gold price
Money management; personal finance

Singaporeans – Stupid or Smart?

sgwealthbuilder 805 Views 6 Comments
There are many ways to become rich in Singapore and investing in gold is one of the way to build your wealth. In Singapore, there is generally low awareness on how to invest in gold. Because of this, there is increasing trend of Singaporeans fallen prey to gold scams.

Recently, the Straits Times published an article stating that 180 investors had inked a petition urging government to take action against Gold Guarantee (TGG). Apparently these investors turned up at Hong Lim Park and signed the petition urging the authorities to expedite investigations into the gold buyback firm. One of the victims even claimed his family lost almost close to one million dollars on TGG. It seems that a lot of Singaporeans had lost huge amount of money after investing in gold buy-back schemes offered by TGG.

Gold bullion

Greed or Stupidity?
Readers may remember that last year, I wrote an article “The wrong way to invest” on The Genneva Gold Trading, which also offered similar gold buyback scheme to investors at ridiculous yield rates. Many investors also lost huge sum of money in that fiasco. Prior to that, there was the Minibond case which also involved multi-million dollars investment losses. Sometimes I wondered why some Singaporeans are so stupid to fall for such silly schemes.

Many years ago, a foreign politician remarked that Singaporeans are gullible, not street smart and easy to cheat. As a Singaporean, I was extremely furious that he made such insulting remarks on Singaporeans. But 20 years later, I am not so sure whether he was wrong. After all, Singapore just don’t seem to learn from mistakes made by others. Bear in mind that these cases were widely publicized by local media, so there were absolutely no valid reasons for claiming ignorance on the tactics employed by these financial companies.

Prevention is better than cure
The best way to prevent yourself from being financially cheated is to educate yourself constantly. Always keep in mind that investing is a process and not an end in itself. Investors need to update themselves on the latest developments in the financial markets, local and internationally. One of the best ways is to connect with mainstream media and the Internet.

So do check out local financial blogs like The Finance and SG Wealth Builder. They are free of charge anyway, therefore investors have nothing to lose at all. In addition, if you have elderly family members who have a lot of saving in the banks and you fear that they might be cheated of their hard-earned savings, one way is to set up a joint account with a trusted family member. This will certainly prevent a lot of potential heart pain down the road.

I received several comments from my readers for my article last year. Some of the readers emailed me and agreed that these greedy investors deserved to lose their monies. Some readers commented in my blog that I was too callous and blasted me for gloating at their misfortunes. I think each of us is entitled to our own views, so I did not attempt to reply or clarify my stand. Because by doing so, it will be against my policy of encouraging feedback to my blog. Ultimately, my aim is to educate Singaporeans on financial literacy and not to antagonize the local community.

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Magically yours,

SG Wealth Builder

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6 thoughts on “Singaporeans – Stupid or Smart?”

  • Low FQ has nothing to do with IQ.

    High IQ may have low FQ.

    Average IQ may have high FQ

    Good news is that most of us can improve our FQ.

  • We are all born with different talents or gifts. But some are just born more “gullible” than others. No amount of FQ education can change their good nature of believing in people in good faith.
    i know because i have relatives who are born like that. Any con-man can con them anytime on the street.
    And it really happened to them on the street.
    Woe to those con-man for taking advantage of such good nature people. If they manage to con a person with FQ, then it’s a different matter. Maybe these FQ people succumb to their weak points without realizing for that moment because of the conman’s mesmerizing magic.

  • Watever it is, the people who ran away with the money should have a warrant of arrest issued to them.they cant be scot free

  • A (greedy) fool & his/her money, will soon part.

    Didn’t they teach this in primary school ?

  • Maybe some of you have heard of this : It takes the combined intellegience of 2 HK people to match 1 Taiwan person. It takes the combined intellegience of 2 Singapore people to match 1 HK person. So what does this tell us? People in Taiwan are 4 times smarter than us!

  • We Singaporeans are known as “Goonduporeans” overseas!

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