Personal Finance
FIRE Trial — January 2026: A Month In Thailand And What It Did To Our Budget
By Turtle Investor  •  June 5, 2026
The FIRE Trial series is back. For those new here, my wife and I are your average Singaporean couple living in an HDB flat in Singapore. Our monthly mortgage is fully paid through CPF, so housing doesn’t show up in these numbers. I’ve been tracking every dollar we spend since 2013 with You Need A Budget (YNAB). This series looks at our real monthly expenses, compares them against my alternative income, and answers one question.idempotent Can we sustain our lifestyle without a full-time salary? A quick note on what “alternative income” means in this series. For a start, I mentally split my portfolio into two halves: the income-producing side (dividends, interest) and the non-income-producing side (Index ETFs, sitting there compounding). Add in side hustle income on top, and that’s what I’m tracking here. I call it “alternative” rather than “passive” because some of it (like blog revenue, digital product sales) takes effort. Not a paycheque, not zero-work either. Include:...
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By Turtle Investor
Hello there! I am Kevin and the author behind the Turtle Investor blog. At age 37, I hit CPF Full Retirement Sum (FRS) of $176,000 on the last day of 2019, twelve years after graduating from university. I am married and owns a 4-room apartment. I continue to be gainfully employed to build up my portfolio and provide my loved ones with better lives. Leaving everything behind and transitioning to a digital nomad life in Bali remains an option but not something that I’m actively pursuing now 🙂
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