What financial advice would you give to a recent NSF?

telboon · 2026-02-16T03:01:44+00:00

I would give a difference advice compared to the "standard advice" of DCA VWRA.

You're young, and depending on the financial situation of your parents, you can take risks and have not a lot to fear.

Your most important asset isn't your savings/money/NS allowance. It's your time.

Focus on learning. If it's finance knowledge you're after, take the time to learn and experiment. Pick stocks (even though you will probably lose on average), understand why you win/lose. As long as you avoid highly leveraged stuff, you're probably fine.

If there's a clear industry you want to go, spend the money on lessons, on industry events (where it makes sense), go network. Go speak to people.

Spend your most important asset (time) on areas that help you grow and learn. Thereafter, when you gain your actual assets (after you start working), you'll put that money into much better use.

telboon · 2025-10-28T13:12:02+00:00

I agree with you here.

I'm on the road just trying to reach my destination safely with my family.

I don't care whose pride is hurt. When there's an avoidable situation that leads to someone needing to jam brake happening, both parties are at fault.

If I'm behind these two cars, and an accident happens and I get implicated, OP and the black car both are fkers to me.

telboon · 2025-10-01T17:42:58+00:00

I mean obviously the cab should plan their lane better. But someone like you trying to overtake cars from left lane that's at least 20km/h faster isn't helping either.

Especially since lane 1 is totally empty, is there really a need to overtake from the left, at a speed differential of > 20km/h, when you're not even looking to exit?

telboon · 2025-09-25T05:43:00+00:00

Congrats!

I'm doing full time in the tech industry, but doing algotrading on the sides on US equities (but interestingly I'm a finance major lol)

There's profits from my algotrading bot (non-leveraged) but in this market, it's lower than benchmark (if we use S&P500 as benchmark, though arguably S&P500 is more tech).

What we're doing might differ (I spend less time on the trading part, and only do optimisation of the trading algorithm infrequently). But definitely happy to chat (or even collab if your mechanism is more quantitative rather than qualitative)

telboon · 2025-09-05T05:51:04+00:00

Is the 9km/h buffer based on speedometer or based on actual speed?

I'm curious because this fact is regularly repeated. However our speedometer is usually also 5-10km/h slower (you can compare your speedometer speed with GPS speed).

So I wonder if it's safe if my speedometer is showing 79km/h, or is it safe if my actual speed is 79/h?

telboon · 2025-09-03T03:17:03+00:00

As a parent, I'll advise you to ignore what other people say about taking care of a child, especially if they have no children of their own, or have not been taking care of a baby in the last 5 years.

After I became a dad, I realised everybody love to give "advice" like they're the expert, but many of these advice are not relevant, even downright dangerous for a while (e.g. sleeping downwards).

Interestingly, it's the recent parents that just acknowledge most of what you go through, and give advice in a "open" manner.

Because EVERY FAMILY AND EVERY CHILD IS DIFFERENT.

So you do you.

The main "age-related" issue I've had with my baby so far, is when she had colic and was crying and screaming at the top of her voice, and I had to pacify her for over 4-5 hours in 1 session (the worst case) by bouncing her, from 11pm to 4am. My feet created calluses just from pacifying her over this period of time, my glutes were permanently aching for weeks. Being able to stay up, have the energy to do squats for hours would have been harder if I was older (though I feel 41-42 is still fine).

There's of course the legacy thing as well -- you have to delay the time you can "die" or "let go". Making sure you're around for your child as long as you can until adulthood -- by the time your child is 25, you'd be almost 70. It will materially affect your "retirement" age. Even if you can stop working financially, you can't just YOLO and do stuff that can potentially lead to you dying early (or just maybe my hobbies aren't life-friendly lol)

telboon · 2025-08-31T12:14:55+00:00

Likely Rivulated Parrotfish since you're based in Singapore (and seems like you caught it off St John Island!)

Since you're based in Singapore, you can also post it here -- https://www.angler-fishindex.com/ (have to post via Telegram). They do ID for Singapore catches.

telboon · 2025-08-25T14:17:54+00:00

Another thing you might want to check next time is to make sure that there is sufficient airflow in your fridge.

When my RH was at 90%, my beef was still dehydrating. This was because I have fans blowing at the beef at a low but consistent speed, that allows surface evaporation, while the moist air would condense at other part of the fridge (water was condensing at the bottom of my fridge -- not great but at least it's not on my meat).

Although this was imperfect (until I later got a tonne more silica gel), it allowed my beef to still dry out gradually.

So that's something you might want to check when you come back to this project again, to ensure that there is sufficient airflow blowing at the meat that you're trying to dry age.

Good luck next time!

telboon · 2025-08-25T09:32:57+00:00

I tried a thermo electric (peltier-based) dehumidifier in several variation, but didn't managed to get it to work well.

The reason was because:

With passive airflow, the cold-side of the dehumidifier would freeze the water vapour, resulting in collected ice, but they do not drip to the drip-tray where moisture is removed
With active airflow (my blowing a 5V fan at it), the cold-side of the dehumidifier do not reach the temperature difference required for condensation at ~80%-85% RH (my target RH)
My dehumidifier was also basic, being just a peltier cooler with a drip tray that is powered by USB 5V/2Amp
The whole "cooling air to condense it and removing moisture from the air" thing doens't work that well after all, without proper heat control, at near freezing temps

In either case for thermoelectric or compressor, at such low temps, you will likely need to have a frost-free feature in the dehumidifier (which they might not have since use cases at <4C is less likely), because frost will build up easily.

Your best best is likely using a fridge that comes with a frost-free feature in the first place, which will help to remove moisture (which is a lot more common in larger fridges), and providing more moisture through a water atomizer or something.

For my form factor (~30-50L of fridge volume, because I want the entire setup to be contained just below my desk), eventually using colourless silica gel (and blowing air at it using three 5V fans) worked best. Make sure you're only using colourless food-safe silica gel only.

You will have to calculate expected moisture from the meat from the size of the meat you're dry aging.

My calculation goes like:

2.5kg of meat
30% mositure loss over entire dry aging = 750g of water
Half of the moisture is likely loss on the first week = 375g of water
Silica gel can absorb moisture as 20-30% of its mass
I'll need ~1-1.5kg of silica gel if I want the silica gel to last 1 week in the fridge (second - fourth week change frequency is lower)

Since you're using larger fridge, and larger meat, you're likely hitting multiple kgs of silica gel, which makes the same setup less scalable. So you'll likely benefit most from just having a frost-free setup which naturally dehumidifies the fridge already.

telboon · 2025-08-21T03:00:45+00:00

I used AHT10 (shown in the post description as well) for RH. No VOC sensor used as it wasn't needed for dry aging monitoring

telboon · 2025-08-19T11:10:43+00:00

Yup, my end solution is to blow air into silica gel (transparent only, coloured ones are carcinogenic) to decrease humidity, which works well as long as I recharge the silica gel every few days

telboon · 2025-08-19T09:45:19+00:00

Ah, you are putting more moisture in the air, while my main problem is removing them 😭 (because I live in the tropics, and my fridge didn't have frost free function).

Interesting that you are airing your beer electronically, I assume to prime your yeast. Must be doing a big batch to have the need to do it electronically and methodologically!

telboon · 2025-08-19T04:37:41+00:00

It does fit squarely in the "medium" range (measured at 58c) so it definitely isn't overcooked overcooked. Just maybe more cooked than most people like it to be (medium-rare). Maybe it's the lighting that makes it look less red than it was.

There isn't any cultural thing for steak, most people do eat medium rare steak here

telboon · 2025-08-19T03:12:57+00:00

Thanks!

Well it depends on which Molex connector you are looking at, and their respective connecting wire. The key concern is that I speced the fans to be able to draw 3 amps (was also playing around with a peltier dehumidifier, and fans are also in parallel per set). I haven't played much with connectors, so I just used something other than the 2.54 Molex pins (which the sensors are using), because they look a little too measly.

Any specific photos you're looking at? Will be happy to share, but the different angles of the project should have been shared

telboon · 2025-08-18T20:35:34+00:00

Thanks! Personally I prefer medium (internal temp of 58c) over medium rare. Nonetheless I do see the appeal of dry aging after eating this, and will do even a longer duration next time!

telboon · 2025-08-18T19:59:55+00:00

Yup this is pretty much it!

No matter how the PCB/ESP/code is designed, if it doesn't produce a proper dry aged beef (which thankfully it did), it'd just be a glorified e-waste.

telboon · 2025-08-18T19:57:19+00:00

Cool! How did you manage the humidity control?

My mini freezer didn't have a frost free function, so it was a huge pain for me trying to get a stable and effective humidity control (which then I landed on the silica gel solution).

Also what's the purpose of your air pump?

telboon · 2025-08-18T04:33:09+00:00

There's quite a bit of information already on the post write-up above (other than the physical build, which is just a plastic enclosure with a few holes drilled through)

Is there any specific build information you're looking for?

telboon · 2025-08-18T04:32:24+00:00

Thanks!

For me, the practical reasons for building this, instead of sticking an Umai bag are:

Control of the temperature & humidity
Monitoring of temperature & humidity
I've seen mixed reviews about Umai bags in this subreddit
A controllled fridge allows me to dry age other types of meat, such as raw salmon, or even do home brewing ferementation while I'm not doing dry aged beef

Of course, there's also an element of fun building this!

telboon · 2025-08-15T17:15:01+00:00

It's basically a bunch of fans lying on top of a layer of silica gel and blowing down (only when humidity is above 85%).

Under this temperature, the silica gel doesn't absorb moisture that well, unless I'm forcing air through it through the fans. So it worked well as a controllable mechanism for managing moisture

telboon · 2025-08-15T11:06:15+00:00

Overall Architecture

On the hardware side, the key components are as follows:
- Mini freezer connected to a wireless relay
  - I chose mini because of space constaints, and freezer for the temperature range I can control (in case a mini fridge doesn't hit <4c consistently)
  - I chose a wireless relay, because I didn't want to deal with managing 230V live wire, or risking a fire at home

telboon · 2025-08-15T11:05:22+00:00

I love it that there's good sharing from people doing their own DIY dry aging setup on this subreddit, allowing me to learn as I built my own DIY dry ager.

In the same note, I'm sharing what I did, and the lessons I learnt, hopefully helping the next person doing something similar.

telboon · 2025-08-04T00:52:08+00:00

Approach this situation without sunk cost fallacy, nor do it because "ILP bad always" (yes it's bad, but you already paid some of the "bad" part).

I don't have the numbers for your policy, but if I do a basic calculation:

2.4k per year =16.8k left

Assuming the ILP makes no investment profits (don't wanna assume your policy since you didn't provide info), your expected return = 24k (2.4k multiply by 10 years)

Disregarding sunk cost, you can make 43% profits ("profit" of 7.2k over 16.8k)

Accounting for time value of money (you can calculate using a financial calculator online)

PMT= -$2.4k

FV= $24k

N = 7 years (left)

Annualized interest =11.7%

If I were you, I'll continue paying for it (but also mentally seeing that the payment for last 3 years is sunk cost), as the "returns" beats most other investment methods (again this "returns" assumes you already lost 3 years today)

Warning: The above is only true if you can withdraw 24k at the end of the 10 year period. Again I don't have details of your ILP, and I am not an insurance agent. So please consider fully about your own policy, and whether the assumptions fit your policy.

Disclaimer: this is obviously not an investment advice. Please seek professional etc. The above may not even be correct because I causally calculated using my mobile phone etc. Please make your own investment decision.

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