Your possessions do not define you

I WAS born five years after Singapore’s independence. My late father came from Malacca in his teenage years to work for Singapore Traction Company which operated trams. It was a blue-collar job that required him to stand under the hot sun and in the rain to operate a system which decided the direction the trams would take.

When Singapore Bus Services started, he joined them as a bus conductor before being promoted to bus driver. Our first house was a rented one-room flat which meant that there were no bedrooms, just a living room and kitchen with a bathroom and toilet.

At night, we would take out the mattresses to sleep in the living room and when morning came, the mattresses would be folded up again. While my late mother, who was a homemaker, ensured that we never lacked anything, I knew at a young age that we did not have a lot of money.

When I was in primary school, many boys wanted to join the Boy Scouts. Somehow, there is something special about wearing a smart uniform with many badges on it. It makes you feel superior to the rest of the boys. But when I asked my mother if I could join this uniformed group, she said no, because we did not have the money to pay for the uniform, and she was also worried about unforeseen expenses that we may have to incur in future.

That incident had a huge negative impact on my young life. It made me believe that if you don’t have money, you would be inferior to others. It was the first incident in my life that caused me to equate the lack of wealth with being not good enough. As a result, I grew up always feeling inferior and lacked confidence in all that I did.

Thankfully for me, a transformational experience changed that thinking. I was accepted into Officer Cadet School after my basic military training and after 10½ months of gruelling training, I graduated as the top cadet of my platoon and was conferred the Sword of Merit. It was the first time that I realised I can still be good in certain areas of life without having to be rich.

Over time, I developed three perspectives or principles about wealth and possessions.

Measure of success

First, the world judges how successful we are based on what we have or do not have. While some may not openly agree, people perceive how successful we are based on how much money we have, the kind of house we live in, the type of cars we drive, or even the brand of handbags we carry.

Judgments are made not just based on wealth or material possessions, but also on the schools and universities we attended, and the titles on our name cards.

Recently, I did an “Ask Me Anything” session for Reddit, a social news aggregation, content rating and discussion platform. A participant asked me how much wealth I have because he did not see how someone less wealthy than he is can advise him. Wealth was used as a measure of advisory competence.

Some years back, while attending a conference, I was in a VIP suite with many prominent senior executives in Singapore. While waiting for the event to begin, the group I was interacting with started chatting about the schools that they attended. Coincidentally, all of them came from two famous schools in Singapore. Suddenly, one of them turned to me and asked: “You must be from X or Y school too?”

When I cheekily replied that I graduated from Singapore Polytechnic (which I did), there was an awkward silence, probably because I did not fit the stereotypical definition of success in the room that day.

While we may not agree with this worldview, it is not easy to change it. But by pursuing what we need in life, we have the opportunity to positively influence others. Over the years, I did a post-graduate degree from a reputable university; founded a company; managed sizeable assets; became more competent in my job; and built a reputation. And because I became more “successful” by the world’s definition, I have been given more opportunities to share my money convictions through various platforms.

Second, once we have reached a certain level of success, do not do the same thing – that is, measure others’ success by what they have or do not have, because that is wrong. The person who asked me about my wealth in Reddit may not understand that to become rich and to stay rich require different skill sets.

My job is to help my clients remain wealthy and I don’t need to have the same level of wealth as they do in order to advise them well. Every role, no matter how humble, is important in society, and one’s success cannot be gauged by wealth, education, or titles alone.

Third, do not allow the world to judge you based on what you have or do not have, because those items are not your identity. This is a difficult principle to follow even for me today.

When I was younger, there was an older, very wealthy man who liked to introduce me this way: “This is Chris, he is trying to advise people how to manage their money.” And he would end that introduction with sarcastic laughter. That hurt me a lot. He always made me feel that I was not good enough.

If you have similar experiences, I would like to offer you some encouragement. We are all “work-in-progress”. What matters are your values and how you have impacted people. Your identity comes from the people who love you and care for you, not from your possessions.

Whenever I doubt myself, I draw courage from my loved ones, colleagues, clients, and readers of my columns who occasionally send me encouraging e-mail.

As the year draws to a close, I hope that this article will speak to all of you in different ways and may you experience the love, joy, and peace that the message of Christmas brings.

The writer is chief executive of Providend, South-east Asia’s first fee-only comprehensive wealth advisory firm