Blog Reaction To Confronting Mr Loo About 1M65

 

Have you watched those viewer reaction videos on YouTube?

Well, I thought I'll do one. Sort of... (Since I do not have a YouTube channel)

Hope it works via blogging!

OK, see if you can watch the video below in its entirety. Warning: 38 minutes long... 

Now to my spontaneous reactions:

1)  Hey! Mr Loo practice "Market Timing" too! 

2)  In current environment, CASH is more powerful, whereas CPF has very limited use... (14.22 in video for those who can't be bothered to watch the full video)

Duh! 

3)  1M65 is just an "inspiration" call... With inflation and lifestyle escalation, we'll certainly need more than that. 

Couldn't agree more! 

Regular visitors to this watering hole know my minimum and recommended PC requirement analogies. Wink.

4)  This last take away, its something I love the best!!!

Most people who quote Rich Dad Poor Dad often intentionally or unconsciously avoid the big gorilla in the room - Business Ownership. 

How many parents would encourage their own child to take 6 months off studies to learn the ropes of running a business in the real world?

Mr Loo is imparting the Rich Dad values to his children. Respect.

Ink blots - we see what we want to see

Well, I must say I'm a bit surprised after watching the whole video!

I started with the expectation to "Argue with the Stop Sign"...

In the end, I had to change the post label to "Street Smarts".

I don't know about you, but all I hear is about Earn More stuffs!?

LOL!

To think I've been wasting my time arguing with his acolytes who couldn't read between the lines.

These acolytes probably still think the 1M65 movement is about Save More!?

If you listened to why and how Mr Loo chose the 1M65 moniker, it was because it hit the "sweet spot".

Those of you in sales, marketing, or advertising would know what he did there. Wink.

And when I found out Endowus is a client of Mr Loo, let's just say I'm not surprised. Wink, wink.

How about you?

What's your viewer reactions?

Do you see what I see?

Or have I missed other interesting points due to my bias and selective perceptions?

Alternative and opposite opinions welcomed. Just as long you don't hit the face! (I don't wear a brown paper bag over my head)

Timing Is Everything. No?

 

We are often talked down to, "Don't time the market, its a fool's game..."

Its like throwing shit on to the wall; throw enough, some of it will stick...

Have you noticed what we "believe" in investing/trading, often they conflict with what we EXPERIENCE in REAL LIFE?

For Chinese readers, you may straight away think of our 5,000 years of China wisdom:

天时地利人和

Timing; Location; People 

Funny how "timing" is placed at the front...

How about relationships?

Some of us know how it is to meet the "right" person at the "wrong" time...

And when we are ready at the "right" time, the "wrong" person turned up...

Or do you just "capitulate" and don't "time the market" - just grab anyone will do?

Career?

This most of us can relate!!!

Of course competence and talent are important. However, being at the RIGHT place at the RIGHT time can equally be important. Some may argue its even more crucial!!!

Property?

If you got married in your mid 20s instead of focusing on your career first; you know and I know. Wink.

Yup, that's how your peers who got married in their mid 20s can afford to upgrade to condo (after 2 bites of the HDB cherry) at the same time you are applying for you first HDB flat in your mid 30s...

Timing is EVERYTHING.

If you have at least 10 years of bull/bear experience in the markets, I'm sure you now have a different appreciation of "don't time the markets"... 

At current WTI crude prices, Hyflux and Hin Leong would be still around and thriving!!!

This is something you may want to take note.

Even if you don't practice Timing the Market (head in the sand), the vehicle you're riding on cannot ESCAPE the effects of Market Timing!

Let's Target Women!

 

I often tell this African shoes story (I changed it to fit our local context) to "brainwash" new salespersons as part of our cheerleading session in my past life:

Two Singapore shoes salesmen went to Borneo during the 1900s. 

One came back dejected... "How to sell like that? They don't even wear shoes!"

The other excitedly wired back to his Singapore head office, "Quick! Send 2 shipments of shoes over! The lobang here fantastic! No one is wearing shoes over here!!!"

When a company or business decides to "target" women exclusively, well, ladies, what do you think?"

Which is more likely?

Someone woke up and decided they just have to mother and take care of sheep? So cute! So fluffy!

Or they discovered excitedly they can actually milk and fleece sheep!? I mean with rams we can only fleece...

If you love to read and subscribe to Women's magazine, you may want to pause and reflect whether you are the customer of these magazines?

Perhaps you are part of the food menu these Women's magazines are offering to their REAL customers?

Why do you think they love to plant ideas into you that you're never too thin, or pretty enough?

And the clothes you bought last season are already so dated...

20 ways to please your man? 

Have you verified the author is actually a woman? What kind of woman would write such articles???

And if its a really a woman, do you really want to take advice from a Got Money, Got Honey "prostitute"?

Want to learn more about goldfish?

The professor placed a bowl with a goldfish on his lectern.  

"If you would just spend the time to look and study an actual goldfish, you'll probably learn more than just reading (or taking workshops and seminars) about goldfishes!"

If you want to be financially independent, just look around you.

They could be your mom or grandma, most never studied beyond secondary school. Some illiterate even. 

Or your female siblings, cousins, neighbours, classmates, or colleagues.

Single or married, young and old. 

Come to think of it, does sex matter? Well, you're the one always pushing for "equality"...

What do you think?

Wouldn't it be better to talk and learn from someone who is actually financially independent (not on the way themselves) that you can RELATE to?

Some of you may even discover you can achieve financial independence without riding any financial assets at all! Wink.

Shh...

Don't let the men know.

Doctors and Lawyers

 

When we ask kids what they want to do when they grow up, no prizes to guess the top 2 professions. Wink.

Its no surprise at our local Universities, the Medical and Law faculties are the hardest to get into... 

If you don't have straight As... 

Wait! How do you reconcile this with the recent deemphasizing of grades by big daddy? Eh...

And if you look at parliament, how many of them are lawyers and doctors? 

Power or what?

You know what's interesting?

If we say doctors represent the left-brained and Science stream, then lawyers would be the flagbearers for the right-brained and the Arts stream.

Those weak in math would not get into the Science stream. And without Science, you can't enter the Medical faculty.

Students more comfortable with words (euphemism for bad at math) will choose the Humanities or Arts stream. Try telling your parents you want to do Literature or History... But once you mention Law... All of sudden everyone fully supports your "wise" decision to choose the Arts stream! LOL!

You know the irony?

Doctors (metaphor) who are good in math don't take the time to verify the numbers. If they had, they would have spotted the numbers don't add up!?

Instead, they pay more attention to the shilling and spin of snake oils. These snake oils are skilled in using words to obfuscate and bewilder their flock...

Of course these marketing and PR propaganda do not work on lawyers (metaphor) who can read between the lines and tell the nuances between similar words. For eg, snake oils don't say high risk; they say high volatility. You don't say junk bonds; you say high yield bonds!

Guess what? 

Lawyers instead prefer to be swayed and bamboozled by numbers and statistics plucked out of thin air by snake oils!

Some of you can spot the humour of this post.

And if you can laugh at yourself, you'll probably survive the next few bull/bear cycles. 

In gambling speak, if you can't spot the patsy at the poker table, you're it!

Or if you're a yield hog and you can't figure out how the asset you're riding is able to sustain the yield??? 

You're the YIELD!!!

 

One Gone; One Bank Run

 

Recent events remind me of the bankruptcies of Icelandic banks during the Lehman financial crisis of 2008.

And the 2012-2013 Cypriot banking crisis where the bank depositors (savers) have to "bail-in" their failing banks!?

For crying out loud! 

These savers must be kicking themselves since they are not even investors or speculators... (But they got to admit, they are yield hogs!)

I mean if the maximum upside is at best 10% or 20%, and the downside can be -100%, like that they might as well join the speculators and jump onto those risk assets that can 100X and shoot to the moon!!!

They got the risk/reward ratios all backwards!?

Contagion?

Smart is telling others to hold on for dear life, buy the freaking dip, or diamond hands all the way...

While you secretly run to your bank and withdraw as much money out as possible.

Vehicles different; human behaviour, same same

 

Stock Index Versus Individual Stocks

 

We are often told stocks always go up.

And this is TRUE!

Of course there are 2 tricks to it.

1.  You need to use a long time frame. 100 years is best! (If you were wrong, its your clients' grandchildren who will be threatening to sue, but by that time, you will be long gone...) 

2.  Always use a stock index.

Of course readers who are i9 multi-core will have guessed what I'll be writing next and don't even have to bother reading further...

For readers who are single core Pentium like me, let me explain by applying History to investing.

You do know that empires come and go. Even empires so mighty and great that no one can believe will decline and fall one day...

Remember Rome? How about the Tang dynasty? Or more recent the British Empire?

If empires and countries do rise and fall, how are you so confident that the individual stocks that you own will always go up in the LONG term?

Remember Kodak and Polaroid? Or Motorola and Nokia?

There's not much money to be made by telling clients to buy an index fund or ETF. 

Hence snake oils show long term charts of stock indexes, but charge you fees and commissions to recommend what INDIVIDUAL stocks you should buy (and never sell).

See how you got "manipulated"?

This is a common Jedi mind trick used on unsuspecting bei kambings...

Now its so much easier to spin Buy-and-Hold; think Long Term; when its Lower, just buy More!

These are comforting words when staring at your portfolio in the red...

No?

Nope. You Can't Get "Rich" With Save More

 

First, don't go triggered on me.

I haven't even said anything yet!

But if you're fuming and churning inside oredi, you should buy me coffee - you now know how well you handle objections and views that differ from yours - for FREE!

Especially if you're in a leadership (shepherd) position in your day job and wondering why no one is willing to give you feedback at work???

Are we good?

OK, let's go!

I found this interesting video that I would like to share. What do you know? I'm not the only fool who likes to argue with the STOP sign!

If you still interested to explore more, you may also want to read some of the comments under the video. Its like ink blots, we see what we want to see; but the quality is much better than the usual "yalor, yalor" commenters.

You know why 1M65 is popular to some but no feeling to others?

That's because some see hope; $500K at 65 is really achievable. 

For stay-at-home dads and housewives that can't manage this, how? Look at your partner. He/she is supposed to top up your CPF account to $500K under the 1M65 plan!

Yet to others who prefer to get "rich", $500K at 65 is not exactly what they had in mind when they diligently listened to others exhorting them to Study Hard; Work Hard all their lives... And after working 40 years some more!!!

The Chief Pipe Piper of 1M65, to cater to the more discerning Earn More audience, has come out with 4M65. 

Which is a not spoken way of saying 1M65 is the "minimum PC requirement". If you want to have a more pleasant gaming experience, the "recommended PC requirement" is 4M65. Wink.

Its the property way of saying, "Can't afford? Stick with HDB. Can afford? Go private!"

That's precision in numbers or dollars for left-brained people. Always asking and comparing with others - "How much is rich?"

Well, even if you have a $100 million, you would still feel "poor" standing next to billionaires.

With "only" $500K Sing dollars, most Singaporeans would not consider that "rich", but take that amount and retire to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, or even Malaysia ... We can still do a bit of wine, woman, and song on the side!!!

Yup. as we trod along on our financial journey, some of us may become more spiritual... More philosophical...

Some may even realise we have been leaning our ladders against the wrong wall!?

Its not financial success, FIRE, or money that we seek... 

Its actually something else. (That FIRE goal is just kicking the can down the road until we figure out what we want to do with our lives.)

This we have to figure out for ourselves,

For example, one may realise its Happiness that you were seeking all along!!!

So you take your ladder away from the Financial Freedom wall and place it against the Happiness wall. Wink.

Do you still want to feel "sorry" (or act superior) to that stay-home-dad who can't manage $500K in his CPF at 65?

Someone who spends time with his 3 kids to bring them up with the right Family Values (not outsourcing to schools), and at the same time, is enabling his wife to power up to her full potential at her corporate day job.

You seriously think he'll have a hard time in his retirement?

 

Nominal and Real Negative Interest Rates for Market Timing

 

For years now, those of us who have funds parked in plain vanilla bank savings accounts have been getting negative real interest rates - CPI higher than what the bank is giving us.

You think why there's so much interest in REITs, cryptos staking, and for the more risk averse ones - voluntary contributions to CPF?

However, it all fell apart this year 2022.

I mean making more than CPI is why we embarked on the Earn More path; having your funds suffering a -50% unrealised loss, or completely wiped out is not part of the plan to beat inflation!

Voluntarily contributing to CPF looks a bit awkward now that our Singapore's CPI is more than the CPF OA 2.5% interest rates... 

In case you didn't know, the Singapore Savings Bond now pays more than CPF OA!

Or course we can still transfer funds from our CPF OA to CPF SA, we just have to treat big daddy's 2022 annual CPI projection of between 4.5-5.5% as "transitory".... 

Repeat after me, "CPF cannot give negative real interest rates...CPF cannot give negative real interest rates...CPF cannot give negative real interest rates..."

Hang on a minute!

Suffering a guaranteed loss in purchasing power of 1-2% is way much better than -50% loss or losing everything!

You're 100% right!

Bet you thought this is a Save More dissing post! Au contraire!

That's why many Western Europe institutions and high net worth individuals have been parking funds at negative nominal yielding interest rates for some years now. Especially in Germany.

This is NOT supposed to happen; if we remember what we've learnt in economics.

Now you know why they have been doing so in 2022.

They are market timers.

Those who are suffering unrealised losses of -50% and more, don't you wish you had done nothing at all and shoved all your money under your mattress all these years?

Just like there's a difference between dividend investors and yield hogs, there are Tarzans (泰山) out there who may appear to be "Save More" with their risk adverse actions, they are in fact closet market timing "Earn More" speculators!

They are the true contrarians.

In bull markets, they slowly sell into the rally to raise cash. 

Then they WAIT to wash, rinse, and repeat.

As I've alluded to in my previous post Early Adopters and Laggards, it pays to monitor the other market participants out there. Wink.

Know yourself; know your opponents. (Our 5,000 years of Chinese wisdom power or what!?)