Inspirations from a Singapore finance blogger

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of finance bloggers joining the scene. Many of them are good bloggers who write better than me. But in my humble opinion, what differentiates a great blogger from a good blogger is his ability to create inspirations among readers. In one of his latest articles, Singapore finance blogger, “Got Money, Got Honey” (GMGH), inspired me.

In his article, GMGH articulated very well his philosophy of giving. I was very impressed by his structured thought-process because although most people donate to charity, not many can think so deeply as him. It also set me thinking about the future direction of my own blog.

As a Singapore finance blogger, it was never my intention to become an influencer in the first place. My original idea was to create a crowd-source platform that attracts readers to contribute ideas on various wealth building ways. Over time, SG Wealth Builder has evolved into a wealth blog that focuses mainly on stock analysis, gold bullion and career management.

There are many Singapore finance bloggers who write about their dividend income reports and portfolio performance. They contribute interesting articles but I seldom read such articles because I prefer to look at those with deep analysis on stocks. There are a few Singapore finance bloggers who can write very detailed analysis and I gained more wisdom after reading these blogs. Sometimes, I was also inspired to write better analysis in my blog but I guess one of the biggest handicaps for me is that I don’t have any financial background or experience.

There is another realm of Singapore finance bloggers who write articles mainly on personal finance. When I started SG Wealth Builder in 2010, there were not many such bloggers around. But things have obviously changed and now the scene seems a bit crowded. In one of my recent meeting with Dollar and Sense co-founder, Timothy Ho, he also agreed with me on this point. Such a development is good for the community as it fosters awareness among Singaporeans on good personal finance practices. However, with so many players around, competition for eyeballs is stiff and thus I would not want my blog to morph into such category.

Like blogger GMGH, I believe gold and silver bullion can play an important role in our wealth portfolio. In fact, I was inspired by several of his articles on the precious metals. My education on gold started in 2013 when BullionStar invited me to be their affiliate partner. I met the founder, Torgny Persson who came from Sweden to set up shop in Singapore after our government announced that investment grade bullion are exempted from GST. I like Torgny’s passion in bullion and his belief in educating Singaporeans on the merits of owning bullion.

To be honest, I have received a number of affiliate program invitations but have declined most of them. I have chosen to be BullionStar’s affiliate partner because I believe in their products and services. The commission is very little but I like the information they shared in their website. However, sometimes I wish they could provide more data on the gold trend in Singapore, instead of the gold demand in China. After all, their shop is located in Singapore and also I reckon most Singaporeans are less keen to know about the gold market in China.

Going forward, I don’t want to be just one of those wealth bloggers who write about their retirement funds or investment portfolios. Everyone has different pathway, different journey and different end points. Therefore there is no point benchmarking and comparing our financial status to others. My vision is to make SG Wealth Builder the blog that is able to inspire and motivate readers to be successful wealth builders. To do so, I aim to share more analysis and holistic viewpoints on shares, bullion and career. I hope readers can benefit more through reading my articles.

I invite you to join me in my journey and be part of the wealth network. You can be part of my community by signing up for the email notification of new articles in my blog. One day, I hope to be able to meet and reach out to my subscribers by organizing a small gathering. Together, we can become better wealth builders through sharing of knowledge and collaboration opportunities. This will be a networking session for wealth builders, by wealth builders.

Magically yours,

SG Wealth Builder