There is an increasing number of blogs and courses these days talking about methodologies of investing in stocks, advocating financial independence or financial freedom (I am using the 2 terms interchangeably in this post, you could read more on their subtle differences here). They speak of how good it is to reach the stage of FIRE (financial independent and retire early) in life, how one could achieve FI through investing (like bao chiak) and package it with methodologies which are often narrowly defined as long-term investing in dividend yielding stocks.

The holy grail of reaching financial independence is not in its entirety about becoming a skilled (passive /value) stock investor. Those who are inspired by Robert Kiyosaki like to talk about portfolio and passive income by investing - forgetting that he wrote financial intelligence is a synergy of accounting, investing, marketing and law. Why did