Hey everyone,
This week: the number one thing people tell me is actually stopping them from investing, and the exact five things I'd do in order before you put in a single dollar. I'm also ranking DBS, OCBC, and UOB after this quarter's results, an easy credit card trick most people miss, and a genuinely counterintuitive idea about retirement portfolios.
One more thing.
There are a lot of new subscribers here recently, so I want to build the next few editions around what you actually want to know, not just what I think is interesting. I want to continue to build this with you guys (the audience) front and centre. Take this 1-minute survey and tell me what you'd like to see more of.
I'm planning a full reader Q&A edition next week, built entirely from what comes in, so if there's something specific you've been wondering about, that's the place to put it. Or just hit reply if that's easier.
Let’s get into it.
🎯 Personal Finance Quick Action
Before every cohort of my course, I send out a one-question survey. What's your biggest challenge with investing right now.
The single most common answer, by a long way, isn't "I don't have enough money." It isn't "I'm scared of a crash." It's simply just: I don't know where to start. And that’s totally understandable.
If that's you, though, here's the actual five-step order I'd follow:
Get proper term insurance
Term insurance gives you real protection without the fees an investment-linked policy (ILP) quietly bundles in. MoneyOwl (under Temasek Trust) is a great independent starting point if you want to objectively compare options without a commission-driven sales pitch attached.Build an emergency fund
A minimum of six months of basic living expenses, in something liquid and low to no risk. If your income's less predictable or lumpy, lean toward 12 months instead.Pay yourself first
Set aside your savings, investment, and insurance contributions the moment your salary lands, before bills and before discretionary spending. This is what actually funds steps two and five, not willpower later in the month.Figure out your actual risk appetite
Not what you think it should be, what it actually is. Spend a bit of time understanding how stocks and bonds have behaved historically, so a (completely) normal down year doesn't feel like an emergency or a reason to panic and sell out.Start investing through ETFs
One or two ETFs from a reputable provider; iShares, Vanguard, or State Street, gives you diversified market exposure in a single purchase, without betting everything on picking individual winners.
This week’s task: If you've got steps one through four sorted and you're just stuck on step five, here's exactly how to close it out. Both Interactive Brokers Singapore (IBKR SG) - learn more about why IBKR is my preferred broker here - and FSMOne give you access to broad-based UCITS ETFs like VWRA or ACWD. Open an account if you don't already have one, and set up a recurring monthly order; even if it’s a small one. The amount matters way less than starting the habit.
📷 YouTube Deep Dive
All three Singapore banks just posted record profits this quarter. Same market, same rates, same three months. One of them is falling behind the other two, and it's not hard to guess which one.
I go through the banks’ actual Q2 2026 numbers, profit growth, return on equity (ROE), where each bank's growth is actually coming from, and dividend growth.
Then I give you my full ranking of all three. Spoiler alert: the bank with the highest headline profit growth this quarter isn't the one I'd rank first.
💡 Tim’s Pick of the Week
Always, always, ALWAYS get your credit card's annual fee refunded.
Banks will try to charge you one by default, hoping you don't notice or don't bother calling.
I find it kind of funny how banks actually have an automated "fee waiver" option built into their phone banking line, so you don't even need to speak to a human.
That’s how much they expect people to request one but they’re betting on the assumption that a lot of people will just accept it and pay the fee. It's literally a two-minute call (or logging on to Internet Banking) for money you were never supposed to pay in the first place.
One bank is sneakier than the rest, though. UOB doesn't always charge you a cash amount for the annual fee. Instead, it deducts UNI$ points instead, sometimes up to UNI$ 10,000, or the equivalent of 20,000 KrisFlyer miles.
That deduction won't show up as an obvious line item on your statement. Check your UNI$ balance directly after any annual renewal is upcoming and call to get it reversed after it’s been deducted.
If you're converting bank points to KrisFlyer miles at some point, two more things worth knowing. It costs around $27 for a one-time conversion, and minimum conversions come in blocks of 10,000 miles (UNI$ 5,000 or 5,000 DBS points). Converting small amounts repeatedly wastes money on fees you didn't need to pay.
📩 From the Inbox
Most people assume you get more conservative as you age into retirement. The data says the opposite can actually work better.
Bill Bengen created the original 4% rule. He recently went back and redid the research with more data.
His updated finding: the real safe maximum withdrawal rate isn't 4%; instead it's 4.7%. That number comes from the single worst 30-year retirement period on record, someone who retired in 1968 straight into multiple bear markets and 6% to 8% inflation.
Even in that worst-case scenario, a portfolio withdrawing 4.7% a year, with a fixed 55% stock allocation, held up for the full 30 years.
Here's what surprised me. That 4.7% number assumes you pick one stock allocation and hold it steady for all 30 years. But if you instead start your equities allocation lower, say 40% to 45% in stocks, and increase it by 1% every year, you can help mitigate the risk of early bear markets in retirement.
What’s known as the “rising glidepath” for equities involves gradually adding more equity exposure as retirement goes on instead of going with a “static” allocation (like 60/40) and rebalancing it every year.
Of course, the flipside of a lower stock allocation early in retirement is the opportunity cost involved if stock markets perform spectacularly early in your retirement. As always, there’s no “free lunch” in investing.
My take: the instinct to get more conservative as you retire isn't wrong exactly, it's just backwards in its timing. The real risk in early retirement is a bad market in the first few years (sequence of returns risk).
Being slightly more conservative right at the start, then gradually adding equity exposure each year can help mitigate that risk versus picking one (higher) stock allocation from the get-go and freezing it for 30 or 40 years.
If there's a topic you'd like me to break down in a future edition, hit reply and let me know or take the survey here. The best ideas in this newsletter come from your replies.
Until next week,
— Tim
When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help:
1. Investing Made Simple: A self-paced course that walks you through building a proper investment portfolio from scratch. ETFs, allocation, brokers, and the mindset to stay consistent. Everything you need to start and keep going. Join here.
2. Miles Made Simple: A strategy guide for earning and redeeming KrisFlyer miles the right way. If you're flying out of Singapore and not optimising your credit card spend, you're leaving a lot on the table. Get the guide here.
3. Got a question? Submit it here and I might answer it in a future edition.