Before anyone start judging me for being so-called born in a rich family, which I actually wasn’t and hate to repeat myself. Please do yourself a favour and stop reading here if you’ll just get salty and be critical after reading my post.
Being an only child and son born in a traditional Asian Chinese family, I felt an immense pressure to carry all the responsibilities since young. I would never want to disappoint my parents in any way at all. Born in 1997 just before the financial crisis and having been through SARS in 2002, I witnessed how my parents suffered in their business and lost their assets (our only HDB and car).
Hence, I told myself, this is the last thing I would ever want for anyone in my family to go through again. Till date, the memory of my mum in 2002 telling me how we need to start scrimping on our daily necessities and my dad reminding me to work hard so that my future family wouldn’t have to suffer the same fate is still as clear as crystal in my head. Although at that point of time it wasn’t easy for a 5 year old child to understand, it was clear to me that my life is going to change and things will never be the same as before - The way I look at humanity…The value of money…And even the meaning of family…
Through the years of growing up, I constantly think of ways to improve myself. From crazy thoughts of becoming a professional gamer to a corporate raider, setting up a supply chain business and even an app developer. Just like a typical Asian child being flooded with tuitions and school holiday workshops, I attended countless workshops and seminars, until I came across this ‘motivational’ workshop (or course) when I was in Primary 6. To be honest, it really “motivated” me.
Probably not their intended form of motivation, but it motivated me to outperform their founder who made his first million when he was 26. After almost a week (of hearing all his b*llsh*t) and being forced to attend their Math tuition, I recalled telling my dad to save his hard earned money and withdraw me from the tuition, swearing that I would be better off without it (pretty bold statement for a P6 to be making).
Then, reality hit me and I started to ask myself this… if these people are indeed good, why do they have to work so hard as trainers? If they are really trying to give back to the society, why are they charging such high fees to the consumers? They should be donating all their profits if it is really to give back to the society isn’t it? Aren’t they doing training because they couldn’t make it in their field of expertise if there is? Or else why would they be here? Of course nothing in this World comes for free and I am not trying to penalize all trainers just because of one black sheep (there truly are good trainers out there who are really giving back to the society or does training out of passion), but please do your due diligence before deciding on attending workshops, especially those who claim to be able to help you generate fast cash. If they are able to generate fast cash for you, they won’t have to spend money to be advertising on YouTube or even Facebook and the government wouldn’t have to be wrecking their brains to find a solution to help the less fortunate!
I have been through various businesses from drop shipping, e-commerce, digital marketing to even on-call concierge services (failed many too). It is not difficult at all to make money, everyone can do it. The challenge is to grow your money by folds and to make the most out of what you already have. Earning my first million at age 24 is just a milestone and there is nothing to be proud of in today’s environment where every other minute we have a new millionaire in China. In fact, I go through the same worries as many others growing up in Singapore. Calculating the cost of starting my own family, buying my first private property and if I can afford to give my children in the future a comfortable life.
So before I go, here are some words of advice on how you can get started on building your first pot of gold and to survive in today’s ever-changing economy..
1. Making the first S$100,000 is the toughest and before you reach there, DO NOT GIVE UP, because that will be your first milestone towards growing your assets. However, please DO NOT SPEND it as well because the first S$100,000 will be crucial for you to either start a new business, learn a new skill set or even invest in new opportunities with managed risk.
2. Have a CLEAR VISION on what you want to achieve - 3 years, 5 years and 10 years down. It can be as ridiculous as it might sound and it may change from time to time. However, everyone needs a direction, DO NOT WORK AIMLESSLY. People who work aimlessly are actually building someone else’s dream, WORK WITH AN AIM, WORK TOWARDS YOUR DREAM. (E.g. I aim to retire by age 40 with at least 100 million in net worth)
3. NEVER BUY ANYTHING JUST TO IMPRESS OTHERS. One day you will realize that their opinions mean nothing to you and you just need to BUY WHAT YOU LIKE.
4. LIVE FOR YOURSELF, leave any toxic relationships and don’t waste another second in it. It might hurt at the start but getting rid of UNNECESSARY baggage(s) will allow you to GROW more than you can imagine.
5. SET YOURSELF A CLEAR GOAL ANNUALLY. Aim to at least achieve one milestone a year such as a 50% pay rise, a promotion in career, a new skill or even a new certification. NEVER STAY STAGNANT, you will just obsolete yourself eventually because the World will never stop changing for you. STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME.
6. CREATE MULTIPLE SOURCES OF INCOME. You might have heard this from many, but many would never tell you to HAVE A KEY FOCUS. Never lose focus on your main income source (the source which brings you the most income). Other sources of income should only act as a supplement to your main income source and should never play an important role for your cash flow planning. Start new businesses around your key business, build passive dividends incomes and diversify your investments.
7. DO NOT BUY A DEPRECIATING ASSET ON LOAN UNNECESSARILY. It doesn’t make sense to be paying monthly with interest for something that is depreciating in value everyday (e.g. a car, a luxury watch or even anything else since retailers these days are even offering luxury bags on instalments). I stand by the principal of not buying something I can’t afford destroying or losing it. It doesn’t make sense to be living so carefully just for a material object that was purchased using my hard earned money. Why spend money to make your own life difficult?
8. STOP THINKING OF GETTING RICH QUICK. Great wall of China isn’t built overnight and Singapore took more than 50 years to develop what we have today. PATIENCE IS KEY. Work smart instead of work hard is what I believe in, but are you even working smart to believe in other’s so called get rich quick methods? Or investing through rumours? If they are that smart, the billionaires on Forbes must have really wasted their efforts working through these years.
ALWAYS THINK TWICE AND DO YOUR DUE DILIGENCE BEFORE MAKING ANY DECISIONS. You Only Live Once, so live it WELL and live it FOR YOURSELF.
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