Do you want to be middle class or a crazy rich Asian?

Hi guys, I've written some quite serious posts of late, time to do something a little bit more fun and silly! As you guys know, I love posting pictures and videos on Instagram and it shows you some of the crazy and fun things I do - I've just also finished renovating my house (well, almost, 95% of the work is done, just some finer details to sort out) and have posted some nice pictures recently. So I actually received two messages on Instagram out of the blue, one from Spain and one from Singapore. Now the guy in Spain asked me if I was one of those crazy rich Asians from Singapore - no doubt, in reference to the film Crazy Rich Asians. I didn't respond to that comment as I was left wondering, well depends where you draw the line. I'm rich but am I crazy rich? Like compared to the characters as portrayed in the film, the fictional Young family in Singapore? Of course I am not that rich, but they aren't real either. And the second person who messaged me (I suspect s/he probably found me via my blog here) asked me for advice about how to become a "crazy rich Asian"; once again, referencing that film. We're all enjoying the parodies on Youtube, maybe some of you have seen the film already but before I answer the second question, let me first try to define what it actually means to be crazy rich.

I think the first thing about being so crazy rich is that you probably never have to work ever again, whilst having enough money so you can have a very comfortable lifestyle until you die, effectively never running out of money - it means living in a beautiful house, being able to afford any luxury you want and plenty of nice holidays in exotic locations of course. Now a lot of rich people do actually choose to work because they enjoy the work they do - there's a huge difference between people who enjoy what they do because they are very successful at it and have a deep passion for what they do, compare that to those who positively hate every aspect of their jobs but still have to keep going to work everyday just to pay the bills and support their families. But where do you draw the line to become 'crazy rich'? A lot of it depends on just how many people you're trying to sustain with your wealth - obviously, if you don't have the responsibility of supporting anyone (say everyone else in your family is already super rich), then the only wealth you need is for yourself to spend. Conversely, even if you are a multi-millionaire, if you're trying to share your wealth with your huge extended family, your friends and even your community, then there's never ever going to be enough millions to spend when you're trying to improve the lives of that many people. Bill and Melinda Gates can do so much philanthropy because they are worth about US$95 billion: they are constantly giving money to charity but they keep making a lot of money everyday.

So for the purpose of this calculation, I will have two criteria: you have to either have a pot of money to the tune of US$25 million, or you must earn at least US$1 million a year constantly. I tried to pick a benchmark that would clearly define you as 'crazy rich' but still kept it at a reasonable figure. Sure there are people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Ma who are a lot more wealthy than that, but how many multi-billionaires in the world are there like Zuckerbeg and Ma? Very few indeed, heck even the man ranked 50th on Forbes top 50 richest people in Singapore still has $535 million but at US$25 million, it is actually quite realistic in any big city like London, Singapore, Tokyo or New York. So the figure of US$25 million is just about achievable for people, it makes you rich enough to enjoy a fabulous lifestyle whilst still not being a totally fantasy, fairy-tale number. Please note that I am picking the figure of US$25 million as the benchmark with the condition that this money is pretty much meant for you (and your partner) to spend, that you're not trying to leave any of that money for the next generation - let's just assume you expect them to make their own fortune, that's great character building exercise! And whilst you may do some philanthropy with that money, you're not trying to support many people.

You see, for people who have access to a big pot of money be it through inheritance or say they win the lottery, they have to be careful to try to make it last by a lot of it investing it wisely whilst making sure they don't go nuts shopping for diamonds and sports cars (or diamond encrusted sports cars - yes there is such a thing for people who have literally too much money to spend, see the video below). Whereas if you are smart/skilled enough to earn over a million dollars a year, then at least you can spend a lot more confidently. Say you want to buy an expensive piece of property worth several millions, it may be a huge price tag but you're confident that you can earn that money in just a few years if you keep on doing what you're doing. Whether you're sitting on a big pot of money or whether you're earning over a million a year, that puts you in a position to say yes to many things that will define you as a crazy rich Asian. My regular readers will know that I came from a poor working class family in Ang Mo Kio but somehow managed to make my fortune in the world of finance in London, so in today's post, I'm going to talk about how to become a crazy rich Asian if you weren't born wealthy. Some of this may sound like common sense, but if you want to enjoy the kind of lifestyle you saw in the film in question, then read on! So, do you want to become a crazy rich Asian or are you content with being 'comfortable'?

1. Pick the right career which doesn't have a fixed salary 

If you want to become rich, then you need a salary that is linked directly to your performance, so you're effectively writing your own pay check - if you want to give yourself a raise this month, then simply perform better and heck, you can do the same every single month of the year. Well, that is exactly what people who work in sales do and you want to retain that kind of control over your earnings: the more you sell, the more you earn in commissions, it is that simple. What is quite sad is the way I see civil servants or other employees beg their management for a pay rise, "please sir, I've not had a pay increase in over 2 years and the work load has really increased a lot in the last 6 months - I have put in so much unpaid overtime in the last few weeks, can we talk about my salary please?" Maybe you will have a boss who will gladly reward you for your productivity, but too often you will find many companies setting up clear guidelines in terms of what you have to do in order to get a pay raise, on the surface it is to give transparency and clarity to what you can expect to be paid but of course, these rules are always set up to favour the employers over the employees. They would set arbitrary benchmarks such as having to spend a particular period in a role before you're allowed to have a pay review, regardless of how good (or bad) your performance is - these are rules designed to keep your pay down and often, many people are so frustrated by these rules they find that the only way to get a decent pay rise is to change jobs. That is the only way they get to hit the reset button each time they renegotiate a pay deal at their new company - you won't get rich like that.

Don't get me wrong, having a fixed salary can bring with it some benefits, such as being able to prove a stable income when you want to get something like a mortgage but if you want to become rich, then you need your income to be able to double or triple in the period of a year or two and for that to happen constantly until you're raking in well over a million dollars every year. Even if you have a very respectable income, if you're plugged into a system which will only give you a modest increase once you have achieved certain milestones, then you're in a situation where you will become comfortably wealthy of course, but you will never become crazy rich. For a lot of people, they are quite content with being comfortably wealthy (or as we more commonly call it, 'middle-class') but if you're not content with being just middle-class, if you dream about becoming one of those elites who have lifestyles similar to those portrayed in the film, then you need to gamble: trade in the security of knowing exactly how much you will earn per month for the possibility of doubling, tripling your income in a short period of time. Those who 'settle' for middle-class comfort are not doing badly at all, in fact they are probably the envy of the working class. But if you want to move up a level, from being merely middle-class to being truly crazy rich, then you are going to have to earn that privilege - which brings me neatly onto my second point.

2. Be your own boss, start your own business. 

I have been chatting with my friend in Kuala Lumpur today and good grief, not only does he run his own business, his wife has started her own business as well and he is helping her. I asked him how he found the time to do it and he replied, "well she helped me when I was just getting established, so I am returning just the favour, it is only right." Both businesses are now doing really well, but good grief, they work so crazy hard as they are driven by passion. As my friend is in finance, he splits his time like this: when it is conventional office hours, he is dedicated to his own business but in the evenings and weekends, he is working for his wife and neither of them get nearly enough sleep! It's just insane how many hours a week they work, but the reason why they do that is simple: they have both worked for other companies before where they had a boss who would pay them what he could get away with and kept the majority of the profits for himself. That's the privilege of the boss because if the company has a bad month or two and makes a loss, the company still has to pay the employees' salaries of course and the boss takes a direct hit. But when the company is making good profits, then the boss has the right to keep the lion share of the profit for himself whilst the employees simply don't have that privilege - or at least they are totally dependent on the goodwill of the boss to give them a bonus to reward them.

It is extremely difficult to start a business and develop it to the point where it starts making a steady profit. Even when you get to that point, can you continue sustaining your company's performance? Can you keep expanding into new markets? Can you face the competition who may come up with a rival product or service that is better? No one is pretending it is going to be easy, many of us settle for the certainty of getting a salary because we know we're going to be paid at the end of the month regardless of whether or not the company has made a profit that month. An example of a person who left the comfort of a middle-class steady career to become a crazy rich Asian is designer Vera Wang. She spent much of her 20s and 30s working for Vogue magazine and Ralph Lauren but at the age of 40, she resigned to become a bridal wear designer. She was earning very good money in her 20s and 30s, but nothing compared to the success she achieved as a designer in her later life - her net worth today is estimated to be around US$420 million. That's not the kind of wealth you can achieve by working for a magazine like Vogue or a designer like Ralph Lauren: you can only make that kind of money when you are your own boss and you get to keep the bulk of the profits for yourself.

3. Bet on a winning horse. Not literally. 

No, I am not encouraging you to gamble but I am a big fan of the reality TV show Dragon's Den or Shark Tank as it is known in some countries - different name, same format. Entrepreneurs go on the show and pitch the dragons or sharks (typically venture capitalists) for an investment in exchange for equity in the company. There have been some incredible success stories from the series when a successful partnership has allowed the dragons/sharks a huge return on their original investment - they weren't the ones to come up with the ingenious design behind the amazing product, they just funded the business. Now most people think that you need to work as a venture capitalist or go on a show like that in order to get involved in that kind of investing, but really, anyone can do it as long as you have enough money and understand the risks involved. Just get a good lawyer to draw up a water-tight contract to protect your interests. I have been involved in VC events over the years and sometimes the smaller companies are asking for amounts as little as US$10,000 and on the US version of Shark Tank, they usually don't ask for more than US$250,000 as the investor would want a much bigger slice of the company at that kind of price. This is the kind of money that any middle class professional can probably find to invest, particularly since the price of a decent new home in a city like Singapore or London costs a lot more than that. So the entry level when it comes to this kind of investments isn't prohibitively high.

Why is it so important to get involved in this kind of investing? Well, it is very high risk of course, you're placing your faith usually in one person or a small group of people running a company and the return on your investment is contingent on them succeeding. But if you do manage to invest in a company that is on the right track, then that's your opportunity to double or triple your money in a very short space of time. Compare that to sticking the money in a bank account, good grief. With interest rates so low at the moment, you're barely going to get a few percent even on a high interest account that is struggling to keep pace with inflation. Some people play the stock market and buy shares in companies they think are going to do well, but by the time a company is big enough to get a listing say on the London Stock Exchange, then it is what we would consider a fairly mature company with a pretty established track record. Whilst such mature companies do not offer the kind of exciting growth and huge returns that you may be hungry for, they offer instead a much lower-risk investment and you can go to bed at night knowing that the company you invested in will still be there tomorrow, next week and next year. Such investments are not going to turn you into a 'crazy rich Asian' - no, if you want to become crazy rich through investments, you do need to take huge risks and bet on start ups that will become the next big thing.

4. Don't have children. Not at least until you become very rich. 

If you're already filthy rich, by all means do what you want when it comes to children, have seven kids, adopt a few more from Africa, do whatever you want. But if you're just middle-class, then you might want to think twice about having children. Let me explain why: if your aim is to become crazy rich, then you are going to need money to invest (as described in the previous point). If you have a child or two, then the problem is that your children are always going to take priority. Say you spot an opportunity to invest and they company is asking for US$100,000 - you have that money but you were originally intending to use it to send your daughter abroad for her degree. You could take a risk and hope that you can turn that $100,000 into a much bigger pile of money, but there is a risk that you may lose your investment and with it, goes your daughter's chance of studying abroad at the university of her dreams. So being the sensible parent, you decide that in all good conscience you can't possibly run that risk so you choose to keep that money for your daughter's education. Adults with no children wouldn't have that dilemma though and would be in a much better position to capitalize on the investment opportunities that come their way. Having to provide for your children is a long term commitment that comes with no guarantee that you'll ever get your money back - not unless you're prepared to present your child with an invoice when they get their first job, along with a repayment plan for every penny you have spent on that child. And even if you are prepared to do that, what makes you think that child can and will repay you in full then?

Besides, it is so expensive to bring up children in this day and age, having a child or two would mean constantly hemorrhaging money every single day - money that could be put aside for that investment that would turn you into a crazy rich Asian. I'd like you to meet my friend Sylvia (not her real name), she is an old classmate of mine from university and is married with two children in London. She leads a very comfortable, middle-class lifestyle and her husband has a decent job that pays well. Her children are doing well in school and are training at the local gymnastics club: on the surface, they appear to be a perfectly happy family. However, they are in debt with their mortgage and after they pay off all their bills, mortgage and spend money on their kids, they are not left with much at all - not enough to spend on luxuries to treat themselves, never mind try to put aside anything towards their retirement. As for saving up to create a nice little nest egg for them to invest with? That's at best many years away because they are still trying to clear their mortgage and are paying just the minimum every month. Don't get me wrong, they do have a rather nice apartment in West London and have a pretty decent middle-class lifestyle that many would be envious of, but given the constraints of what they are earning, Sylvia can only accept that this is as good as it is ever going to get for her and her family given the choices they have made regarding their financial situation. They might have been in a better position if they had delayed having children by at least five or ten years, to improve their financial situation before undertaking parenthood.

5. Marry a billionaire

Oh yeah Melania Trump did it, she's hardly the first. If you have the looks and don't mind marrying for money instead of love, then by all means go for it. It is a free world and who cares what everyone else may think of you when you have more money than the jealous bitches living in mediocrity. The fact is the haters can judge Melania Trump all they want, she is still the First Lady of the USA regardless whilst they are all very poor in comparison to her. This is probably not as easy as you may imagine - these older, single men who are more than happy to marry someone like Melania Trump have a lot of choice when it comes to picking their favourite gold-digger. I am sure some of you would remember the late model Anna Nicole Smith, who married an 89 year old billionaire when she was just 27 years old and had the cheek to claim that it was true love. Well the old man died just 13 months after the marriage, leaving her laughing all the way to the bank. Would you be happy? Perhaps, it depends on what you want in life and if you're looking to escape poverty through this means, then the luxury of being rich would probably compromise whatever sacrifices you have to make when you marry someone who looks as ghastly as Donald Trump. But if you're going to go down this path, then make sure you go all the way and marry someone who is truly crazy rich, not just someone who is comfortably middle class!

6. Embrace something brand new, avoid the familiar

Imagine if you had bought one Bitcoin back in 2011 at about US$1, you could have sold it at the peak in December 2017 at $19,666. But just imagine you put in $1,000 - well, that means you could have potentially sold that initial investment for $1,966,6000. But of course, hindsight is 2020 - if we had known that Bitcoin was going to soar in value back then, wouldn't we have all bought some ourselves? The price of Bitcoin has since come down from that all time high, but the moral of the story was that those who had the foresight (and luck) to embrace Bitcoin in the early days would have still made quite a profit even at today's prices. Now compare this to something my mother said when I was in Singapore some weeks ago - like everyone else, I bought myself a bubble tea and she commented, "oh even you are drinking bubble tea! Nowadays so popular, all the young people in Singapore love it - sell bubble tea sure can make a lot of money one." Actually no, it is a rather crowded market and margins are pretty slim. But if you were the first person to introduce a fad into a new market (such as when bubble tea first appeared in London many years ago), then yeah, there were profits to be made then because you could charge whatever you wanted as you had absolutely no competitors. But now even in the neighbourhood where I live in Camden, there are at least five places where I can get good bubble tea.

7. Look for gaps in the market that are underserved

Don't get me wrong - you can certainly make a living selling something that is popular like bubble tea, but that's not going to make you crazy rich. You're not going to be rewarded for simply jumping on the bandwagon of a trend and unfortunately for the guy who came up with bubble tea in Taiwan in the 1980s never patented the concept - in fact, there are several competing theories as to who was the first person to create this incredible drink that so many people around the world now love. You don't even need to be the genius who invents something so unique that the world has never seen before - you just need to spot a trend in another part of the world and bring it to your country. Now before you go onto Instagram to start spotting trends from another country, sometimes this can be a lot more mundane but no less profitable. I knew a French expatriate in Thailand who made an massive fortune introducing some far more complex financial instruments for rich Thai high net worth investors and institutions - there was a huge gap between ordinary Thai retail banking and the kind of services that the Thai multi-millionaires could access from global private banks: so this French guy merely spotted a gap in the market that simply wasn't adequately catered for in Thailand. His business model was simply, "this is how we serve this segment of the market in Europe, now use these products that have been tried and tested in Europe for this segment of of the Thai market". It's not rocket science, he didn't invent anything new: rather it was all about being in the right place at the right time to fill a gap in the market. Oh and he's definitely crazy rich today.

8. Be prepared to turn your back on your dreams and do something you don't like

Well, many of my readers will know that I did want to become an actor. I have done quite a lot of films and TV programmes, especially in Germany of all places due to the complete lack of Chinese looking, German speaking actors. Yet somehow, I knew that acting work was always going to be sporadic at best - it was never going to become a proper career for me and that I should be just grateful that I've had the chance to be in the German film with the biggest budget on record and have walked down the red carpet in Berlin and Munich earlier this year. Was corporate finance my first choice of career? No actually, I kinda fell into it quite by accident and it was at the time when I accepted that my acting career was going nowhere, so I may as well focus on my office job whilst waiting for my next big break in acting. Well that next big break never came but in the meantime, I had become so good at my job that I primarily enjoyed being in a position to make so much money, so easily. I guess any career can become fun when it becomes very lucrative; so with that in mind, I had effectively turned my back on acting this year and had been working full time in corporate finance. I'm quite practical - I knew I had accidentally stumbled upon something I was actually quite good at and it would be so foolish to squander this opportunity. If I had stubbornly clung on to wishing to be an actor, I think I would be a lot poorer today. 

9. Have the right kind of friends

Oh this is so important if you want to make your fortune. You know the Chinese saying 一山还比一山高? It means literally that there's always another mountain higher - we use this saying to explain that no matter how good you are, there's always someone better. Who are your best friends? Who are the people you spend the most amount of time with? You see, if they are a lot less successful than you and poorer than you, then you may feel obliged to want to help them improve themselves and it might lead to you feeling quite complacent when you think, "oh I am doing so much better than them." Conversely, if your friends are mostly richer and have achieved far more than you, then whilst that may be just the kind of inspiration you need to try to do better, to become as successful as they are. Even within your industry, having friends who are more senior and established than you are clearly have loads of benefits, let me give you an example. A client came to me with a problem earlier this week and I didn't even understand the question: it dealt with an aspect of leveraging that I was totally unfamiliar with. Thankfully, I have a few friends who are more experienced and knowledgeable I could turn to, who were able to help me find a solution so I would appear more credible to my client. So at least my client may not have the impression that I am so intelligent I understand all aspects of leveraging from an academic point of view, but at least I am well-connected enough to have friends in all the right places who can help me.

So to have the right kind of friends, you need to not just be networking with people in your industry but target those who are a lot more successful than you are and not be intimidated by the process. Gosh, I'm 42 now and whilst I'm doing pretty well in my field today, I do often meet people who are younger than me and more successful than me. Two of my business partners whom I deal with on a regular basis are both in their early 30s and damn, I'm quite a few years older than them. I don't know specifically how much they earn but I know (and they know) that they probably make more than me - but the fact is nobody actually says, "could you tell me how much you have earned in the last tax year, so whether I know where I stand relative to you". I think you just have to puff your chest up and say, "I totally deserve every bit of respect I get from my peers in this industry because it's not a competition - this respect is offered in the spirit of cooperation, so we can help each other make money. Everyone is a unique individual and people want what only I can bring to the table." By that token, you need to attend plenty of industry events, get out there and be very sociable - make sure you have a Linkedin profile that is up to date and use it to meet others in your industry online. Most of all, don't be afraid to ask for help: don't ever let your pride get in your way if the other party is more than happy to give you a hand. 

But of course, this process starts from a very young age for the most successful people out there - I have once worked with a guy who was so posh his playmates at school when he was a child were minor royalty figures. Sometimes it is hard not to be intimidated by that when I think back to my primary school in Sembawang Hills and compare! Where do I even begin, when I had a childhood with a lot of the odds stacked against me? Nonetheless it is what it is, that was my humble, working class childhood in Singapore and I can't change that - what I can do however is to look at the end result I desire: many of these people with privileged upbringings have access to a network of friends and family who are powerful people in a position to help them whenever they need anything. Some people have that privileged handled to them on a silver platter by their parents, but there is still plenty you can do to help yourself acquire that viable network of useful professional contacts if you're willing to put in the effort to get out there and make new friends in your industry. It is far easier to succeed and become rich when you have plenty of influential friends on your side, so it is not just about how many friends you are, but whether or not they are in a position of power and influence to help you become crazy rich.

10. If all else fails, move to a country where you can live like a king.

Let's say you make it to middle class but like my friend Sylvia, realize that you're never going to become crazy rich. What can you do, if you want a taste of living as if you're crazy rich everyday? Well let me tell you about the story of my friend Akash (not his real name), his parents moved to the UK in the 1960s for a better life, with dreams of becoming rich beyond their wildest dreams in London. They didn't become crazy rich, but they became what I suppose you would consider middle class with professional jobs. The kind of family you'll find in a decent West London suburb with a nice house, they were comfortable of course but not crazy rich. So one day, Akash's parents decided, well the kids are all grown up, we're moving back to India because we can acquire a huge piece of land, live in a mansion with servants back in the area where Akash's father came from - property in India can be very cheap as long as you're not trying to buy real estate in the middle of a big city like Delhi, Kolkata or Mumbai. So his parents sold the family home and cashed in their pensions, moved back to India and I've seen pictures of their house in India - oh man, compared to their semi-detached home in West London, it looks like a fairy tale palace. Are his parents rich? Not by London standards, but certainly by Indian standards and they're truly enjoying their retirement in India, with a sizable troop of servants at their beck and call.

I'm sure you've all been somewhere on holiday where things are generally much cheaper than wear you live and you feel like a very rich person because you're constantly converting everything back to your own currency in your head. I remember how I loved shopping in places like Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Tunisia because everything just came across as extremely cheap - even when I am not specifically looking for bargains, such as when I just pop into a cafe for lunch, I realize that I am paying a fraction of what I would normally pay in London for my meal. Of course, the reason why I wouldn't live in such a country is because the salaries there are also a lot lower, that's why the prices are so low because that's all the people can afford. But if you have worked hard and already accumulated a nest egg of a modest sum - say US$2 million dollars, well that won't last that long in a place like New York, London or Tokyo, but if you were in rural India or Thailand, you can probably make that pot of money last a long time whilst sustaining a very comfortable lifestyle. The question then, is whether or not you'll be happy there? I know of a retired British teacher who did just that and has a massive house just outside Chiang Rai - the novelty of living like a king in Thailand worn off after about a year and he got lonely, his Thai language skills were very limited and he failed to establish a meaningful social network there and spends most of his days surfing the web. Hardly the kind of happy ending that Akash's parents found in India - but then again, Akash's parents are Indian after all whilst this retired British teacher stuck out like a Fahrang in Chiang Rai.

As for me, I would describe myself as a upwardly mobile, upper middle-class professional - the reasons why I am able to enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle is down to a number of factors. I don't have any dependents and my partner is rich anyway, so I get to spend every penny I earn on myself. Secondly, being self-employed, I have a very flexible work schedules which means I do work hard when I have a deadline but I can take time off to do the fun things I enjoy when I want to - that's the kind of luxury you can't put a price on. My good friend Tanya is a very successful lawyer in Singapore who earns a lot of money of course, but goodness me the insane number of hours she works every week means that she doesn't really get to spend enough time with her family or even just getting enough sleep. Finally, on top of my substantial central London property portfolio, I have passive income even at work because I am the account manager of quite a few big clients who are repeat customers, so as long they keep on investing some money in one of my company's products every month, I just sit back and collect the commission whilst I make sure I keep taking them out for lunch and being very friendly with them . Nonetheless, I don't think I'm crazy rich - not yet anyway, but so much of that depends on what your benchmark is. Hey, I know some crazy rich people and if you're going to compare me to them, I'm crazy poor.

So there you go, over to you now. What do you think? Do you intend to see this film? Are you middle class? Would you consider yourself rich? Or if you're young, what are your ambitions? Would you be satisfied being middle class or do you have the raw ambition to become crazy rich? What would you consider to be the benchmark for someone to be considered crazy rich then? Let me know what you think, leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.