Why I do this work.

I was in primary school. My father was a salaried employee — same job for years, steady pay slip. From time to time he'd do small things on the side with friends, but the ground he stood on was always the salary. There was a stretch where money at home got tight. At lunch he'd leave the office, walk around the block for an hour, and come back without having eaten. He wasn't doing it for our benefit — he was doing it for his colleagues, who he didn't want to see that the month had got that tight.

I figured it out anyway, because I was a kid and kids notice things. I don't think I had the words for it then. I have them now. There's a particular kind of shame around being seen as struggling — especially in a workplace where you're expected to look as settled this month as you did last month. He carried that quietly. I grew up beside it.

That's the room I'm in when a business owner sits down with me and the spreadsheet doesn't match the car parked outside. I'm not surprised. I'm not embarrassed for them. I already know the shape of it.

When I first started working I didn't have much help from home. For a stretch I lived on a thirty-dollar grocery budget a week. I planned meals on the back of receipts. I learned which supermarket dropped prices on which evening. I was tired in a specific way that month-end people understand.

I want to be careful here, because I don't want to dress this up. It wasn't noble. It was just necessary. What it left me with isn't a story about discipline — it's a quiet certainty that I can sit with a tight number without flinching, because I've already sat with one.

I'll also say what I got wrong in that period. I assumed being good with money meant cutting everything. No coffee with friends, no small treats, no plane ticket anywhere. I held that line for a while and I noticed something — I became smaller. Less interesting to be around. Slower to say yes to things. These days I tell people: a budget that doesn't have a line for joy isn't a budget you'll keep, and it isn't a life you'll like living. I had to learn that the hard way.

Born in Taiwan. Moved to Singapore as a teenager for school. UK for university. Back to Singapore to practise.

Each place taught me something different about money. Taiwan taught me how a family carries one another, often quietly, often without a written plan. Singapore taught me what it actually takes to settle a household here — the paperwork, the CPF, the long form of belonging. The UK taught me to think about money in a different language, with different defaults around tax, pensions, and education.

I came back because the life I'd already lived — body in one place, family in another, money moving across borders — turns out to be the everyday reality of a particular kind of family here. I wanted to do the work in the place where it would matter most.

Most of the people I sit with are Chinese-speaking. Some are SME owners — F&B, education, services — three or five years into a business that has finally found its footing, and whose personal finances are quietly breathing in sync with the company. Some are new PRs, still working out how CPF and SRS actually fit a life, and whether the policy they bought in Shanghai or Taipei fifteen years ago still does anything for them now.

Some are families with parents back in mainland China or Malaysia, and children preparing to study in the UK or Australia. The household sits across two or three jurisdictions. The decisions don't fit neatly on one form.

The through-line is this: I work best with people whose lives don't fit a single passport, a single currency, or a single financial system. I lived inside that shape before I ever advised inside it.

Clarity, structure, and an honest read. That is genuinely the whole list.

When you sit down with me, the first conversation isn't about products. It's about what your household actually looks like, what your business actually does at month-end, and what the next ten years are meant to feel like for the people you're responsible for. Once those numbers are on the table, the gap stops being a feeling and starts being a figure. Then — and only then — does product choice enter the room.

I don't chase. I don't pitch. I don't email you a quote after one conversation. The industry has a reputation for moving fast in the wrong direction; I prefer the opposite.

I don't always have an answer in the first meeting, and I don't pretend to. Cross-border situations in particular take time — tax in one jurisdiction, legal in another, insurance in a third — and I'd rather take the extra week to coordinate properly with a licensed tax adviser or lawyer than improvise something that sounds clean in the moment.

I'll be honest about what I'm still figuring out. I used to think clear numbers would settle a household — that if you laid out the figures plainly, the anxiety would go. It doesn't, not always. Some of this work is sitting with someone while the numbers stay difficult, and not rushing them to a product to make the feeling go away. That patience is the part I'm still getting better at.

The work I'm trying to do is slower than the industry's usual rhythm. That's by design. A plan you understand and trust is worth more than a plan that closes quickly.