My Financial Successes
-21 years old now, third-year NUS law student
on full, bond-free scholarship (no NS either), technically also CEO
of a tech startup.
-Saved a lot since first year in university. Worked some as
well. Monthly expenses are below $100 every month. Have free
accommodation (scholarship recipient). Have scholarship allowance.
Have parent allowance (no big handouts here, just enough to
cover/supplement typical living expenses).
-Invested most of my savings in one stock in fall of
2008. Second round of investment in early 2010, in the
same stock (price was good then). Stock still doing well. Counter
went rather crazy the other day (KLSE counter), causing my net
worth to exceed S$100,000. Not sustainable, yes. But still an
achievement in itself.
-Basically more than tripled my base capital since 2008.
My Financial Failures
-Started a scalable software product company in middle of 2010.
Never really took off, but still working hard at it. Can be
considered a failure, at this point. Launched a product, struggled
for adoption. Launching another product soon. A huge, huge time
commitment, since prototyping software and getting feedback is
time-intensive. This is my "the Social Network" sort of gamble,
only that I'm already aware of such a thing long before the movie
was released.
-Invested in AUD at the end of 2008. Despite a small profit, the
opportunity cost was huge. Same with my unit trust investment (DWS
mutual fund).
-Bought a bunch of domain names hoping to resell them for a
profit. Never happened. But I never made the effort to look for
buyers either.
Yes, I'm bragging, because I'm fairly proud of my successes
*and* failures.
hmm, i thought 2 yrs ago, people below the age of 21 are not
allow to own stocks?
