I hit my first S$100k in my late 20s. Not through investing — I didn’t touch the stock market until I was 35. It was almost entirely saving, year after year, with nothing clever behind it.
There Was No Trick
If you’re expecting a story about a smart investment or a lucky break, this isn’t that story. From 22, I saved consistently — a fixed amount, set aside before anything else got spent. That habit, repeated for several years without much variation, is what got me to six figures. No windfall, no bonus that changed everything, no single decision that mattered more than the rest.
It sounds almost too simple to be useful advice. But that’s genuinely what it was — closer to Think and Grow Rich‘s idea of definite purpose and persistence than any investment strategy. I read that book in my twenties, long before I understood anything about markets, and the mindset in it mattered more to those early saving years than any financial knowledge did.
Why My First S$100k in Singapore Felt Different From Every Milestone After It
There’s something about the first S$100k that later milestones don’t quite replicate. It took the longest, relative to how little I had to show for the effort along the way. Every year of saving before that point felt slow — the number moved, but not in a way that felt significant month to month.
Then somewhere past the halfway mark, something shifted. Not the pace of saving — that stayed exactly the same — but how the number started to feel. It stopped being just “money I hadn’t spent” and started feeling like proof that the habit actually worked.
What I’d Tell Someone Chasing Their First S$100k
Don’t wait for it to feel exciting. It mostly won’t, especially in the early years, when the number is still small and the progress feels invisible. The excitement isn’t the fuel — the habit is. If you’re saving consistently and it feels boring, that’s not a sign you’re doing it wrong. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.
I also didn’t invest a cent of it until years later. If you’re comparing your progress to people already investing and see them moving faster, that’s not a failure on your part — it’s just a different stage. Saving first, investing later, worked for me. There’s no rule that says you have to do both at once.
The Milestone That Actually Mattered More
Hitting S$100k mattered less, in hindsight, than proving to myself the habit could hold for years without me abandoning it. That’s the part that actually carried through to everything after — the two properties, the SGX investing from 35, the decades that followed. The number was just evidence. The habit was the real milestone.
If you’re building toward your own first S$100k, Start Here walks through how I think about the whole journey. And if discipline is the part you’re struggling with more than the numbers, why discipline beat motivation in my FIRE journey goes deeper into that specifically.
— Eunice
My Fifty Freedom | Build the wealth that buys back your time