Greetings from the Beggar King

Welcome to my humble abode. Greetings. I am the Beggar King, descended from poverty heaven to spread my miserly gospel far and wide.

This is the first page of my diary. A diary about… *drum roll*… personal finance.

To summarise my existence very briefly – I am an ambitionless, young Singaporean man facing a quarter life crisis, and my only goal in life is to save up enough money to buy a house by 35 and retire by 40 with a good amount of passive income; all so I can sleep and play video games all day long. Probably not the most interesting description of a person you have ever seen, but that’s the Beggar King for ya.

I decided to start this blog, because I realised that my Beggar King Policies™ might be able to help out poor souls out there. Poor souls who have to let out deep, tortured sighs when looking at their account balance. Not just my fellow country mates, nossir, but every financially-challenged human out there.

Unlike countless other personal finance blogs which try to speak to the general public, I want to differentiate my blog by putting heavy emphasis on my own saving methods, which are pretty extreme. I am quite certain that few people in developed countries live the way I do.

I was partially inspired by the Woke Salaryman, who I recognised as a kindred spirit the moment I saw his blog. I certainly don’t have his talent of drawing, but I do have my Beggar King Policies™, which I’m proud to say are mine and mine only…!

So how money-savvy am I exactly? It is rather embarrassing, but I suppose I can’t get anywhere without first laying the numbers out.

Here’s my track record so far :

• I have $89,000 of liquid assets now. Meaning, cash and stocks combined. I will hit that sweet $100k with certainty by June. If I don’t die or suffer a major accident, that is.
• As of today, I have worked for exactly 3 years. I had $3,000 in mah bank when I started working, which means I saved $86,000 in 3 years. That’s about $28,666/year.
• I’m just an average employee earning average salary. $3500 after graduation, $4000 now. Objectively speaking it is slightly above the average, but for the school and course I graduated from, it is near the rock bottom. Oh, I graduated from a renowned university known for its Kukubirds, a rare species of birds. 🙂
• When I just started working, my monthly expenditure was about $300-350. Take that off my $2850 take-home pay, I was saving about 88% of my take-home salary.
• I have moved out for quite a while, so I have an added expenditure of $600 for rent, plus I gotta pay for all my meals. I am only saving about 63% of my salary now.

Some additional, non-track record stuff perhaps I should clarify.

• I was from a pretty poor family, by Singapore standards. $2xxx ~ $3xxx monthly income for a family of 6 for a good chunk of my life. I guess becoming the Beggar King was my destiny. I was used to being poor so spending money never became a habit.
• I have been single since I started working, so my expenditure over the last 3 years was mine alone. It sure is cheaper to be #ForeverAlone though. :’)
• I don’t have a home to live in, so I have no choice but to rent.
• I actually enjoy saving money and researching on ways to save money. It’s sort of a hobby I suppose.

Say, were my salary $1000 lesser, let’s say starting at $2500 ($2000 take-home), and currently $3000 ($2400 take-home). If I lived the exact same way, I would have 40.6*$1000*0.8 = $32,480 lesser savings. So I would have $56,520 now instead of $89,000. Well, it would actually be a bit lesser than that due to having lower interests, so maybe $55,xxx instead. On the other hand, I would have been even more of a money-pinching bastard if my salary was lower, so my savings would be higher, say… about $60,000. My point is, having a lower salary is not an excuse not to save.

And also… no, living in Singapore, the supposedly most expensive city/country in the world, is certainly no excuse to being poor.

I am aware that my lifestyle may appear insane to some, but I am certain anyone, high or low SES, can take away something from it.

Here are some topics I plan to write about :

• Personal balance sheet
• Savings account
• Insurance
• Housing
• Credit card
• Foreign currency
• Expenditure
• Side hustles
• Useful apps
• Idiot-proof investment
• Beggar King’s life in Japan

… And more. There’s so many things to talk about when it comes to saving money.

Let’s get on to the first topic right away. Personal balance sheet ahoy!