If you read financial blogs but have just started out, you would probably be shocked that it is possible not to work in Singapore and have everything paid for by dividend payouts. A decent number of these readers will then hunker down to figure out how the capitalist system in Singapore works.

It is of no surprise to me that many readers will feel jelly or salty about financially independent folks - to these guys, we must somehow be crooks!

I think my own success is actually quite conventional.

The basic framework even has a name - Financial Advice Commonly Delivered or FACD based on the excellent book shown above by Michael Ellsberg.

Here is how FACD works :

a) Earn money from a job.
b) Save a large chunk of it, delaying gratification for the next 2 decades.
c) Invest (and reinvest) in various instruments with an emphasis on stock equity.
d) Retire when dividend income/capital gains...