My Father Has Five Friends Left. He Said It Like the Weather.

Three weeks ago I moved back to Singapore. The Wife is still in Melbourne. So the shape of my week has become simpler than it has been in decades. Swimming on Monday. Running on Wednesday. Riding on Friday. Cleaning and washing somewhere in the gaps. Church on Saturday, and every weekend, the bus out to my parents' place.

It is a little over five kilometres. It takes just under an hour by bus, which sounds absurd until you remember that Singapore has the most expensive cars in the world, bar none. There is a faster option, one of those point-to-point car sharing services. But I am not in a rush, and the bus is the economical choice, so the bus it is. An hour there, an hour back, for a few hours in a flat I have known most of my life.

Last weekend we watched YouTube videos together. My father, my mother, me. I was showing them a YouTuber we had been following even in Melbourne, who started out with the old shopping malls. Last week's was different: he went to old buildings that are still standing and dug up the stories behind them. I put them on partly because I thought it would be good for my parents to get out of the house, even if only vicariously. My mother is in the early stages of dementia. My father is the one who keeps the days running.

One of the videos took us to a house on a road I recognised immediately. It was the road to my father's old village, not far at all from where he sits now. I searched for an old photograph of it on my phone and turned the screen towards him. His house was just outside the frame, but the huts along the road were in it, and he started naming them. There was a coffee shop. There was a provision shop. He knew what had been in each one, the way you know the layout of a place you cannot go back to.

I already knew what stands there today. So did he. A low-rise private apartment block, a supermarket on the ground floor, a few shops. He said it plainly, without any of the sighing you might expect. He simply held both versions of the road at once, the one in the photograph and the one you could drive past tomorrow, and did not seem to find that difficult.

Then, somewhere in the middle of all this, he mentioned that most of his friends are gone. Five left. And of those five, two are losing either their mobility or their mind.

He said it the way you might report the weather. Not sad, not fishing for comfort. A count.

I said nothing.

This is not the first time he has told me. He mentioned it once before, when I was still in Melbourne and the conversation was happening down a phone line. Back then I had a suggestion ready straight away: make some new friends. Chat to people at the market. You spent most of your working life driving a cab, talking to strangers all day long, this should be the easiest thing in the world for you.

I remember thinking that was good advice. Practical. Encouraging. The sort of thing a helpful son says.

Sitting next to him last weekend, five kilometres from my flat instead of six thousand, I could not say it. Not because I have grown wiser in the interval, but because I could see the room. I could see who was in it. I could see that the man I was about to send off to the market to make friends is the same man who cannot leave the house for long, because someone has to be here, and he is the someone.

There is an obvious answer to all of this. Active ageing centres. Group activities. There are more of them around than there used to be, and they exist precisely for men like my father. I thought of it on the spot. I also knew, in the same second, that it does not fit the life he is actually living. Advice that ignores the caregiving is not advice. It is a way of feeling useful.

So I did not offer it. I have not offered it since. Whether that counts as restraint or cowardice is not obvious to me.

What has stayed with me is something smaller and more embarrassing. Of those five friends, I have only ever known one by name. He was my father's best friend, I think. He looked scholarly, in the way certain older men did back then, and he visited us regularly. We visited him too, and I can still picture it. My father spoke about that friend's son constantly, what he was studying, what he was doing now, in the way Asian parents do.

That is the extent of it. One name, from decades ago. I do not know how my father and his remaining friends keep in touch. Telephone, probably. I do not know whether they ever meet, or used to meet, or stopped. I know the number five because he said the number five. I have his balance sheet and none of the accounts.

Which brings me, uncomfortably, to my own three weeks.

I have not called anyone. Not one friend since I landed. This is not an accident and it is not loneliness sneaking up on me, at least not as far as I can tell. It has been deliberate. I have been quietly enjoying the solitude, the small tidy routine of it, the swim, the run, the ride, the bus.

I have wondered, though, whether that is normal. Whether it is healthy. Whether a preference kept up long enough eventually stops being a preference and becomes the only setting you have.

I do not know. My father spent his working life among strangers and now has five. I am three weeks into a city where I know plenty of people and have contacted none of them. The two facts sit next to each other, and I am not going to pretend I have worked out what they mean.

What I do know is this. There is no rebalancing strategy for the part of your life that is made of people. Nobody sends you a quarterly statement. You find out the balance the way I did, on a Sunday afternoon, with an old photograph on your phone and a man beside you naming the shops that used to be there.

Is there advice you have given a parent from a distance that you would not be able to say to their face, sitting in their living room?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – I’d love to hear what’s resonating with you.

☕ Your support keeps L-Plate Retiree writing about the parts of ageing that don't come with a strategy, like a friendship count that only goes one way. If sitting with your own parents' shrinking circle is something you recognise, you can consider buying L-Plate Retiree a coffee on Ko-fi.

Beyond the Basics of Diversification

Welcome back, L-Plate Retirees! We've covered market timing and emotional investing, and now we're diving into another cornerstone of smart investing: diversification. You might remember us talking about asset allocation, where we spread our investments across different types like stocks, bonds, and cash. That's a fantastic start, but true diversification goes much, much deeper!

Think of it this way: if you only invest in one type of asset, or even one country, you're putting all your eggs in one basket. If that basket drops, all your eggs are gone! Proper diversification means spreading those eggs across many different baskets, and even different types of baskets, so if one falls, the others are still safe.

Beyond just asset classes, we need to consider:

• Geographic Diversification: This means investing in companies and markets all around the world, not just your home country. As we've often highlighted, global markets behave differently. If one country's economy is struggling, another might be booming. This helps smooth out your returns and reduces country-specific risk.

• Sector Diversification: Don't put all your money into just one industry, like technology or healthcare. If that sector hits a rough patch, your entire portfolio could suffer. Spreading your investments across various industries protects you from sector-specific downturns.

• Style Diversification: This involves investing in different types of companies within the stock market, such as 'growth' stocks (companies expected to grow faster than the market) and 'value' stocks (companies that appear to be undervalued). It also includes looking at different company sizes, like large-cap, mid-cap, and small-cap companies. Each style and size can perform differently at various times.

The magic ingredient in effective diversification is understanding correlation. This simply means how different investments move in relation to each other. Ideally, you want assets that have low or even negative correlation. If one goes down, another might go up or stay stable, balancing out your portfolio. For example, bonds often have a low correlation with stocks, meaning they might perform well when stocks are struggling.

However, there's a fine line between diversification and over-diversification. Adding too many assets can sometimes dilute your potential gains without significantly reducing risk. The goal is to mitigate concentration risk – the danger of having too much exposure to a single asset, sector, or region – without making your portfolio overly complex or inefficient. Remember the importance of regular review of your portfolio to ensure your diversification strategy remains appropriate for your goals and the ever-changing market conditions.

By diversifying broadly, you're building a more resilient portfolio that can weather different economic climates and market fluctuations. It's a smart way to protect your nest egg and ensure steady growth over the long term.

Next, we'll tackle how to maintain your long-term strategy, especially when the market gets a bit bumpy. Stay tuned!

L-Plate Takeaways:

• Diversify Beyond the Basics: Asset allocation is good, but true diversification includes spreading investments across different geographies, sectors, and investment styles.

• Go Global: Invest in markets around the world to reduce country-specific risks and capture growth opportunities wherever they arise.

• Spread Across Industries: Don't put all your eggs in one industry basket. Diversify across various sectors to protect against downturns in any single one.

• Understand Correlation: Combine investments that don't always move in the same direction. This helps smooth out your portfolio's ride during volatile times.

• Avoid Concentration Risk: Don't have too much exposure to any single asset, sector, or region. Regularly review your portfolio to ensure it remains well-diversified.