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My story  . I am early 40s. Higher investible amount compared to funman but i have a 6 years old young kid to feed, 2 age old parents to support. Lucky thing is my wife still working although income is less than half of mine. My bro in finance sector pay sh be quite good i think.
One year ago i felt tired and told my boss i am going to quit soon. Few mths ago i secured a part time lecturing job (by the way, i hv 0 teaching experience too) and told him my intention to resign in one mth. Of cos not easy to give up my >100k per yr job but i just want to take a break before deciding what to do and reading "Think and Grow Rich" book does help a bit . I cut down expenses and sold off my 7.5 years old car.
Then came the unexpected. He offered me a one year sabbatical. So i decided to take up the offer. Maybe i will feel recharged after a year although i am mindful the same tight schedule awaits me one year later. Mine will start April this year though i been clearing my leave and staying at home and tying all these  .
I dont really hate what i am doing though i hate the tight schedule and frequent requirements change while deadlines didnt change  .
Yours is different as you hated your job. Well, just do what your heart tells you to. Dont think so much. Read that book. Dont think of failure.
We are educated. We can always get another job if all personal ventures failed.
What will i be doing for next one year? Well, fetching my kid to/fro school. Some housework. Lots of reading annual reports. Branching into overseas market. Lots of sleep. Lots of nagging from parents and wife to filter  .
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It seems full-time investors aren't rare in VB.
“夏则资皮，冬则资纱，旱则资船，水则资车” - 范蠡
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I have nothing else to say.
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12-03-2015, 03:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-03-2015, 03:58 PM by invest4aliving.)
My story is similar.
40yr old and stopped working completely in 2007.
My time is now occupied with running errands of kids, parents and wife. Other times, I will look at my investments.
I tried going back to work fulltime 2 years back but quit after 6months as I hate the routine.
Now I am trying to get back to work as a "SELF-EMPLOYED" - ie, the only jobs left for singaporeans - real estate agents (or so i thought).
But maybe i won't be successful coz I am an introvert and I do not like to prey on people's emotion to make them buy/sell properties.
I guess my approach to real estate will be to duly advised them of all the pitfalls of the deal and if they do want to proceed, i have no guilt.
back to the investment,
At the start of the year, I pull out min 1 year of cashflow from the portfolio(depending on whether need to finance new house purchase or other major expenditures like cars) for living expenses.
The portfolio is generating an avg yield and modest capital appreciation (as a whole) since I skewed the weightage towards bonds(to create the cashflow stability) , followed by equal weighting to cash (for warchest in crisis) and equities. The skew was done after I had a 50% weighting to equities in 2007 and it crashed 25% in 2008 and i exited before i went in again with reduced weightage in early 2009).
I Thank my lucky stars I am above water still and I hope to continue that way for years to come.
My advise to the TS, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR JOB. If you cannot tahan, just switch to another lower paying but more relax job.
All the others have told you what i am going to tell you : "It's more shiok to use your job income to fund all expenses and live your money to compound"
Oh.. and One other time.. if you have a fulltime income, it's much much easier for you to get BANK LOANS for properties!
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Just sharing an extract of my story which I did in 2012, and hope it can give some pointers to funman168.
I retired from the corporate world 7 years ago and became a full time retail investor.
The initial days after retirement, I was a little lost . There were no longer people asking me for decisions, no more boss telling you if you are good (or no good), no more schedules or deadlines, no more business and execution plans, no more deals to close, no more jetting around and no more media or institutional funds contacting me for information. I did lose most of my network and contacts and relied mainly on the internet for information. There are no colleagues that you can rely on to tell you if you do right or wrong. Right and you are rewarded. Wrong, you just suffer the consequence.
I went through the 2007 crisis with much pain after losing about a mid 6 digit sum on paper but was fortunate to have recovered since. I was certainly humbled by that crisis. I did have some luck, both before retiring and certainly after the crisis. Before the crisis, just like most people who have made their fortune in the bull market then, I thought I knew a thing or two about investment just because I read some investment books and had some gains. If you asked me again today, I will tell you it is a lot of hardwork, patience and yes, luck.
After spending these few years doing full time retail investing, I can only say it is really not easy. You can have all the fundamentals or numbers right, but you can get the sentiments or timing wrong. Or you can get all these right, but your greed or fear just prey on you.
Some years, during good times my portfolio returns can be 20-30%. Some years, nothing to shout about, just 5%. I have learned to take recent volatility in stride.
I do have more time with family and friends. Recently, I was able to spend more time visiting and chatting with both my 70+ years old parents, and realised there are many things I do not know about them. I was glad to learn about their own little stories. I also spend more time exploring our own little city, Singapore, and found many interesting places, where I never knew existed. I am also planning to do more travelling with my wife, and there will be no more business meetings during these trips.
But somehow I guess whichever route one chooses, you gain some, you lose some.
But if I were to choose again, maybe taking sabbatical leave or working part time would have been a better route. Or perhaps I would just continue working, and tell myself not to get too serious over those office politics etc. Just do my part, collect the pay and be grateful just for that, while I continue to invest and learn.
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Really many full time investors here!
I guess a good question to add on to the sharing is.. do you guys regret not working longer/more? Personally I thought without working full time, one will have more time to pursue interests that will not have been possible if you are working a full time desk job. Life should be more enriching and more fulfilling in that sense..
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i regret not working longer as once you are out of it, you get used to being rewarded for taking the right calls and usually the reward is more than your annual salary. So, you will find it hard to go fulltime work , the next best alternative would be to do work that is renumerated on your outcome (ie, commission based) while having flexibility of timing and being able to make your own decision in how to go about achieving that outcome.
But if you have a very deep passion for social work or some hoobby, i don't see why those who can retire fulltime wil find it bored or less satisfying not working.
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I wish to thank all those full-time investors for sharing your stories and experiences. It is very useful for me.
When I am pissed off by my bosses, I also harbor the thought of quitting, especially when easy money has been made over the last few years form stock investment.
When it is a bull market, most of us can make money easily and would think that we are such a gifted investor and start compounding the return.
I believe that, with a regular income, we will be in a better mental state to invest and less easily affected by fear. Lately, I started to give each of my children $500 monthly allowance and encourage them to save most of it. I transfer the money to their bank accounts exactly on my pay day each month. It serves to remind me that I need to continue to work to support my family using my salary income. I will not use the pool of fund set aside for investment for daily expenses as it will be a drag to the growth of the fund. Since last year, I stop channeling the saving from my salary income to investment as my investment fund is already quite sizeable. I channel the saving from my salary to my retirement fund instead.
Right now, I am actually building up and growing two pools of funds - one pool for investment and the other pool for retirement.
All my CPF will be kept for retirement so that even after I stop work, I do not need to tap into my investment fund.
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Same here. I am also grateful for all the sharing.
Like TS, I have been preparing to go full time investing. When I look at my past records, I have realised I have been saving more than my pay partly because of my low living expenses and lucky investment income. However, like what Shn has shared, I think my mental state will be different if I invest w/o regular income. Also I have want to build higher capital to ensure I can withstand any kind of economic disaster as once I choose the route of full time investment, I think it is difficult to turnback. On the other hand, my full time job currently does not allow me to do more investment research as I would like to.
Perhaps going for part-time work is a good middle of the path option. Can anyone share what is the requirement for part time tutor/ lecturer?
It seems like a good option while keeping in touch with my current professional expertise in finance & accounting.
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(12-03-2015, 06:55 PM)header Wrote: Same here. I am also grateful for all the sharing.
Like TS, I have been preparing to go full time investing. When I look at my past records, I have realised I have been saving more than my pay partly because of my low living expenses and lucky investment income. However, like what Shn has shared, I think my mental state will be different if I invest w/o regular income. Also I have want to build higher capital to ensure I can withstand any kind of economic disaster as once I choose the route of full time investment, I think it is difficult to turnback. On the other hand, my full time job currently does not allow me to do more investment research as I would like to.
Perhaps going for part-time work is a good middle of the path option. Can anyone share what is the requirement for part time tutor/ lecturer?
It seems like a good option while keeping in touch with my current professional expertise in finance & accounting. I have peers in the tutoring/ lecturing fields. Those have their own challenges like any other jobs.
If teaching part time, one has to take it at his/her own stride. These days, teaching part time is no longer like the old days. Students can petition against lecturer online. It was unheard before in the past.
With sufficient hours to clock, it is an attractive source of income. Only issue is that it may not provide the consistency of fixed pay permanent jobs. I ever had a friend who was teaching full time hospitality and he was later downgraded to driving cab... just because there was a lack of demand for hospitality programs, as compared to accounting and finance.
The same like for investing full time. The consistency of income is always an issue. On the other extreme, I seen peers hitting 5 figures from teaching. In any trade, there are the dogs and the stars.  Just be sure to spread your eggs in different baskets, plates, pans, bowls, cups and whatever utensils in the kitchen.
The thing I am scared most is not nightmares or market crashes..... Its my greed that I fear the most.
When people ask what is my target price, I never have any good answer for it because Philip Fisher said before (in Common Stock Uncommon Profit) that the best time to sell is never. Equity investment is buying into ownership, not betting slips.
The path to greatness and wealth is necessarily dangerous.... because greed is a fearsome fore that threatens your success at every step.
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