I want to tell you something about how I built my passive income.
It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t complicated. And it definitely wasn’t exciting.
It was just the same boring decisions, made quietly, over and over again — for about fifteen years.
If you’re looking for a hot stock tip or a get-rich-quick shortcut, this isn’t that post. But if you’re a woman in your 40s or 50s wondering whether it’s still possible to build real, lasting income that doesn’t depend on showing up to an office every day — keep reading.
It started at 35, with the Singapore stock exchange
I was 35 when I made my first investment on the SGX. I didn’t know very much. I just knew that keeping everything in a savings account wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
So I started small. I bought shares in companies I understood — the kind that paid dividends, the kind that had been around for decades, the kind that weren’t going anywhere. I wasn’t trying to time the market. I was just trying to own a small piece of something that would pay me while I slept.
That first step felt bigger than it was. But looking back, it was less about the money I invested and more about the mindset shift it triggered. I stopped seeing myself as someone who spent money. I started seeing myself as someone who deployed it.
Then came property — one careful step at a time
At 36, I bought my first investment property. Not because I had everything figured out, but because I had saved consistently enough to make it possible.
For the next three years, I did something that might sound extreme but felt completely natural at the time: I kept saving hard and paid off that first property.
No, I didn’t “invest the difference.” No, I didn’t leverage up to buy more. I just wanted to own something outright. To have an asset that was fully mine, with no bank holding the title.
There’s a psychological power in owning something free and clear that I don’t think gets talked about enough. It changes how you sleep at night.
The second property — and the long game
The same year I paid off the first property, at 39, I put down a deposit on a second one.
And then I did it all over again. For the next six years, I channelled my income, my rental returns, and my savings discipline into paying down 80% of that second mortgage.
Was it glamorous? Not even slightly. Was it the “optimal” financial strategy according to every personal finance article I’ve ever read? Probably not.
But it worked. And it worked because I stuck to it.
The third piece: CPF and bonds, running quietly in the background
While all of this was happening, I was also building two other streams simultaneously.
The first was a bond portfolio — steady, unexciting, doing its job in the background.
The second was my CPF. I made voluntary housing refunds when I could, topping up my Ordinary Account intentionally rather than letting it sit idle. For Singaporeans, CPF is one of the most underutilised wealth-building tools we have. The interest rates alone make it worth paying attention to.
None of this happened in a straight line. There were years where I felt like I was barely moving. Years where the rental income felt like a drop in the ocean. Years where I wondered whether any of it would ever add up to something meaningful.
It did.
What I’d tell my younger self
Start before you feel ready.
I was 35 when I made my first SGX investment. I wish I had been 30. Not because five years would have made me wildly richer — but because five more years of that mindset shift would have changed how I thought about money for longer.
You don’t need a sophisticated strategy. You need a simple one that you’ll actually stick to.
And you need to be willing to be boring about it for a very long time.
Your turn
What’s one financial decision you’ve been putting off because it didn’t feel like “enough”?
The first SGX trade I made was small. The first property deposit took years to save. The CPF top-ups felt like rounding errors at the time.
None of it felt significant in the moment. All of it added up.
If you’re not sure where to start, head to my Start Here page — that’s exactly what it’s for.