3 Key Principles for Beginner Investors: Understanding Financial Planning's Infinite Game Through Deng Kaiwei's Baseball Journey
In this article, you'll learn:
You may have recently noticed a Taiwanese pitcher making his mark in the U.S. Major Leagues — Deng Kaiwei.
His first MLB appearance came in 2024 — he stepped onto the stage every baseball player dreams of. But behind that dazzling achievement lay more than seven years of daily grind through the minor league system. His path to the majors was anything but smooth: after the shock of his debut, he was sent back down to the minors for adjustments, only to fight his way back up through sheer ability and resilience.
This journey of ups and downs is strikingly similar to our own path in personal finance. We all dream of a single big break in the market — but the reality is: we need to go through a long preparation period, continuously adjusting our mindset along the way, before we can find our footing.
Minor League Life Is Like Those Painful Early Days of Saving Money
Watching Deng Kaiwei grind through the minors made me think back to my own days when I first started saving. Honestly, it was really boring.
My savings formula back then was: Income − Expenses = Savings. Every month, watching NT$3,000 or NT$5,000 being added to my account, I genuinely felt it was too slow. Even if you saved NT$600,000 over five years, it sounds like a lot — but in the face of inflation, it’s actually not much. Because NT$600,000 today in 2026 can barely buy a new car, and even buying a scooter feels like a major financial blow.
To save more, I did something that hurt the most: keeping a spending journal
Recording every few dozen or few hundred NT$ spent every single day was genuinely tedious! And after all that tracking, I found I was still living paycheck to paycheck. I eventually gave it up entirely. It felt like a pitcher practicing arm swings every day only to find the ball speed hadn’t improved at all — pure frustration.
It wasn’t until later that I realized: direction matters more than effort
Instead of tracking expenses, I flipped the approach:
- Set up automatic transfers: The day after payday, I’d automatically send the money I planned to save directly into my investment account using a regular monthly investment plan (定期定額 / dollar-cost averaging).
- Pay your future self first: Whatever’s left is what I can freely spend this month — no more anxiety about tracking every purchase.
This simple change finally freed me from the paycheck-to-paycheck curse and started building my “training volume”. From NT$3,000–5,000 per month to NT$12,000 now.
Making It to the Majors: The Excitement, the Euphoria — and the Crash
Back then, when I’d saved my first real chunk of money and entered the market for the first time, the nervousness, excitement, and anticipation — I’m sure you’ve felt that too. But right after buying in, seeing negative numbers in my account because of fees and transaction taxes — that felt awful. It’s pretty much a given that you start in the red.
But when I tasted my first profit, my mindset flipped 180 degrees instantly.
I remember thinking I was basically a genius. I even thought: “Maybe I should quit my job and become a full-time trader — just withdraw from the stock market every day!” 💰
Reality hit fast. I lost every NT$ I had saved. And not willing to accept the loss, I borrowed money to try to recover — and lost all of that too.
That feeling was just like a pitcher who just made the majors getting hit with consecutive home runs — enough to make you question your whole existence.
I once made NT$200,000–300,000 in a single day trading warrants (認購權證 / warrant options), and I also lost nearly NT$1,000,000 in a single day because I didn’t understand the rules and chased excitement into futures trading.
That painful experience made me realize: investing based purely on passion and luck is no different from gambling. It wasn’t until I abandoned that mindset and reconnected “investing” with “financial planning” that I finally found an approach that let me sleep at night.
Tip
Your Financial Planning Shouldn’t Be a Gamble
From Deng Kaiwei’s story and my own experience, what can we take away for our financial planning?
| The Pitcher’s Experience | Our Financial Planning | What Saving Teaches Us |
|---|---|---|
| Years of grinding in the minors | Saving and building capital | Without a solid capital base, even a 10% investment return feels meaningless. More importantly, having money around creates a real sense of security. |
| Getting called up / seizing the chance | Spotting investment opportunities | Because I hadn’t built a savings habit, I once missed a stock lottery (IPO ballot) with 30%+ gains. When opportunity knocks, you need to have ammo ready. |
| Being sent back down, adjusting, returning | Facing losses and recalibrating | Losses are inevitable in investing. The key isn’t to beat the market — it’s to find a way to coexist with losses and feel at peace with your portfolio. |
Building a Major League Financial Mindset
A truly elite athlete’s greatness isn’t that they never fail — it’s that they always manage to rise after each fall. That’s exactly what we need most on our financial journey:
Build gradually, increase your “training volume” Don’t try to do it all at once. The best way to force yourself to save is to start with an amount you can live with. For example, begin with a monthly investment of NT$3,000. If that doesn’t impact your lifestyle, bump it up to NT$5,000 next month. I built my own “training volume” up to NT$12,000 a month the same way. Please avoid long-term expense tracking — it’ll make you lose yourself in trivial details.
Feeling anxious about losses? Try these three approaches:
- Get your life in order first: If investing makes you anxious, it means you’ve taken on risk beyond what you can handle. Immediately reduce the amount — even just NT$500 a month. The point is to rebuild your confidence.
- Get to know your investments deeply: The more you understand your holdings, the less you’ll panic from market noise. Confidence comes from knowledge.
- Find partners who give you confidence: Read more of my articles, or join my community. You’ll find you’re not alone — there’s a whole group of people on the same journey, cheering each other on, ready to support you.
The Lazy Takeaway
Do what you love, earn money the lazy way, and live the comfortable life you want.
This is the core value behind “Lazy to Be Rich” — and it’s the message I want to pass on to you.
The ultimate goal of personal finance isn’t to turn you into someone who stares at stock tickers all day and pinches every penny. It’s about building a systematic, peace-of-mind approach — one that lets your money work for you. That way, you can spend your precious time and energy on what you truly love, and live the comfortable life you’ve always wanted.
Start now — adjust your mindset, build your system, and launch your infinite game.
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