A Great Taiwanese Early Retirement Roundtable Discussion.

A member of my community shared with me a Taiwan-based discussion on early retirement.

Unfortunately, this discussion is in Chinese, so my non-Chinese friends might have to skip this one.

The host brought together a psychologist, a retired retirement blogger, two financial experts and a recently retired media personality to discuss early retirement.

You can watch the 1-hour discussion here:

Both the host and guest asked some good questions which explored various early retirement nuances. This includes how much preparation they did, whether they have retirement regrets, and the push and pull factors of retirement.

About three of the guests have retired.

The news media personality has retired for five short months and reflected upon his experience living through a bear market at the start of his retirement. He retired with NT43,750,000 in the US portfolio. Before retiring, he used his employed status to borrow more money to plough into the market, only to see his portfolio drop more.

Another shared her FI plan, which involves a dividend income strategy with an NT20,000,000 target to draw NT120,000 income based on a 6% dividend yield. Apparently, it is not difficult to find stocks that yield 5-6% in Taiwan.

Aside from that, this discussion is suitable for those who currently hold good jobs to see why older Taiwanese professionals want to retire early and their retirement experience.

Here are some exciting parts of the discussion I picked up:

• Many of the guests on the program manage their money SEPARATELY from their spouses. So when they FI, one spouse usually independently FI while the other works.
• Find out when they first felt the need to retire/ not work.
• Why did the lure of retirement become greater?
• When you retire, you lose a lot of your previous excuses about certain aspects of life.
• Your spouse may think that you are very free and may consistently chide you for not doing some housework.
• One of them successfully did extensive planning before taking a plunge. The other did not figure out how much she needed and how much she could spend, which stopped her from thinking about planning for any extensive travel.
• After you retire, telemarketers would hang up on you after you tell them you are retired because you are not their target market anymore.
• The psychologist shared Australian research, which shared that you might be more susceptible to depression if retirement is not voluntary. Some may find it hard to fall asleep because their mind is occupied with unjust grievances before they are forced to leave.
• There may be many that worked in Taiwan’s thriving semiconductor industry who enjoyed great benefits but exchanged that for their health.
• The guy who retired felt that many of his peers don’t dare to leave the company and they just needed a trigger. When he announced that he is retiring, his batch of working counterparts eventually all left.
• “What is the difference between jumping into a fire or shit hole?”
• An illustration of the potential income from Taiwan’s pension system for an average work after accumulating for 35 years. Just like us, taking out the money earlier is recommended if you are afraid the pension system will one day collapse!

---

I invested in a diversified portfolio of exchange-traded funds (ETF) and stocks listed in the US, Hong Kong and London.

My preferred broker to trade and custodize my investments is Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers allow you to trade in the US, UK, Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and many other markets. Options as well. There are no minimum monthly charges, very low forex fees for currency exchange, very low commissions for various markets.

To find out more visit Interactive Brokers today.

Join the Investment Moats Telegram channel here. I will share the materials, research, investment data, deals that I come across that enable me to run Investment Moats.

Do Like Me on Facebook. I share some tidbits that are not on the blog post there often. You can also choose to subscribe to my content via the email below.

I break down my resources according to these topics:

1. Building Your Wealth Foundation – If you know and apply these simple financial concepts, your long term wealth should be pretty well managed. Find out what they are
2. Active Investing – For active stock investors. My deeper thoughts from my stock investing experience
3. Learning about REITs – My Free “Course” on REIT Investing for Beginners and Seasoned Investors
4. Dividend Stock Tracker – Track all the common 4-10% yielding dividend stocks in SG
5. Free Stock Portfolio Tracking Google Sheets that many love
6. Retirement Planning, Financial Independence and Spending down money – My deep dive into how much you need to achieve these, and the different ways you can be financially free
7. Providend – Where I used to work doing research. Fee-Only Advisory. No Commissions. Financial Independence Advisers and Retirement Specialists. No charge for the first meeting to understand how it works
8. Havend – Where I currently work. We wish to deliver commission-based insurance advice in a better way.