A Little Story of an Unknown Millionaire

This is a short story of an unknown millionaire and his struggles to become one. He's the dad of a friend of mine. His networth is estimated to be a few million at 60+ years old, and his path wasn't easy.

In the 1970s, this chap was just in his early twenties. Fresh from China, he went to Hong Kong to seek for fortunes. At that time, he was merely a penniless bloke. His first job was being a coolie, and was paid less than 2 SGD a day.

But he still managed to save up some cash by being a scrooge. But then, with his earnings, there was no way to save up had he not been a scrooge.

With his savings, and some investment cash from his friends, he started a factory on producing plastic materials, i.e. plastic toys, plastic bags, plastic containers, etc.

The factory took off, and soon, he was earning a few thousand SGD (equivalent) a month. That was when he started buying and investing in properties. It was his hobby to "collect" properties. He leveraged upon bank loans. He made use of rentals to cover bank loans. That was between the 1980s to 1990s.

There wasn't any sub-prime then. Hence the banks were willing to loan him as he has a business and paid back rentals on time so far. He continued to leverage on the loans by buying more properties and renting them out for the rental to pay the loans. In addition, he moved his family to Singapore in the late 1980s and bought an old condo for them to stay for about $300k.

Eventually, nearly 30 years later, his few properties in Hong Kong were all fully paid as he put in extra savings from time to time, and are now fully paid free cash flow generating machines. His business took off as well as China starts to boom, manufacturing for more and more customers.As luck would have it, the condo in Singapore was sold en bloc in 2008, and further boost his networth by another $2 mil.

This is the story of the unknown, humbly dressed, millionaire. The moral of the story is luck, skill, and hard work are necessary ingredients for his success.