S'porean man without degree retires at 37, says multiple hustles, being frugal & childless among reasons

What does it take to retire early in Singapore?

A man in Singapore without a university degree recently retired at the age of 37.

Early this year, Seth, who makes personal finance content online, entered his savings and expenses into a retirement drawdown calculator he built himself, and it told him that he could retire now.

He has reached financial independence, he said in a YouTube video on Dec. 14.

He defined this as a state where a person doesn't need to continue working in order to have enough resources for the rest of their life.

With this assurance, he left his full-time job at Providend, a fee-only wealth advisory firm he had worked at for two and a half years.

But how did Seth manage to retire 20, 30 years before others?

He attributed this feat to five main reasons: luck, having multiple hustles, being frugal, not having any children, and having a monetised hobby.

Lucky to not get a degree

Seth said that his upbringing and supportive parents were crucial to giving him the freedom to pursue what he wanted with little worries.

However, when he did badly for his A-Levels and could not get into any local university, he did begin to worry about his future.

For a few years, he was earning about S$1,000 a month.

"At that income range, retirement wasn't even a concept I had in my mind," he said in his video.

Now, though, he felt lucky that he did not get a university degree, as it pushed him to try out less conventional means of earning money, including starting a YouTube channel.

Although he did enjoy working a corporate job for a few years, he believed that a steady yet fixed pay check was not going to help him reach his retirement goals sooner.

"Grades are important, but these days I do feel that it was a twisted form of luck that I didn't make it to university," he said.

But it was more than just luck.

Hustling and saving

Seth also credited his own hard work taking on multiple side hustles, including being an insurance agent, teaching tuition, and starting his own personal finance website and YouTube channel.

"Multiple hustles was something that really worked for me," he said. "After a while I could take a step back to see which pursuits were doing well for me to double down my efforts, and which weren't really as rewarding as the effort I was investing in them."

He doubled down on teaching tuition, and eventually set up his own tuition centre.

Despite his income growing, Seth continued to be mindful of how much he was spending and what he spends on.

A significant way he believes he has been able to save money is by not having children.

He opined that retiring early was something he prioritised over having children.

"It really depends on your priorities in life, right? If the joy of having children outweighs the joy of retiring early for you, by all means, go have children, and then you just have to retire later in life. For me, I will prioritise having my retirement lifestyle much earlier, and I don't think I'll be a very good parent. So that is a lifestyle choice I made for myself."

In fact, he believes that those "who really have it easy in Singapore" are couples who are DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids), as they enjoy subsidised housing, among other benefits, as opposed to singles like himself.

Carefree

Despite considering himself retired, Seth continues to earn money by doing his personal finance content, which he counts as his hobby.

"Having this hobby that makes me money really gives me the assurance that I can say that I'm retired because I can just live my days in a very carefree manner," he said.

In 2021, Seth made a video about his experience buying a condo for S$690,000 on his own before he turned 35.

Recently, a 26-year-old woman went viral after she shared that she had managed to purchase an almost S$1 million condo by herself.

She had managed to save enough money by hustling hard, working about 12 to 18 hours daily, typically seven days a week.

Top images from Sethisfy Personal Finance/YouTube