Why Most Singaporeans Start Investing Wrong | 2026 Guide
Everyone in Singapore knows they should be investing. But most people start the wrong way — and the cost isn't just money. It's years of compounding they'll never get back.
I've been working in the digital assets and startup space for years, evaluating investment products and the startups building them. And the pattern I keep seeing is the same: people start in the right direction, but on a shaky foundation.
Here are the 3 most common mistakes — and the simple framework I'd use instead.
Mistake 1: Investing Before Building a War Chest
The most common mistake I see is treating an investment account like a savings account, putting money in monthly without separating emergency funds from investment capital.
When the market drops (and it will), and life gets expensive at the same time, these investors panic-sell. They lock in losses that would have recovered if they'd just held.
Build up your investment war chest before starting to invest
The fix: before investing, keep 3–6 months of expenses in a liquid, accessible account. For an average Singaporean, that means roughly $12,000–$18,000 sitting in a high-yield savings product before going into markets.
Think of it as your defence. Investments are your offence. You can't play offence without a defence.
Mistake 2: Optimising Before Knowing Your Goal
VOO vs VTI. Tiger vs MooMoo?
Weekly DCA vs monthly?
DCA vs Lumpsum?
These are real questions, but they're the wrong first question. Before you optimise the how, you need to answer the what.
“What is this money actually for?”
Investing for financial independence at 45 looks completely different from saving for a property down payment at 35. Different time horizons require different instruments, different risk profiles, and different strategies.
One way to get some clarity is to write your goal in one sentence before you open a brokerage account. For example, "I want $300,000 by age 40 to have the option to not work." Specific, time-bound and achievable.
From here, we can then look at different instruments or tools that each broker can provide, compare them against the risk involved and how much we have as a starting point to use these tools or services.
Every tool in the market has its own risk, and what can work for others might not work for you. So that’s something to consider.
Mistake 3: Staying on Autopilot
One of the laziest tools you can use in a platform is the ‘Recurring buys’ function. This is a great tool, and I use it as well. But think of them as starting points to learn the different offerings that brokers offer, and not an endpoint where you just ‘automate’ your money.
Most investors set it and forget it, without ever building their understanding of what drives markets. I get that because it’s easy and fuss-free. But to become a skilled investor, it’s about understanding what you own in your portfolio and how the macro markets will affect them.
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The Framework I'd Use Instead
Step 1: Build your war chest — 3–6 months of expenses, liquid and accessible.
Setting this up is straightforward and requires consistent discipline. If discipline is something that you don’t have or you succumb to temptations easily, consider setting up an auto transfer of a percentage of your salary into another account, 1-2 days after your salary hits your bank account.
This way, when you don’t see the money, you have fewer opportunities to spend it.
Step 2: Write your goal in one sentence. What are you building, and by when?
Growing up, I didn’t save much money and spent almost whatever I earned. Coupled with the fact that on a $2,000 - $3,000 salary, saving a sum of $10,000 seemed almost impossible.
But I met a friend who talked me into investing. But I needed some war chest, so I printed out a slide with pictures of things I wanted to own and why I wanted them. Thinking back, that piece of paper might have kick-started something in me to become more frugal and focused on saving more money as I grew older.
That piece of paper was stuck to the wall in my room and was a constant reminder to save money for the things I want.
Plot twist: I didn’t end up getting the things on the paper because they were more materialistic. But the lesson I got was building systems and habits for myself.
Step 3: Pick one instrument, understand it well, then diversify. Don't spread before you understand.
In the world of investment, there are many instruments: Bonds, T-bills, Options, Equities and much more. I’ll admit, I’m not an expert in all the instruments, but I know a couple well, and those are the few that I use regularly.
At the end of the day, we are working adults and probably have a day job to juggle together with family and friends. Learning how 1 - 2 instruments work deeply and well enough can probably bring you a long way. A good starting point is learning the difference between investing in a stock/share vs investing in an ETF.
Step 4: Set a recurring buy and review quarterly, not daily.
When I started investing, I found myself logging into the app every day. Just to see where my investments were, am I in the green or am I in the red?
This ended up taking away my focus from my day job, the main driver or source of income that I got. And a few months later, it started affecting my work. And that’s when I told myself that I need to start focusing on my work and only do regular check-ins on my portfolio.
So what I did was to set up a monthly review sheet that will be updated only at the end of each month. This enabled me to effectively do 2 things.
Focus on my day job and not get distracted
Track how my investments are doing
And I have been doing that for the past 3 years. Some people call it extreme to be tracking every month. But I feel that I created a system where I know where my money is going and what it is doing monthly, giving me some space to think if I should be doing some rebalancing or diversifying my money elsewhere.
Step 5: Keep learning consistently. Your knowledge should compound alongside your portfolio.
One of the things that helped me and still is helping me through my investing journey is always staying curious. This is also why I started my YouTube channel, creating content about personal finance and apps that I use.
Being curious about what’s new in the space and being curious about markets is equally important because it allows you to have a macro view on how things are happening around us that affect markets and how newer fintechs are creating solutions to solve these challenges or problems that we might be facing.
Final Thought
The best investment strategy isn't the one with the highest historical return. It's the one you'll actually stick to when things get uncomfortable.
Get the foundation right, and everything else follows.
