Always Have Enough Money

Which of the following is the best investment that you can ever make? A stock that has the potential of becoming very valuable in the future, a property in a distressed sale that is under-valued by almost 100 per cent, or an invitation to invest in a totally new venture that can produce profits that are possibly 10 times of your initial sum? The answer is none of the above. The reason is simple – the best investment that you can ever make is YOU – in growing your wisdom and knowledge. If you have made such investments yourself, you would realise that the last option is probably a scam because no one would ever sell you such a good investment if it was genuine in the first place. If it was true, the seller would go to a bank and pledge his entire wealth to ask for a big loan to make such an investment simply because he would make 10 times of whatever loan amount that he can borrow. Why would anyone want to share such good fortune with you in the first place? The inevitable conclusion is that people who make such claims are looking to become rich and they are looking to you to contribute to their wealth. There is nothing more precious in this world than your ability to judge and question everything that life puts in front of you. You may have the good fortune of winning a lottery and striking it rich in an opportune, but if you do not have sufficient knowledge to understand and appreciate the circumstances and the people around you, you will soon be poorer – acknowledging that a fool and his money will soon be parted is great wisdom by itself. Quite frankly, no one can teach you how to become rich with absolute certainty. This is not what this book is about – instead it aims to imbue you with the wisdom and knowledge to make better decisions and to always question everything that comes your way. A rich man will also become poor if he makes a bad decision. What this means is that we must learn the ways on how to avoid becoming poor. If you are able to do so, you will always have enough money, for life. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tan Ooi Boon is well-known for his practical and easy-to-understand weekly personal finance columns as the Invest Editor of Singapore national daily The Straits Times. A lawyer by training, his unorthodox approach to money management is influenced by his unique experience, as a writer in law and crime matters and as the head of advertising responsible for income generation and business development for the then Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. He now writes with the aim to improve the financial literacy of the man in the street, a contribution that was recognised by the Securities Investors Association Singapore which honoured the ST Invest with an award in 2021, for excellence in community education.