The first SGD 100,000 is the toughest

Most of you would have probably read this article about achieving SGD 100,000 by 30 years old and wrote or commented on it before. I I am not going to rehash the article. Instead, I want to point out some of people on the internet that have achieved this amount by that 30 years old milestone. This is motivated largely because I realise that my Singapore equity portfolio has struggled to cross that mark.

You can click through the links and I counted about 6 of them at least, who have accomplished 100 by 30, based on  trawling through the sginvestbloggers link:

http://thegameplan81.blogspot.sg/2013/12/review-of-2013_23.html

http://wealthbuch.blogspot.sg/2009/11/my-first-100k-long-journey.html

http://ryangoh.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/100000-before-30/

http://sgmusicwhiz.blogspot.sg/2007/12/end-december-2007-and-fy-2007-portfolio.html

http://dividendsrichwarrior.blogspot.sg/2011/07/june-july-2011-dividend-portfolio.html

http://ladyyoucanbefree.com/

I follow some of the bloggers and for those I am not familiar with, I went through some of the older posts. Granted that n=40 would be a better sample, I found some interesting points from the 6:

• 5 out of 6 were male
• All 6 were born around 1980
• 5 of them possibly had slightly above-average income benchmark against graduates of their time (insufficient data for "lady").
• The same 5 had technical degrees most likely, engineering.

Finance blogs in Singapore's are really dominated by male but I do notice that when women blog about investments, they tend to be of much higher net worth, such as ladyyoucanbefree. I think that men like to blog about finances because that is probably the only acceptable topic to blog about part from food. And very often, when the stock market tanks, some of the finance bloggers disappear, and I suspect that these are what I term "ego bloggers", bloggers who just need a platform to prove they are god-like.

Having a slightly above-average income than your peers help in reaching the 100 by 30 milestone simply because you would be able to save more of your disposable income. However, I think that because of their technical background, they were able to articulate clear solutions to solving the the problem of financial freedom. Goals were set out, clearly defined and the correct processes put in place. These goals were also reviewed annually. As an abstract thinking social science student, I do spend more time thinking about the purpose of financial freedom, than laying out steps to achieve. I tend to digress and regress into short-termism as well, but this is not the result of my education.

On reflection, the journey for me reaching the 100 by 30 was not easy initially because I took a below-average salary for the first two years, despite being afforded better paying opportunities. I also spent a decent amount on furthering my knowledge, attempting the CFA program (I'm considering retaking Level 2) and obtaining my Masters (which i did this year). It got easier over the past two years because of me moving jobs.

The next milestone would be settling down, having a family and achieving the 700 by 55 concurrently. Hopefully, everything I have read about wealth sustaining and growing wealth is true.