Investing & Dividends Misleading — the headline number is real but unrepresentativ

By the Income Reality Check Editorial Team · Updated 2026-08-11 · 7 min read

Kelvin’s SGD 24,000/month “passive income”: what the label quietly leaves out

Verdict: Misleading — the headline number is real but unrepresentative. The total is believable, but the part you can actually copy adds up to loose change.

Kelvin Learns Investing opens his 2026 video by claiming eight income sources that together bring him “over SGD 24,000 a month (~$17,800) in passive income.” To his credit, he says up front that true passive income doesn’t exist. But the framing still sells a fantasy: eight streams, rated on how easy, how lucrative, and how passive each is. Add up his own numbers and one uncomfortable fact appears — the streams a normal viewer can replicate produce a rounding error, while the two that carry the total are a full-time media business.

What the video actually claims

The eight streams, in his words, are bank interest, a Singapore-licensed property-lending platform called BigFundr, Singapore Savings Bonds, dividends, YouTube AdSense, affiliate income, digital products on Ko-fi, and options income. He rates each on a 1-to-5 scale for ease, earnings, and passivity, and he’s candid that the “passive” ones pay little and the lucrative ones aren’t passive.

Here’s the breakdown he gives, converted to a rough monthly figure:

Affiliate income alone is about 74% of the total. Add YouTube AdSense and you’re at roughly SGD 20,400 — around 85% of everything — from a single asset: a finance channel he’s been uploading to for six years. The genuinely hands-off streams (bank, bonds, BigFundr, dividends) come to about SGD 945 a month combined. That’s the number most viewers should anchor on, because it’s the part that doesn’t require becoming an internet personality first.

What the method actually requires

Look at the big two honestly and the “passive” label falls apart.

Affiliate income — his SGD 18,000 monthly average — is commission when a viewer signs up for a platform through his link. He says plainly it took “the last 6 years building this up, one video at a time,” and that most clicks come from recent uploads, so he has to keep publishing. That matches the wider data. Across published surveys, a large share of affiliate marketers earn under $1,000 a month and a meaningful slice earn literally nothing, with “job-replacement” income typically arriving only after roughly two years of consistent work. Affiliate revenue isn’t a file sitting on a server; it’s the output of an audience that has to be fed weekly.

YouTube AdSense (SGD 2,400/month) has the same dependency. Kelvin says his RPM is around $7 per 1,000 views because finance advertisers pay a premium — vlog and gaming channels sit closer to $1–$5. That premium is real; finance is consistently among the highest-RPM niches. But you don’t earn a cent until you clear the YouTube Partner Program bar: 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 public watch hours in the prior 12 months (or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days). He admits the AdSense “bulk” comes from recent uploads and that “the moment I stop, this number would start falling.” Passive income that collapses when you stop working is just income.

Two of the smaller streams also carry hidden asterisks. His US dividends get docked before they arrive: the IRS withholds 30% on US-source dividends paid to nonresident foreign investors, and because Singapore has no US tax treaty reducing that rate, his USD 3,180 becomes roughly USD 2,250 in hand. And options income (SGD 3,000) he rates a 1 out of 5 for passivity — the least passive thing on his list. Selling cash-secured puts and covered calls pays a premium, but a covered call caps your upside if the stock runs, and a sold put can force you to buy a falling stock — worst case, one that goes to zero. It needs real capital and constant attention.

Is any of it actually copyable?

Yes — but only the small streams, and only in proportion to your capital.

Bank interest, Singapore Savings Bonds, and BigFundr are things a beginner really can start this month. The catch is scale. Kelvin earns about SGD 200/month from SSB because he bought “many of these when the rates were at their peak” across five issues; at today’s ~2% average yield, matching that takes something like SGD 120,000 parked. His dividend math is honest about this too — at a 4% yield you need around SGD 30,000 invested just to collect SGD 100 a month. His own bank interest, after all the salary-crediting and card-spend hoops, is about SGD 20 in a typical month. These streams work. They just don’t move the needle until you already have a pile of cash sitting still.

Who actually wins this game

The people who replicate a SGD 24,000 month aren’t the ones who open a DBS Multiplier account. They’re the ones who already have what Kelvin has: a six-year-old finance channel with tens of thousands of viewers and an audience that trusts his links. His affiliate and AdSense income is a return on that audience, built one weekly upload at a time through the brutal early phase he rates a 2 out of 5 for difficulty. Strip the channel away and you’re left with a competent-but-ordinary investor earning under SGD 1,000/month from bonds, bank interest, and dividends. The channel is the business. Everything else is where he keeps the profits.

What you’d realistically earn

If you copy the four truly passive ideas with, say, SGD 50,000 spread across a high-interest account, SSB, and dividend stocks, you’re looking at roughly SGD 100–300 a month — real, safe, and genuinely low-effort. If you chase the affiliate and YouTube streams that produce 85% of his headline, budget for a year or more of near-zero income while you build an audience, with no guarantee you ever reach monetization. His own scorecard says as much: affiliate and AdSense both get a 2 out of 5 for how hard they are to start. The SGD 24,000 is not a starting salary. It’s the far end of a six-year runway, and most people who step onto that runway never take off.

Who this is (and isn’t) for

The passive streams suit someone who already has capital they won’t touch, wants safety over growth, and treats a few hundred dollars a month as a bonus, not a plan. The creator streams suit someone willing to publish consistently for one to two years with no pay, who can stomach the odds that most channels and affiliate sites stall. This is not for anyone who needs income this quarter, who has little spare cash to invest, or who hears “passive” and pictures money arriving while they do nothing. On Kelvin’s own numbers, the closest thing to that — bank, bonds, dividends — pays out slowly and only in proportion to what you’ve already saved. For more on how yield-focused strategies actually behave, see our looks at 16 stocks to buy now and crypto staking explained.

What to remember

Kelvin is more honest than most — he rates his own streams and admits none are truly passive. But the title still does the misleading part for him. The SGD 24,000 is real; it’s just that roughly SGD 20,400 of it is the payout from being a successful finance YouTuber, not from any strategy a viewer can lift and run. Copy the safe streams and you’ll earn a modest, honest few hundred dollars against your savings. Copy the headline and you’re really signing up to build a media company first.