“panoramic photo of London Eye” by Larry Teo on Unsplash

Singapore is known to be an expensive country. In fact, Singapore is “ the world’s most expensive city to live in for the fifth year running”. Hence, having a full-time job and saving as much as possible into a savings account is probably never enough in order to retire comfortably. I need to earn more in order to be ready for the future. So I started learning about investments in 2012.

As this was my first go at investing, I had the impression that it will make me rich quick. Even though I read so many books and articles regarding personal finance and investing that tell me otherwise, I was confident that I can make a quick buck trading in the stock market. Since I have been doing spectacularly well with saving, how hard can stock trading be?

Well, as you can expect, it did not go well at all. I was overconfident and took a big risk using a big chunk of my savings to venture into the stock market. In the end, after a few months, I realised that trading is just not my thing. I was obsessed with the slightest movements in the charts and made so many wrong decisions. It affected my daily life as a result of my obsession. So I closed my brokerage account and decided to start over.

This time, I decided to take the advice of the many personal finance writers that I previously ignored. If you cannot beat the market, join the market. After days of research about passive investing and portfolio allocations, I bought ETFs that track the local market index, local bond index, and the global market index.

At this point, I have a stable job and my investment plan has been set. But my monthly income is not enough. I need to earn more in order for me to save more, so that I can retire earlier.

I need to earn more money.