Kyith Out and About in the Media with CNA & Sethisfy

In recent weeks and months, I have been featured in two video interviews.

Some of you may have seen the first one about me and tips to calculate and reach your long term savings targets on Channel News Asia:

This video is 9 minutes but man… the exposure is crazy. Now I know how many people still watches Channel News Asia on TV. Even more so how far-reaching is a feature on CNA on social media. Many of my friends, relatives and ex-co workers see it.

As difficult as it is to watch myself, I got to thank the people at the back to make the story more compelling as it is. The guy Jake tried his best to get all the facts right and I was especially appreciative about how the 4% Safe Withdrawal Rate is described.

I think most are more interested in how I look than the actual numbers (see the great comments in the video). I think only Evelyn (my Providend Deputy CEO) asked me how come the retirement number is that huge.

Well, I really don’t know how each part will turn out because all I did was just answer questions. The question was that in a recent survey, many younger folks felt that if they have $5,000 monthly income, they would be comfortable.

So can we get $5,000 monthly in retirement.

Naturally, we have to adjust the $5,000 monthly figures by inflation. So I said… if a young adult at 25 years old think he or she needs $5,000, in 40 years time that figure is $29,458 monthly.

With such a large monthly figure, even if I apply a 3.5% safe withdrawal rate the figure is pretty large. I did not factor in CPF, but was asked later and you can imagine that if you need $5,000 monthly today, CPF LIFE would probably offset $1,000 monthly so that you will need less.

If the goal is for a couple, then it is even less. The math is quite similar to the numbers I illustrate in this article.

My colleague Seth or Sethisfy as he is widely known, asked me whether Retiring Early is a Lie:

Okay, this chit-chat is 1 hour.

Seth and I went through my wealth accumulation journey but unlike other interviews, I appreciate that we have time to explore a wide breadth surrounding the topic of work, retirement, financial independence, FIRE, sacrifice, keeping score, savings rate.

We explore enough such that if you ask me out for coffee, I would most likely say the same thing. So this will be as much as you can get, aside for asking personal consultation on your current situation.

Got to say thanks for Seth for featuring me. I help him test whether anyone would watch a 1-hour chit-chat session haha. Also special thanks to Vincent’s client for not showing up so that we can use the conference room.

I think after doing these two interviews, I would likely go into hermit mode for a while. Well, unless someone wants to discuss the long and short of income planning haha.

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