Start Here: Your FIRE Journey in Singapore

"Freedom Starts Here" title text on top of an image of a road going towards the horizon — Photo by Luke Stackpoole on Unsplash

Hello there FIRE enthusiast!

Your FIRE journey in Singapore starts here.

If you’re new to my blog or to the concept of FIRE, you’re in the right place!

When I started writing back in 2018, I was a few years into my own journey towards Financial Independence and simply wanted to document what I was learning along the way. Fast forward to 2026 and my portfolio has (briefly!) crossed my personal FIRE number. The journey from figuring out what FIRE even was to reaching that point is documented right here, mistakes and all.

I count myself extremely fortunate though – a high income, six years living with my in-laws, a powerful bull market, leverage for part of the journey, plenty of help and encouragement from the people around me and a healthy dose of luck all played a big part in how this turned out. My wife and I are now working towards our family FIRE number, so the story isn’t finished quite yet.

There are more than 50 posts here now, so if you’ve only just found the blog and don’t know where to start – don’t fret!

You definitely don’t need to read all of it. Pick whichever of these sounds closest to why you’re here:

I’m completely new to FIRE: start with the five-part introduction below.
I want to know whether this actually worked in real life: jump to my FIRE journey.
I’m looking for something specific: jump to explore by topic.

If you’d rather watch than read, you can also start with my interview on The Financial Coconut. I tried to squeeze the past decade into one conversation while slowly melting inside a lion suit. If anything in there catches your interest, come back to this page for the numbers and the posts behind it!

New to FIRE? Start here

These five posts take you from the basic idea of financial independence through to the index-investing approach behind my journey.

1. What is FIRE and why should I care about Financial Independence?

Read: What is FIRE?

The short version: spend less than you earn, invest the surplus, and build up enough invested assets that paid work becomes optional. The part that appealed to me was never the “retire” bit – it was the freedom to choose how I spend my time.

2. How do I get there faster?

Read: Best way to increase savings? Cut expenses first, get a raise second!

Every recurring expense you remove helps you twice: more money to invest today, and a smaller portfolio needed to fund your future spending. I wrote this early in my journey, and I’d add one thing with hindsight – once you’ve cut what you’re comfortable cutting, growing your income is the other lever, and in my case it made an enormous difference.

3. How much will I actually need?

Read: My “never have to work again” number – An introduction to the Safe Withdrawal Rate

This is where the famous 4% rule comes in and turns your annual spending into a rough portfolio target. I use 3.25% for my own planning because a FIRE horizon could last much longer than a traditional retirement.

The spreadsheets below will help you turn that starting point into a FIRE number built around your own life.

4. Hmm, passive investing huh… why is this the better option?

Read: A Bet On Humanity: Why Index Investing Works (In Simple Terms)

Before picking a fund or a brokerage, it helps to understand what you’re actually buying and why owning a broad slice of the world’s businesses works over long periods. This is the clearest explanation I’ve managed to write of the idea behind my whole approach.

5. So how do I do this from Singapore?

Read: The Bogleheads 3-Fund Portfolio for Singapore Firewalkers

I wrote this in 2018 as my Singapore version of the classic Bogleheads portfolio. The principles still hold, but some of the specific funds, fees and CPF references have aged, and I removed the STI ETF from my own portfolio in 2022. These days I mainly hold VWRA, with my CPF and SRS in an Amundi global index fund.

Bonus: I just got my bonus – all at once, or spread out?

Read: DCA vs Lump Sum Investing

The analysis uses eleven years of STI ETF history, so bear that scope in mind. I invest money as it becomes available, because markets go up more often than they go down. If spreading it out is what gets you invested and keeps you there, that’s fine too.

Tools you can copy

Once the concepts make sense, these spreadsheets help turn them into actual numbers.

Build and track your FIRE number. Start with the original FIRE Budget Tracking Spreadsheet for the full explanation of how to list, prioritise and gradually “fund” each part of your future lifestyle. Then use the v2 version, which lets you set a different withdrawal rate for each expense depending on how critical it is, how long it lasts and how flexible you could be about it.

What I found useful was having to work out what I actually wanted the portfolio to fund, how long each cost would run for, what I could cut in a bad market, and how much margin of safety I wanted on top.

Track your portfolio. My Portfolio Tracking Spreadsheet is the sheet behind all the contribution, gain and progress charts in my update posts. It’s an old and fairly elaborate Google Sheet, so make your own copy before changing anything. The market-data imports occasionally break when providers change their feeds – the comments section has most of the fixes readers and I have worked out over the years.

Books I’d start with

If you only read two:

The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel – start here. This is the most foundational book on the list for understanding our own behaviour and what it takes to have long-term success with money. It also does a great job of explaining why what’s right for you and what’s right for somebody else can be vastly different.
The Simple Path to Wealth, by JL Collins – a more organised and packaged version of JL Collins’ Stock Series, and highly recommended if you’d rather read a book than a blog.

Those two will get most people about 90% of the way to what they need to know. Everything below is incremental – more detail, more specificity, or another useful way to think about the decisions.

If you want more investing detail: The Elements of Investing and The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing. Both are easy reads, just a little more technical than The Simple Path to Wealth.

If you want to understand how the strategy changes as wealth grows: The Wealth Ladder, by Nick Maggiulli . Good for understanding that the right strategy depends on which level you’re on, with a handy mental model for working out which level that is and what to focus on at each one.

(Lifecycle Investing is specifically about leverage, so you’ll find it further down.)

For the resources that shaped my thinking: Browse the full list of resources

My FIRE journey

So looking through all of the above, you may be wondering:

“So FIRE-Path Lion, all this is nice and all, but I’m interested in knowing how your advice is working out for you. Does all of this stuff actually work?”

Glad you ask! I’ve documented my portfolio and every major decision around it in real time since 2018 – exact figures, allocations, returns and all. My FIRE number itself has moved twice along the way: I published SGD 2.16M in 2018, revised it down to SGD 1.8M in July 2019, then revised it up to SGD 3.7M at the end of 2023 as our lifestyle inflated. That’s part of the story too.

If you only read two of these posts, make them these:

Read this first: My FIRE Path: 2025 – Turning 40: From $0 to $4M in 10 years – the entire first decade of the journey in a single post.
Then the latest chapter: My FIRE Path: 2026H1 Update – Hitting My FIRE Number and More Life Milestones – baby number two, our first family car, briefly touching SGD 3.7M, deleveraging near the market bottom, and the road to SGD 6.2M.

Investing through market crashes

One useful side effect of writing in real time is that the archive shows what the uncertainty actually felt like before anybody knew how it turned out. Four episodes so far:

COVID-19 (2020): the initial plan, one month in, and the surprisingly fast recovery
The 2022 bear market: Getting Mauled by Bears (& JPOW) and Staying calm within the storms of 2022
Trump tariffs (2025): my plan during the crash and how it had worked out by mid-year
The Iran war and oil shock (2026): the decision I made at peak fear and why I reversed the leverage part of it almost immediately

Through all four, the regular investing carried on. Do note that the later two also involve leverage decisions, which are not part of a normal index-investing approach.

Every update, 2018 to 2026

The two featured posts above are plenty for a new reader. If you want to see every stage, here’s the full chronology.

Open the full chronology from 2018 to 2026

2018

My FIRE Path: 2018 Progress & 2019 Goals

2019

Looking back at 2019 progress, lessons learned and my goals for 2020

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

2026

You can also browse the whole My FIRE Path archive.

I’ve largely left the older posts as they were written, so some prices, products, CPF and SRS rules and portfolio choices are now out of date.

Explore by topic

FIRE numbers and withdrawals

Introduction to the Safe Withdrawal Rate
Minimum portfolio value for financial independence in Singapore – my 2019 calculation using the expenses and assumptions I had then
FIRE Budget Tracking Spreadsheet and v2
Using CPF LIFE, SRS and a brokerage account together during withdrawal – a 2019 framework, worth checking against current rules

Passive index investing

CPF, SRS and tax

Housing and property

Insurance

Cars and intentional spending

The opportunity cost of buying a car in Singapore
And then, seven years later, we bought one anyway – the story is in the 2026H1 update. Reading them together is more useful than either on its own.

Advanced: My journey with leverage

Obligatory Warning: Using leverage for investing is extremely risky and can wipe out your portfolio if you don’t know what you’re doing. This is not intended to be a recommendation for anyone to use leverage. If you’re considering it, ensure you’re fully informed about the risks and have a clear plan before jumping in. You absolutely do not need leverage for FIRE or ordinary index investing.

I used a 1.5x target for about four years before reducing it to 1.05x in 2026 as I approached my FIRE number and reassessed the downside. The timing was painful: the market rebounded almost immediately, and the decision had cost me roughly SGD 220,000 in foregone gains by the time of my 2026H1 update. I still think it was the right call with the information I had at the time, and I explain why in the post.

If you’re going to look into leverage at all, start with Lifecycle Investing, by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff. It’s the book behind my use of leverage.

If you only read five leverage posts, make them these:

Open the complete leverage chronology

The House Gamble

Later leverage updates

Following along

I’m still working towards our family FIRE number, so there’s more to come. I don’t post on a schedule – I write when there’s something worth sharing. If you’d like the next one in your inbox, the subscribe box is just below.

I hope that all of this content gets you FIRE’d up and inspired to start and continue on your very own journey!

Let’s go get this thing together!

FPL