Recall a while back there were many posts about property agents warning about the oncoming rush for HDB resale because of the lifting of the 15 month wait out period. Hope people here kept a cool head instead of FOMO-ing in and paying more than necessary.
Imperative for FIRE and its principles have only grown - cut expenses, grow income (including through side hustles), invest the difference to grow income further, rinse and repeat. No longer sound to be dependent on only a job as a single source of income.
"GIC has ceased a long-time practice of publishing the returns of a reference portfolio that represented the risk its client was willing to take. For years, the firm had regularly underperformed it on returns while delivering better volatility."
this is a reminder that even GIC cannot beat its own "reference portfolio" - most retail investors should not even try.
the lesson here should NOT be that if you cannot beat your benchmark, to remove the benchmark instead of improving performance by tracking the benchmark.
There's a lesson here about personal finance: it doesn't really matter if the food and public transport is cheap if the biggest expenses (housing mainly, but also cars) are really expensive. Similarly, it doesn't really matter if you scrimp on day-to-day expenses if you overstretch on housing and cars; spending on the latter simply dwarfs whatever tiny savings made on the former.
I suppose the other personal finance decision is that if you want to live like a king when retiring, it's best to geoarbitrage.