Start of new blog!

I've been in the market for years.

I've seen people. Well not tons, but I've seen many people.

As a financial advisor, I walk the streets of Singapore and talk to people of all walks of life. Rich people, poor people, family people, single people, smart people, stubborn people. It didn't hit me at first but slowly it began to seep in. One by one I see common traits amongst us. Bit by bit I repeat the same story to different kinds of people.  I refused to accept this as reality for a long time to come, but today I have finally accepted it as part of Singapore and who we are.

We are limited in terms of financial knowledge.

In school we were taught math. We started on math with how Ahmad has 10 apples and how 3 apples were taken by Ah Seng. We know how $5 can buy us 10 pencils, and that each pencil costs 50 cents. We can understand when the teacher says "compound interest for 5 years".

Somehow this concept of math doesn't translate to financial knowledge when we left school to work (of course it doesn't). We are capable of scoring 10/10 for math tests, but we can't understand how the income tax works.

School simply didn't prepare us for this. We didn't know how insurance works. We didn't know how banks can help us grow our money. We didn't know who to approach to work out the loan details. We didn't have an idea what a budget entails. All these "didn't know" costs us money.

Which brings me back to here. Why I want to start this blog.

I am a financial advisor today, and I see the money problems people face. I want to help people out. I want the world to have access to financial knowledge, but there's only one of me. I want to use this blog to share the views and problems common people. People like you and I who go to work to make an honest living, who squeeze in the MRT after work, who dabao dinner from the kopitiam along the way home.

I want to help.

In this blog, I will share with you the daily experiences I face as a financial advisor. I will share articles that I believe will be useful for the common man. I will advise on the financial aspects of life that was simply never taught to us in textbooks.

I hope one day we can all be good in finance.

Start reading.