The Entrepreneur’s Bookshelf: “Growing Your Tree of Prosperity” by Christopher Ng Wai Chung

Recently, different bloggers, Aaron and Fearfully Opinionated have discussed the need and importance for financial education for Singaporeans in order for them to survive in our new economy. Actually, there is a simple solution to how we can help Singaporeans to get a sound financial education by reading. The solution is to read this book “Growing Your Tree of Prosperity” by Christopher Ng Wai Chung, which I strongly recommend as a beginner’s guide on financial education in Singapore. This book offers details on how you can grow your financial investments, take advantage of the global economic trends and survive in the changing economy in Singapore.

When I first came back to Singapore, I was handed a copy of this book from the author as a birthday present. After reading the book, there are two aspects of the book which I like very much and will recommend anyone to go and read if you have no idea of how to start planning on your own financials. Importantly, I have actually tried out the strategy suggested by the author and the $100,000 challenge suggested by the author. The book is written with a good review of the Singaporean’s philosophy towards wealth and materialism balanced with a pragmatic set of tools on how one can start a savings plan with the current packages offered by the local banking institutions and websites of established financial institutions. If I have the choice, I will like to have every young Singaporean to read this book when they are in junior college.

In the first two chapters, the author introduces the various problems faced by the Singapore society and talk about the worst case scenarios for our economy. This is followed by his discussion of the various mindsets prevalent in Singapore and how we should reconfigure ourselves with a different attitude to adapt and transform from simply consumerist-workers to investor workers. One aspect that I like about this book is the talk about people who are spending beyond their means to maintain their car and status. For that matter, a lot of people are getting into credit card debts because of bad financial management. It is in the first two chapters that he laid out the fallibilities of modern Singaporeans and how we should avoid it.

From chapter 3 onwards, the author introduces the $100K challenge and emphasize the need to use a technique he proposes known as “salary truncation” to achieve that goal. In his proposal, one creates a second savings account with a local bank and set a spending target for the individual such that his excess cash is shifted into this account. That accumulates till the point where the individual achieves financial independence finally with the first $100K. That is followed by his proposal on how to make investments with a sound unit trust savings plan (in Chapter 5), and engaging the Singapore stock exchange with a “kiasu” strategy (chapter 6).

One of the strengths of this book is the use of sound corporate finance and economics concepts to explain debt, inflation. The author also distills ideas from Benjamin Graham’s famous fundamental analysis concepts for the Singaporean context. My favourite section of the book is in chapter 5, where the author provides some rule of thumb investing strategies in creating a portfolio of unit trusts saving plans and also details of some unit trust funds in Singapore which the reader might be interested to look into.

Lastly, the author provided an appendix of useful forms that helps the reader to track his/her investments and some internet resources which the reader will find useful.

If you want to start learning some basic financial education for yourself and begin to create and strengthen your own “economic castle” (a term proposed by the author), this will be a good local publication to start off and perhaps, Chris will provide more details in his sequel, that will be due out in the market soon.

Acknowledgments: BL thanks Christopher Ng for contributing the preview of a chapter in his 2nd book to SG Entrepreneurs earlier this year and wishes him a happy birthday on this Christmas Day.

Related Articles written by Christopher Ng Wai Chung:
[1] The three Es of Singaporean success, SG Entrepreneurs.
[2] Status Anxiety, Intelligent Singaporean
[3] Are you a scholar or a statistic?, originally published in Mr Wang bakes good karma blog.

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