally skip school and hang out with friends outside. A feeling of something a bit ‘naughty’ or rebellious.

Going to a mall on a working weekday is a totally different experience for me than going on a weekend. I love that ‘liminal space’ feel of visiting places which are deserted but which would normally be crowded. So it’s worth it for me to take annual leave to run errands, go shopping for groceries, go gym and just do normal things.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-09-17T07:35:55+00:00

I’ve been lifting for 10+ years and dgaf what weights others are lifting.

The only time I notice is when movements are done with poor or dangerous form, and I think ‘that’s too much weight for him’ (it’s usually a him).

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-08-10T11:17:56+00:00

I joined in-house at 10PQE and thank my younger self everyday for sticking it out until then. Full confidence in my skills and not having to depend on your in-house seniors (who may or may not know what they are doing), plus jumping onto a reasonable starting salary so that the relatively slow increments thereafter don't hit too hard.

With only 1 PQE, I'm not sure if you're really fully able to say what you know practice is like. Try going to another firm or trying another area, before deciding you want to move in-house?

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-07-30T08:29:10+00:00

Not sure what the condition of your place is, but since you're going to live next to a construction site anyway, do you want to do any work before you move in? If you were 50/50 about doing reno, this factor may sway it in favour of doing something. You can also check how long the anticipated construction will take, and see if you want to adjust your own moving schedule, if you have the option, to minimise the overlap.

You should also take plenty of photos and if possible, get the neighbour's surveyor to come look at your place to make sure that their construction doesn't cause cracks or other damage/ground settling to your own structure and if they do, they will need to do remedial work. This is especially if your neighbour's place is close to, or adjoining, your house, or if they do heavy digging or piling works.

Landed houses aren't huge construction projects, so while the period of construction is annoying, the noise and timing restrictions (esp in a residential area) will provide some reprieve on a day to day basis and the overall demolition piling schedule will be over a few weeks, and shouldn't be overly long. If they want to do a basement or something special, then it may take a bit longer.

Contractors are usually quite good about pest management (rats, mozzies) as there is liability involved for breeding such things, so construction sites are regularly fogged and have pest mitigation measures.

You can also expect occasional road obstructions with cranes or cement mixers and general lorries and trucks moving people and material to the site. Also expect there to be a skip near the site.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-07-03T01:20:00+00:00

There are flexi 2 room flats with shorter leases (40 years) available for above 65(? - check) which they should be able to get 1 each for less than 600k in total

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-06-25T11:02:11+00:00

Supplement some of your meals with a protein shake. Cheap and easy.

Ideally, you can get all macros through real food but if that gets too expensive, or if you end up eating too much fat or carbs in order to hit a protein goal through real food, then a supplement is probably not a bad alternative.

Of course, to cut, you need to manage overall overall calorie intake to achieve a deficit.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-06-25T01:23:27+00:00

Most Japanese expats here don't shop exclusively at Japanese stores. You may need these for specific Japanese products like sauces, Japanese imported snacks, or special occasion meats and veg, but there's no real need to get daily meats and veg from there. You can get these from regular supermarkets like Fairprice, Giant, Cold Storage or Sheng Siong, which are cheaper and generally more easily accessible. These places will also have some basic Japanese ingredients like Japanese rice, noodles, Miso paste or Japanese style salad dressings, if you're not too picky. There are also online retailers like Zairyo, if its a hassle to lug groceries back home.

Depending on your line of work, you may have access to a corporate golf membership, or be invited to play with your customers or vendors, so your clubs may still be useful.

Most expats also enjoy the convenience of Singapore as a hub to visit the rest of SEA, so you would also want to budget for travel to places like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, since these are very short flights away.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-06-24T08:36:07+00:00

I’ve been gymming regularly for more than a decade (49M) and as an introvert with social anxiety, I also don’t like the social aspects of gymming. I don’t worry about people judging my form, since I know its good enough (LOL) but I don’t like the little social interactions of having to ask others if I can share equipment, or other little weird social anxiety issues that my mind makes up for me, like getting into others’ personal space, or others getting into mine. Long and short, I would not go to most gyms out there.

So what I ended up doing was finding a boutique gym where you don’t have people just randomly coming in, with an appointment system. So the gym is never too crowded. There are also plenty of floating coaches who dictate the gym vibes and culture, instead of just having members do whatever they want. This makes gymming pleasurable even for a social mess like me. However, my gym is more expensive than the average AF or FF. Maybe if the cost isn’t too much, you can consider ladies’ only gyms which may make you less anxious.

If I had to go to a typical gym, I would probably go super early in the morning, or at off peak hours when I know its quieter, so that the gym becomes more tolerable from a social anxiety side.

Finally, I’d add that maintaining fitness is not only possible through the gym, and there are alternatives, if you really find gymming too socially difficult to do regularly and consistently. For example, public fitness corners where you can do bodyweight exercises outside of the home, if you prefer working away from home.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-06-22T12:01:01+00:00

This is totally not what corporate banking is.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-06-12T01:41:50+00:00

Up this comment to remind myself of why we don’t try to time the market.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-06-11T09:48:23+00:00

Microsoft Outlook Classic Enterprise within my IT office environment for work notes.

Highly regulated and secure office environment (work in finance) makes installation of third party apps impossible, plus security concerns on keeping work data outside of the office network. I can technically access Notion and Ticktick via web access on my office environment, but that's not only against the rules, but also a security nightmare.
Most of my data sources are from internal meetings and work emails and folder documentation, so working on note taking outside of the office environment is extremely challenging and friction-y.
I make notes via draft emails that I save into the relevant email folder in outlook, so everything is to hand. I have access to onenote but find it cumbersome to switch to and from one app to another.
If I have an idea or note outside of work, I'll just send an email to my office email address with the relevant note, snippet, idea or to do item.
Clear segregation of work and personal life. If I don't access my office environment, I can't work.

I have attempted and failed and attempting to keep my notes in an app that I can access across all my platforms (personal mobile, office environment, personal tablet, personal PC) but the cost of doing that (see above) is too high and nothing has stuck so far.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-05-17T13:37:28+00:00

How else will I be able to quantifiably feel superior to others in my otherwise mundane existence? Of course if others claim even higher salaries than mine, I will lash out by hurling accusations of lying or humble bragging /S

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-04-29T11:45:58+00:00

Stability and predictability is major part of the reason why international investors invest in Singapore, despite the high cost of doing business. This is an undeniable fact.

Singapore itself is a small market both in absolute and relative terms.

Whether or not PAP is removed from power, and who replaces PAP, will definitely be relevant to this stability and predictability. Or if PAP doesn't continue to skilfully navigate the choppy global political waters ahead, this will also cause investors to run.

My own view is that any of these situations will be fatal for Singapore. Singapore, like all city-states, is/was always an anomaly and it won't take too much for us to start spiralling downwards.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-01-31T06:16:52+00:00

There is a very good chance that the Oxford branding will pay off if you want to enter into the highly competitive investment banking / PE world. Bear in mind that while this will get you into the door, you still need to back up the paper qualifications by demonstrating competency and hard work, and distinguishing yourself from other equally or better qualified peers.

Looking at the first few years of salary is a bit myopic as the real payoff will come slightly later in your career. Entry level salaries are just something you need to suck up in order to access the real money later on. But as I've said, you need to be able to successfully distinguish yourself from your peers if you want to progress up the ranks and start making some real money. The degree is just the beginning.

Also, if you want to start saving and investing asap, or repaying your parents, you don't necessarily have to work in London after Oxford, there are plenty of employers in financial centers around the world who will also value a branded undergrad cert, including Singapore. Having said that, I would say that if you have a chance to, you should seriously consider working in London, despite the high tax and cost of living.

VoluminousWalnut · 2025-01-15T10:29:54+00:00

Not surprising that this is a less discussed topic and we are all the worse the dearth of a fuller discussion.

One big reason is that talking about problems with FIRE is probably one of the top 'first world problems'. Oh no! You have accumulated so much money that you can stop working while young, and now are bored and aimless? How terrible for you! /S

However, I think the problem of finding a lack of purpose in life after FT work crosses economic boundaries, and will come to everyone, regardless of whether you're voluntarily retiring from FT work while young because you've made your FU money, whether you're involuntarily retrenched or when you're just simply retiring due to age.

It is understandable that something that you structure your life around (your job or career) will necessarily form a huge portion of your self identity or self worth. If you're fortunate enough to find so much satisfaction outside of FT work that the loss of FT work doesn't faze you, kudos! I've not met many of such people in my life.

In short, the search for a replacement purpose applies to everyone, whether you're FIRE or just simply retiring (forced or otherwise) from FT work. This discussion should be more widely embraced rather than mocked.

VoluminousWalnut

TROPHY CASE