These young Singaporeans open up about their path to financial freedom

Against the backdrop of rising costs, the path to financial freedom can be daunting.

This is especially so for young millennials and Gen Zs who are trying to achieve financial stability while paying off big-ticket items such as housing and weddings, and caring for ageing parents.

In 2024, the youngest millennial will be 28 years old and the oldest Gen Z will be 27 years old, according to the Pew Research Centre.

Mr Kermond Koh, 23, and Ms Winnie Yong, 22, are no strangers to some of these generational challenges.

The Gen Z couple have plans to get married and buy a home together but right now, their focus is helping their parents retire.

To achieve that, they aim to make $1 million by 2027 with a distributorship business they started in August 2022.

Ms Sara Wee, 31, and Mr Aaron Wee, 28 – who run the TikTok account @theweeblings0 with nearly 37,000 followers – are on a similar mission to hit the million-dollar mark in earnings and investment portfolio value by the end of 2026. They currently have multiple streams of income, including paid partnerships on social media.

Both pairs have unabashedly made their journeys to $1 million public on social media, listing every bit of their progress – business earnings and investment returns – for all to scrutinise, undeterred by potential scammers, kidnappers or saboteurs.

Their financial transparency and openness online reflects a broader quest for authenticity among the young, notes social media consultant Aaron Khoo. He was head of video at new media company SGAG and a co-founder of the now-defunct home-grown YouTube channel Tree Potatoes, which has more than 375,000 subscribers.

“Relatability and authenticity are the pillars of a strong social media personality. Part of that authenticity is sharing your story, your vulnerabilities and your ups and downs of life. Essentially, in order to be an authentic personality on social media, you shouldn’t be afraid to bare it all,” he says.

Dr George Wong, senior lecturer of sociology at Singapore Management University (SMU), does not see the act of chronicling wealth accumulation journeys online as either positive or negative, but rather, he questions the motivation – why young people see the need to do it.

“From a more cynical and critical point of view, this could be interpreted as a form of conspicuous display of financial literacy as cultural capital, by which the chronicling of their knowledge and experiences is seen as a way to ‘flex’,” he says. A slang term, “flex” means to showcase or boast.

“Yet, one could also see this as an exercise for validation. If there is something to be concerned about, it would be whether it is healthy to over-emphasise the seekingof external validation from social media on things like money matters, given that everyone’s journey is unique and often quite personal.”

Many of these young millionaire aspirants sharing their journeys online are proponents of the financial independence, retire early (Fire) movement, which became popular after a book titled Your Money Or Your Life, authored by Americans Vicki Robin and Joseph Dominguez, was published in 1992.

The movement saw a resurgence in the late 2000s during the rise of the internet.

Its underlying philosophy is to live frugally today for financial freedom tomorrow. This involves saving and investing aggressively – and at times, more riskily – in one’s early working years to build wealth for an early retirement.

In Singapore, the Fire movement has led to a slew of finance-related blogs, like Fire Singapore, Mr and Mrs Budget and Fire-Path Lion, in which bloggers post regular updates on their financial portfolios as they work towards early retirement.

The Financial Freedom Index 2024, a study commissioned by local financial services company Singlife, found that Singapore-based respondents felt they needed around $612,000 in cash to be financially free – 8 per cent more than in 2023.

It also found that 71 per cent of its respondents did not feel confident that they would be able to retire whenever they wanted. The study was conducted online from April to June 2024, and surveyed 3,000 Singaporeans and permanent residents between the ages of 18 and 65.

Ms So Sin Ting, chief client officer at home-grown digital wealth adviser Endowus, says: “Given that the cost of living has risen and we all expect to live longer, the younger generation will probably need more money to sustain the lifestyle they want when they retire.

“The risk is that they are going to outlive the money they’ve saved for retirement, so they do have to think about the ways they can make their money work harder for them.”

But Dr Wong cautions the young not to over-fixate on the Fire movement, or they may risk sacrificing their well-being and personal fulfilment in pursuit of extreme financial goals.

He says: “I think when young people look at the wealth accumulation process by just the context of Fire, and see their peers having, for example, $100,000 by age 30, and they are not even close to it, there’s a tendency to internalise the problem and feel that something is wrong with them.

“But it is important to know that life planning is a very personal journey, and everyone has a different path to walk.”

Young Singaporeans chasing their first $1 million tell The Straits Times how they are going about it.

All in a day’s live streaming work for Gen Z couple

In August 2022, Mr Kermond Koh, 23, and his girlfriend Winnie Yong, 22, gave up the nine-to-five grind to become their own bosses.

They took a leap of faith and dove headfirst into a distributorship deal with Cuccio, an American beauty and nail care company, after a friend offered them the opportunity.

“It was a brand I was familiar with and trusted, so when we got the offer to be a distributor, we decided to go for it,” says Ms Yong, who has been using its products since 2014.

For starters, the couple, who have been dating since 2018, had to purchase $20,000 worth of Cuccio products from its California-based headquarters. The brand, which does not have stores in Singapore, retails items such as nail polish and body scrubs.

The capital came from their own pockets. Both had savings from working multiple part-time jobs in the food and beverage and retail industries since their secondary school days, and continued to juggle multiple gigs to raise the sum in the preceding months.

Mr Koh, an O-level holder who quit school at 17, says he never had a keen interest in studying and valued the practicality of on-the-job learning.

“I saw my parents sacrifice a lot for the family, especially since we grew up with money issues. I would like to be able to show my gratitude and give back to them,” says the youngest of three children of a security guard and a housewife.

In order to secure the distributorship deal, he worked seven days a week for four months as a Foodpanda delivery rider, cycling roughly 12 to 14 hours a day to earn around $3,500 a month.

Ms Yong, who got a diploma in information technology from Republic Polytechnic in 2022, has done at least five part-time stints in the retail and food and beverage industry, making around $15 an hour.

Her parents, originally from Johor, Malaysia, moved the family to Singapore when she was seven. Her father is a deliveryman, who often works past midnight, and her mother runs a manicure shop in Bishan.

“Ever since I was young, whenever I wanted something, my parents would try to get it for me even though they didn’t earn much,” says Ms Yong, an only child. “Now that I’m older and I see how hard they have been working, I want to try and give them a good life.”

The couple started out by selling their products at pop-up booths in malls such as Waterway Point and Jurong Point, and doing marketing on Instagram. But the take-up rate for their products, which cost upwards of $4 for a bottle of cuticle oil, was lukewarm.

Most months, they averaged 20 to 30 orders and a monthly revenue of $300 to $800. To pay the bills, Mr Koh moonlighted by reselling Pokemon cards on TikTok.

Business picked up only in April 2023 when they pivoted to live streaming on TikTok from Mr Koh’s bedroom. To their surprise, sales hit around $1,000 from a single live stream promoting both nail and body care items.

They ended the month with about 200 orders, which brought in $6,000 in revenue.

In October 2023, they started working out of a 721 sq ft rental office in integrated commercial development Woods Square.

Business boomed in July after two TikTok videos they posted created a buzz. One of the viral videos chronicled how they started their business. The other focused on their first steps to making $1 million, which garnered over 445,000 views. That month, they earned over $30,000. Sales have continued to grow month-on-month, says Mr Koh.

The couple say they now regularly post about their financial journey as a way to document it, but also as a form of marketing and getting more followers on TikTok.

“We’ve already received many mixed reactions to our content. While we are grateful for the positive ones, we also try to view the negative ones with appreciation rather than take them as criticism,” Mr Koh says.

Mr Koh’s long, manicured nails are the star attraction of the TikTok live streams he conducts with an energetic and personable flair, interspersing real-time demonstrations with personal anecdotes.

During each one- to two-hour session, he brandishes nail care items – like cuticle oil or hand cream costing between $13 and $35 – in front of his phone camera, set up neatly on a tripod in the corner of his office space.

“I’ve tried live streaming before, but his live streams bring in a lot more orders, so I stepped back to do the packing or the orders won’t be shipped out on time,” says Ms Yong, who now takes care of administration and logistics.

As at September, they say they are roughly a third of the way to making their first $1 million, which they aim to achieve by 2027. With that, the couple hope to alleviate their parents’ financial loads and enable them to retire.

Next in line is a wedding they hope to hold in a five-star hotel with around 200 guests, and preferably, a three-bedroom condominium marital home.

Mr Koh is confident that their $1 million goal is just the beginning. “For now, $1 million is definitely our main goal. But I think if we hit that, the next $1 million or even $5 million will not be impossible. So, I think we will not just stop there,” he says.

Millennial siblings dole out money tips on journey to $1 million

Siblings Sara Wee, 31, and Aaron Wee, 28, have shared a love of money-making, productivity tools and content creation for as long as they can remember.

In October 2020, they started their first business, called Woolie, selling iPad sleeves that double as desk mats for $89 and up.

Mr Wee designed the product at home, Ms Wee created a Shopify website for the brand and their father – Mr Andrew Wee, 65, who runs his own architecture visualisation studio – loaned them around $3,000 to buy their first batch of stock and get it manufactured in China.

Neither of the siblings had any business experience beyond watching their father run his own company since they were little.

“Having grown up around business discussions, we better understand the risks, stress and hard work that come with starting something of your own. It helped us go into our current endeavour with our eyes wide open,” says Ms Wee, who has a communications degree from the University at Buffalo in New York City.

She worked in business development at a law firm for nearly two years and as a fashion writer for around a year before doing content creation full-time since the end of 2021.

Mr Wee studied physiotherapy at the Singapore Institute of Technology and decided to pursue content creation upon graduation in August 2023.

In January 2021, the pair started a YouTube channel called 25hourday20 for fun. They made educational videos on productivity – such as about using note-taking tools like Obsidian and MarginNote 3 – which racked up a total of around 65,000 views.

That took a hiatus after seven videos when their next big project – documenting their journey to earning $1 million – launched to even greater fanfare on TikTok in November 2021. The video announcing their financial quest has since been viewed more than 71,000 times.

They decided on $1 million as a collective goal as they felt it would be an achievable amount between both of them. At that point, they had only about $38,000 from past investments in stocks and cryptocurrency.

“We wanted to be more financially literate and financially free. We also felt like going on this journey together would be fun as siblings since we do a lot together anyway,” Ms Wee says.

Their videos deal with personal finance, entrepreneurship, side hustles, trading and investing. “We like to call it the three ‘M’s of money, which is making money, managing money and multiplying money,” she says, adding that they both enjoy watching others speak about finances transparently, and wanted to “value-add” to their viewers’ lives the same way.

When they started out, they posted three short videos of one to three minutes a day for six months. Within the first month, they received a request from a financial institution to collaborate on a paid partnership.

Today, their streams of income are varied. Apart from their e-commerce business selling iPad sleeves and paid partnerships, the pair started a content creation agency in January, hiring one full-time employee to do video editing.

Mr Wee says: “The main reason we wanted to go into agency work was because we wanted a more consistent income. Brand deals can be very inconsistent, so we had to diversify.”

The siblings may not live by the Fire movement, but they do live by a quote from American author Ramit Sethi’s best-selling book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich: “Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.”

“This is the book that got me started on my financial journey seven years ago. If something brings you a lot of joy, there’s no point in cutting that from your life when you could cut it elsewhere,” Ms Wee says.

At present, agency work and partnership deals make up 80 per cent of their total monthly earnings. The remaining 20 per cent is from investment and trading portfolios and their e-commerce side hustle.

They say they are a quarter of the way to achieving their goal and aim to hit it by end-2026. While $1 million is the short-term goal, both are looking to grow their wealth well beyond that.

“I guess the next milestone would be $5 million. If we do hit that, I think we will be more than capable of investing the money to sustain us for a long time,” Ms Wee says.

“More importantly, it’ll allow us to diversify the content we create because, right now, we are very focused on one niche even though we have many interests. But once we hit our goal, we can expand our horizons.”

How can I work towards a goal of $1 million?

Financial freedom looks different for everyone. For some, a million dollars is just the starting point. For others, it may be the end point, experts say.

Ms Goh Voon Jin, executive senior manager at Great Eastern Financial Advisers, says factors such as income, desired lifestyle and time horizon come into play when plotting a timeline to financial independence. 

“There are many ways to achieve your monetary goals, but I think the most overlooked opportunity for building wealth is investing early,” she adds.  

In terms of investments and insurance plans, compound interest can significantly accelerate the growth of wealth. Compound interest is the interest calculated not only on the initial principal, but also on the accumulated interest from previous periods.

The average annual returns from investing in the S&P 500 market – which lists 500 of the largest companies on US stock exchanges – are around 10 per cent, based on historical performance.

For those aiming for $1 million by age 65, Ms Goh has calculated the monthly investment amounts at an average of 7 per cent annual returns, which she says is a conservative number for general investments.

Based on those calculations, a 35-year-old would have to invest more than twice that of a 25-year-old to cash out $1 million at age 65. Those who assume more conservative, lower percentage returns will have to invest more each month.

“When it comes to compounding, it helps to have time on your side,” Ms Goh says. 

Local digital wealth adviser Endowus has seen an increase in investors aged between 18 and 23, from 33 per cent of its customer base in 2021 to 42 per cent in 2023.

Its chief client officer So Sin Ting says the trend comes as both financial literacy and an anxiety around affordability grows among the young. She does not think that $1 million is an unrealistic goal. 

She says: “With a longer investment horizon, young people can afford to take on more risk and ride through different market cycles and short-term volatility to hopefully get higher returns over the long term.”

She suggests that the way to achieving financial freedom is to brush up on financial literacy, seek help in wealth planning and invest for the long term, according to your risk appetite.

Other experts who spoke to ST generally agree that $1 million is an achievable long-term goal, but caution that those who have set shorter timelines of three to five years may need to be more strategic, intentional or enterprising.

The median gross salaries of fresh graduates in Singapore is $4,313, according to the 2023 Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey.

In order to reach $1 million in five years purely on savings, one would need to set aside an average of $200,000 each year – around four times more than the average fresh graduate’s annual income.

“Achieving $1 million in five years with savings alone is hard. But one way to earn more income is starting scalable businesses – like in social media, home-based or e-commerce start-ups. Many are also choosing careers with no income ceiling,” Ms Goh says.

Scalable businesses often require low start-up capitals and have the potential to grow without proportionally increasing costs. Moreover, starting young gives entrepreneurs the benefit of time to grow, take calculated risks and recover from setbacks. The tech-savvy can also take advantage of social media and automation to grow their businesses.

But chasing such ambitious financial goals often comes at the expense of a healthy work-life balance and can take a toll on both physical and mental health, experts warn.

SMU’s Dr Wong finds that more people are realising that their own personal social circumstances may not allow them to achieve the same ambitious financial goals within the same timeline as their friends. Some may have loved ones to take care of, while others may have debts and loans to pay off.

“In some ways, I think this creates a sense of inequality, and what I fear is also a sense of jealousy and less of an ability to empathise with others,” he says.

Dr Wong suggests that those who teach financial literacy should also aim to reduce young people’s anxieties around money and answer the big questions in life like “Are you happy?” and “What do you really want in life?”

The constant exposure to financial stress and competition, and persistent feelings of insecurity, can also result in a chronic overactivation of one’s stress response, says Dr Norman Li, professor of psychology at SMU.

“When one’s stress response is chronically overactivated, it can have pathological effects like impaired psychological well-being and cognition, and can also depress the immune system and induce inflammation,” he adds.

He suggests counter-balancing the stress by eating healthily and getting ample exercise to dissipate cortisol – a hormone produced from stress response – and finding enough time to decompress.

“You could be one of those people who come out successful and healthy from achieving your monetary aspirations in a short time, but a lot of us are not really designed for that,” he says.

“It’s important to realise that if you don’t end up reaching your goals as quickly as you would like to, it’s all right.”

This article was originally published in The Straits Times.