My First Investment

Right after finishing military college, I was awarded a scholarship to further my studies abroad. When we talk about scholarships, we usually mean not just tuition, but also a monthly allowance throughout the program. Like mine covered me until I finished my master’s in mechanical engineering.

I was scheduled to fly to France in 2021. Normally, each student under the same scholarship received a certain amount of money from the sponsor to buy preparation items like luggage, a laptop, and some even got themselves a new iPad, and so on. As a young boy receiving what felt like a huge sum of money, I was really thrilled, thinking: Am I rich now?

I had a boatload of money and thought, I’m going to use this to buy a new iPhone! At that time, I was still using an Android. You know the frustrating feeling when you’re on a trip with friends, and you’re the only one who can’t use AirDrop? You end up asking them to share files via Telegram instead. Well, my plan got busted because my mom found out.

She took maybe half of the money to stop me from spending on what she considered useless things, like a new phone. Instead of just keeping it aside, she invested it in a Unit Trust and in Gold. As someone fresh out of high school, this was the very first time I had ever heard about investments. I didn’t even know what a unit trust was back then. I knew about gold, of course, but I couldn’t understand why people would buy it as an investment. In my eyes, it was just… gold. Nothing more, nothing less.

Even though I didn’t get a new phone, that first investment my mom made on my behalf turned out to be the starting point of my journey into investing.

I still didn’t understand the importance of it at the time. But after about a year overseas, I started consuming a lot of content on investing and personal finance. When you’re exposed to the idea of financial independence, you naturally start becoming more frugal about the things you buy. You become much more particular about every dollar you spend. I learned about concepts like the 70/20/10 rule, the three-bank system, and so on. After that first year, I suddenly remembered the investment my mom had made for me.

If you look at the chart of gold prices between 2021 and 2022, they didn’t change much—the price mostly moved sideways instead of rising. (This blog is written in 2025.) That got me thinking: why do people still buy gold, even since ancient times?

From there, I came across a video about gold as a long-term investment, with projections spanning at least two years. That’s when I started digging up all the gold price data I could find. My mind was blown—the long-term chart showed gold prices climbing significantly. I thought to myself, if only I had started earlier, I would have made a ton of money.

That was the moment I realised the potential of investing. I began putting money into gold regularly, month after month, and I still do today. At first, gold was the only investment instrument I knew. But slowly, I started discovering other investments one by one, which I’ll be sharing with you in this blog.Write your text here...