Dollar Dolla’ Bill Y’all

This past weekend my high school alumni network did an internal webinar talking about money and investing. We had great interests, with up to 40 people participating in the event (20% of our graduating class). Looking back, it is not really surprising that the turnout was great. Like many other Millennials and older Gen-Zs, reaching financial success is usually the number one focus for those in their twenties. This fact combined with the democratization of investing through mobile trading platforms such as Robinhood fueled young professionals’ interest and hunger to make money in the market. …

Why we’re all content creators

GaryVee once said that every company in this digital age is a media-first company.

What does that mean?

In 2020, there is one profession that all of us are participating in whether we realize it or not. That profession is content creation. From a consulting company that publishes industry reports to a CPG firm that sponsors Youtubers to showcase their products, every successful company in this modern age understands the importance of brand awareness and the machines behind it — content creation. …

How It Matters in Investing

I am the only child. Growing up, this meant that I was the sole attention of my parents, which usually can either be good or bad on a child’s development depending on the parents’ skill-sets and understanding of parenthood. This also means that I was more absorbed and involved in everything that my parents do. Not just the typical thing that parents teach their children such as morals and/or their views of life, but also their work and financial condition. …

Deciding to Go Out in COVID-19

I love going out. The alluring beats combined with bright lights contrasting with the night sky; the company of friends and interesting (albeit some time obnoxious) strangers; and just the general atmosphere of being alive. In college, I had a crazy semester in which I went out almost three times a week, for 16 weeks straight. Not very proud of that, but I can say with absolute certainty that I did not do it because of peer pressure or because I tried to look cool. …

On Trump’s Executive Order & the China Ban

In the past couple of weeks, the business world has been occupied with TikTok. Donald Trump announced that the US government might potentially ban TikTok if it’s not sold to an American company by September 15th. This action is primarily inspired by the amount of data that TikTok collects and the firm’s potential tie with the Chinese government. Not long after, Trump announced another executive order banning transactions with the Chinese owners/parent company of WeChat (and TikTok) starting September 20th.

The first reaction to this announcement can only be described as “confusion”…

Pensive Pragmatism

I miss going out. I miss the background noise of strangers chatting, drinks clinking, and music bumping. I’m looking forward to the days when I can eventually go back to those times; chatting with my friends while I’m sipping on my old fashioned, having our own conversations, exchanging ideas, sharing stories, and embracing each other’s emotions. In college, I probably spent too much time hanging out on the weekend, a series of shenanigan that can be justified as “networking” or can be condemned as just simply being young and irresponsible. …

Pensive Pragmatism

This piece is inspired by a friend’s short essay that answers a question he often received.

“Didn’t you study chemical engineering in college?”

For context, he’s a young tech professional working as a Marketing Data Analyst in one of South East Asia’s biggest start-ups.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have also received the same question a lot; especially from older individuals that are not fully up to pace with the relational change between one’s education and professional career in the current generation. Not to blame them — in the past, what you study and what you go work for was…

Pensive Pragmatism

I found the term “quarter-life crisis” to be quite inaccurate. After all, it positively assumes that you’re going to live until 100 years old, a feat that’s only 0.0075% of the world’s population have achieved, providing them with the coveted title of Centenarians. Regardless of the term’s accuracy, the problem that it describes is very real for people in their twenties, especially early to mid-twenties. As an individual that belongs to this cohort, I’ve found myself increasingly discussing this problem with my peers. Sometimes, it indirectly appears in our conversations.

The term quarter-life crisis is often associated with…