Part two of a two-part reflection on JL Collins' The Simple Path to Wealth. Photo by Jaime Dantas on Unsplash In part one[1], I wrote about where I agree with JL Collins — that the core rules of building wealth are genuinely simple. But I think we have to ask, if the path is that simple, and the map is free, why do so few people reach the end of it? Part of the answer is that knowing a rule and walking it are very different things. That gap is not a gap in knowledge; it is a

Part one of a two-part reflection on JL Collins' The Simple Path to Wealth. Photo by Jaime Dantas on Unsplash I read JL Collins' The Simple Path to Wealth. He is writing to answer a dilemma: how does one live understanding that money matters, without spending life thinking about money? The book is clear, straightforward, and mercifully free of jargon. I agree with quite a bit of it. Because financial planning concepts are simple. Spend less than you earn. Avoid debt. Invest t

Photo by Alabaster Co on Unsplash At the start of September, God led me to realise I might have turned stewardship into an idol. I've spent my entire career in this industry telling people to be good stewards of their money. I believe, and still do, that we need to be responsible with what we have been given. But lately, I'd had this nagging feeling; this gnawing discontent that I couldn't quite place. One evening, I opened the Bible app, and the verse of the day was Psalm 30

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash I am too late to begin. I have heard this many times. And as with many things, it is a statement with some element of truth sprinkled on top, to hide a lie. I prefer a different take. You're Not Late. You're Starting on Today's Time. My own finances worked out. But for a long time, they worked out largely by chance, not because I planned them. I fell very sick once, and it was insurance I happened to have, not insurance I'd planned to ge

When I was getting my driver's license, my instructor gave me a simple rule about the yellow box junction. "If you're turning, you can wait in the box. If you're going straight, you can't." That was the whole rule, as far as I knew. As an obedient rule following Singaporean, that was exactly what I did. When I was turning, I entered the box and waited without a second thought. When I was going straight, I held back. Simple. I never questioned it. Recently, by chance, I was re

Photo generated by ChatGPT. Pretty cool "What do you use to track your expenses?" It's a good question. The client wanted to get serious about their money, and this was the natural first step. How do we track expenses? Because this is the first commandment of personal finance: Thou Shalt Track Thy Money. Every book, every blog, every adult (and child) will tell you: know where your money goes. But my answer surprised them. "I don't track my expenses." The look on their face w

(I write this as I reflect on a post I saw on Threads. I couldn't copy it before it disappeared, so I'm working from memory, Please forgive my mistakes if any.) The goal is not to have your kids retire you. The goal is to retire your kids. I read this post on Threads, and while I understood the desire, I didn't agree with it. I believe that the person saying this really loves his kids. It feels like he is saying, I don't want my children to struggle the way I did. And every g

People assume that because I do this for a living, I live a textbook financial life. Every decision optimised. Every box ticked. I don't. Some of what I do—and some of what I don't—might sound controversial. Here are three. 1. I don't count the house I live in. When I look at my own net worth, I leave my home out entirely. Not because it has no value. It obviously does. But the cash value of the house is a lot less than it looks. To unlock it, I have to sell. That takes time,

A client of mine, a teacher, well settled into a school she had built a life around, recently made a change. Nothing dramatic on paper. She left a place she knew for one she didn't, choosing a new school, a different environment, a significantly different shape to her teaching journey. Moving from a primary to a secondary school. The immediate reaction for many people was: "She is brave!" She didn't see it that way at all. The View From Outside From the outside, the change lo

August arrived again this year, the way it always does. And each time it swings by, I take time to thank God. It is my birthday month. 44 years this year. It is also the month, ten years ago, that I was in ICU. The day I was extubated, but still "tubated" Intensive Care, Tan Tock Seng, August 2016. Wrestling with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Paralysed, breathing through a tube, fed through my nose. I've written about that before. The helplessness, the prayer, the line that came t

Refreshed 13 Jul 2026 — original published 3 Sep, 2023 I wrote on my personal investment philosophy 3 years ago and I think now is as good a time to revisit it. With all the noise in the market, how do we act? But why is a philosophy important? A philosophy gives clarity on how to act. A philosophy empowers us to control what we can control: our decisions. It narrows an infinite field of possibilities down to what matters, and that alone tends to produce better decisions. My

Not Loch Ard but on the Great Ocean Road. During a trip to Melbourne, my family and I drove out along the coast and stopped at a place called Loch Ard Gorge. My wife, our children, my in-laws — none of us really knew what to expect. It is a beautiful stretch of coastline, with views that take your breath away. Then I read the displays. I cannot tell you now exactly what they said, word for word. But they told the story of a shipwreck, and something in it stayed with me long a

Photo by Kelli Tungay on Unsplash Towards the end of my teaching career, I started giving each of my graduating students a colour pencil. One pencil. Each of them, as they left. Being a teacher was a privilege and the journey with the students was always amazing. The graduation day was a stark reminder that our journey was ending. We would soon part. I wanted to give them something to think about. I wanted them to leave with a deeper reflection of what their actions meant. I

Part two of a two-part reflection on Lee Freeman-Shor’s The Art of Execution. Read Part 1 here In part one, I wrote about Illusion, the idea that more data doesn’t necessarily lead to better decisions. The lesson was that we often respond to how risk presents itself, not to the risk itself. Here, I want to turn from how returns feel to how they actually arrive. Outliers Most individual stocks are bad investments That is not pessimism. It is arithmetic. J.P. Morgan’s Michael C

Part one of a two-part reflection on Lee Freeman-Shor’s The Art of Execution. Read the second part here. I read a book whose ideas run contrary to my own investing philosophy. Lee Freeman-Shor writes in his book, The Art of Execution, about a High Conviction approach. He gives a group of fund managers a single rule: invest only in your ten best ideas. When Lee studied the 1,866 investments they made, he found something humbling. Only 49 percent of those “high conviction” inve

All things considered, still a great trip. This is me, with the car, on the F1 Montreal Circuit (opened to public, I had no idea) I want to tell you about something that happened to me recently. It reflects badly on me; but the lesson it left behind is one I think is worth sharing (and a good reminder to myself). Just last week, I was in Canada. I rented a car from Avis to get around. When I returned it, I made a point of asking the counter staff to confirm that the tank was

Photo by Ben Kim on Unsplash This post is part of my ongoing series on investment philosophy. If you haven't read the earlier pieces, you can find them at https://www.williamseah.com/blog. It has been roughly two months since the Iran war began. The Strait of Hormuz — one of the most critical chokepoints in the global energy supply chain — remains restricted. Oil and fertiliser shipments have been disrupted. Energy facilities have been hit and will take time to rebuild. The w

This post is part of my ongoing series on investment philosophy. If you haven't read the earlier pieces, you can find them at https://www.williamseah.com/blog. This post is part of my ongoing series on investment philosophy. If you haven't read the earlier pieces, you can find them at https://www.williamseah.com/blog. Let me ask you something honest. When you check your portfolio and it is down — even slightly — how does it feel? Now think about the last time it was up by the

This post is an addendum to my earlier piece on Investment Philosophy 101: What Investment Means to Me. If you haven't read it, I'd encourage you to start there. In my earlier piece, I wrote about why I believe in long-term, disciplined investing. The philosophy is straightforward: stay invested, weather the storms, and trust the data. The market rewards patience. But a question I often get asked is this: if we believe in staying invested, when do we ever get out? When do we

The war in the Middle East has now entered its fourth week. Like life itself, it has its ebbs and flows. For those of us outside the conflict zone, the impact is felt through higher oil, food, and flight prices—and a general sense of unease. For those living in the region, the cost is far greater: lives lost, fear endured, and trauma carried. War is always destructive. Over the weekend, President Trump claimed that talks with Iran were underway. Iran quickly denied this. Head