2023 has been a much better year than 2022 for me. 2022 was a year of waiting and limbo with house hunting/renovation, portfolios crashing and 2 older kids going thru NS. But in 2023 many of these things came to an end or resolved themselves and life got going well again.
Year started with a new addition to family- Kody our black dog adopted from SPCA. He has really changed our family life. Now Ning and I have to walk him daily for 1 hr each time, kids have to do the evening one. Nights now include saying goodnight to him and lots of time spent consoling him during thunderstorms!
We also resumed travel a lot more. Managed our first post Covid full family vacation to Taiwan. And year end managed to bring Dad and mother in law to Australia for a pretty long drive. Also discovered Ning and I really love nature in Iceland. In total we traveled about 76 days this year which is more than in 2022 but less than the usual 80-90 days pre Covid
Main reason is we are a lot busier with angel work, volunteer work and also want to be around for the 4 boys. Number 1 finished NS and entered NUS. Number 2 finishing NS probably going to do law next year, number 3 took up badminton as a key sport and Number 4 continues to surprise us with his willingness to twist what we say and assert his personal reality distortion field.
To recap no change in life purposes, i have centered myself on the 3 purposes below.
Purpose 1: Be there for family. Share and guide kids more. Maintain friendships.
Overall rate this purpose a 7.5.
It’s tough being parents to 4 kids aged 9 to 21. Every day we need to switch mindsets as we help each of them navigate school, sports, NS, university etc. What works well is to discuss with Ning and come to joint decisions on key strategic items and operational issues. Dad wise, he now comes to stay with us every alternate weekend but in time, he may want/need to stay with us more. Arrangement seems to work fine. He had a scare with his eye and it was quite worrying. Lucky it resolved itself and he was even able to resume traveling - to Iceland no less!
The most important relationship with wife is mostly good as we both practice being mindful of each others priorities and desires. She too is learning more each day about ourselves and the world we live in. I must say I am very proud of all the 4 boys and my dearest wife.
Friends harder to keep in regular touch. Still the same catch up over dinner or drinks every few mths. But it’s nice to see mostly everyone grow older happily.
It was a good move to move into current place as our older boys appreciate the privacy of having own room. We also at least now have a study of our own and dad has a room too.
Purpose 2 : Be as healthy as I can mind and body
Rate this 8.5
I lost weight more as walking the dog daily made Ning and I lose weight. Now weight range is 64-65 consistently. Diet wise is still eat anything I want but can’t eat too much and definitely can’t eat post 10pm. Also manage to tone down on wine consumption to about 3-4 bottles per month between 2 of us. Sleep is fine and have added magnesium pills before sleep as it helps sleep better. Fell sick only twice or thrice of which once was repeat Covid a few mths back.
If I am honest, I do get mentally bored at times esp when everyone is up and about and I am alone at home. But filling up all the time with work just to keep busy also feels like a cop out and lack of imagination to me. So I try to exercise and meditate and entertain myself. Am toying with online courses in history or literature as a good use of spare time.
Purpose 3 : Preserve & Grow Wealth - 10% annualized net IRR on networth+ Quality startup angel work for 100 startups+ build AngelCentral + good volunteer
I would rate this 7.5 this year. Much improved from 2022 as markets all rebounded and even our startup portfolio thawed from the funding winter and started getting some investments in 4Q2023. But we made a major allocation mistake by keeping 30% of stock portfolio in sg and China stocks. This drag pulled down our overall stock performance to 20+% in sgd terms which is about acwi but below SPY. But it’s still a great rebound and we are almost fully allocated into equities all the time which is very important for long term investors. Cash is a drag, bonds marginally better and market timing is very very hard.
Will write more on startup side in a separate post as always but in summary - overall its down for PE side as the VC/PE funds we invested in write down their NAVs over the year.
We also crossed 50 startup investments this year with clear green shoots appearing 4Q2023. Not just new uprounds for our startups but also some exits from our PE and VC funds. Not a lot but at least this year it’s more cash in from PE than out to our startups investments.
Couldn’t hit the 10% investment/networth IRR this year with PE not contributing and in fact negative. But we believe over time, PE will kick in strong again. Long term IRR since 2012 is now down to 9% or so if we mark to market all the PE.
AngelCentral also saw the same decline with our angels funding easily 25% less than year before. Membership is stable, though not growing. The good news is final quarter had 4 startups going into up rounds so it’s good vindication of our clubs selection ability.
For startups, we also had 3 startups go into distress and still undergoing liquidation. What’s painful in these cases is when the founder doesn’t want to let go and close down and when the founder starts to plan only for themselves and obviously doesn’t care about investor fairness anymore. It’s mentally not fun to have to deal with the uglier side of human natures. Easy thing to do is write off and ignore them but Ning and I believe in fairness and things being done properly. So we push back sometimes if we feel treated unfairly even if there is no economic rationale.
Anyway have made a in depth post on startup portfolio here.
Finally on volunteer work, I finally retired from my District councilor role with SWCDC after 14 years of volunteering. Reason is because the HwaChong volunteer role is quite involved. So to do a good job, something has to give. Rest of volunteer work with PEP, ITE, IPOS, NRF remain.
So overall, 2023 has been a good year. Kids all growing older and we think we are managing ok as parents. Spousal relationship is better than ever as we both settle into more synched expectations of life. Still get lots of mental and emotional challenge with the portfolio and startups so that’s good. But the interactions that expose the ugliness of human nature is quite draining.
I do think 2024 will be more of the same where our key challenge is parenting well. Startup side should rebound more and I expect more exits from the PE/Vc fund with later stage startups and maturity coming up. Valuations will be the issue. It seems like public markets no longer buy a story of high multiples because revenue growing well or market potential good. They also want profits or near profits and cashflow. See latest 17live, moneyhero spacs as examples. And rightly so. As for listed portfolio, I don’t think there will be another 20% gain on equities or bonds…will be lucky if eke out a 7-10% return. Maybe China will surprise us all…
