STE's story: Personal finance.

There are many savvy investors in Singapore and the majority of them are not in the public eye. They could be our neighbours, our colleagues or even our relatives and we might not even know that they are actually millionaires from their investment efforts.

Recently, a reader, STE, contacted me to share his story to show how common working people could become millionaires without being entrepreneurs. His story shows how hard work, frugality, investment savvy, patience and luck are the ingredients to financial freedom.

He sent me a lot of information and I am thankful for his trust in me. However, I have exercised much discretion as to what is to be published. I think it will be more than enough to inspire.

Don't ever say that common people cannot achieve financial freedom. It is simply not true.

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My wife and I came from Malaysia. My family is quite big and I have 7 siblings. I am the youngest. We were poor and most of my siblings didn't even have a chance to complete primary school education. I was lucky as I had the opportunity to go to the university on a Malaysian government scholarship.

My wife came to Singapore after her "O" levels and I joined her in Singapore 5 years later. When we first came to Singapore, we worked very hard and even held part time jobs although we had full time jobs in the day. We worked on Sundays and even public holidays.

We keep our money separate but most of the investment decisions are made by me. She is a good wife, very hardworking and takes good care of our family. We have two daughters.

As we were not born with silver spoons, we had to work hard in order to have money for investments. Saving money is very important as how much we save is more important than how much we earn. If we earn $10k a month but spend $11k, we are in the negative.

We were very frugal and, for example, a few years ago, a friend laughed at us because we still did not have a flat screen TV although it was already a common thing. I thought that as my TV, then 9 years old, was still good, there was no reason to change. At that time, I was also still using "dial-up" for internet access while most of my friends had broadband.

Only very recently, we decided to enjoy the fruits of our labour and our family went on a holiday to Alaska two months ago. Although I take the MRT daily to work, I do have a car but a weekend car. This is for the convenience of going back to Malaysia for social visits.

Read part 2 of the story in:
STE's story: Investment strategy.

Related post:
The very first step to becoming richer.