When financial writer Lorna Tan's daughter Jacelyn graduated from university, she wrote her a letter.
It was full of motherly encouragement but also practical advice: Budget realistically. Watch your spending. And remember, a man is not a financial plan.
Tan, 55, shared these tidbits and more on Wednesday at The Straits Times Book Club, where she spoke about her new book, Money Smart: Own Your Financial Destiny.
More than 280 people gathered to hear her share the complexities of financial planning and tips on how to capitalise on the Central Provident Fund (CPF) system.
Many peppered her with questions about their own monetary quandaries, from concerns over dollar-cost averaging transaction fees to the merits of multiplier accounts.
She said: "It's very important to have multiple sources of income flows because you don't know how long you will be living and how much you'll be paying later in your lives for healthcare, what with inflation eating into the value of your dollar."
She began retirement planning in her 30s and keeps a spreadsheet that balances her needs and wants - from a basic lifestyle to a lavish one - against her income flows, whether insurance plans, CPF payouts or stock dividends.
Formerly The Sunday Times' Invest editor, she is now head of financial planning literacy at DBS Bank.
Money Smart, a collection of her articles, is her fourth book and follows her 2018 bestseller Retire Smart: Financial Planning Made Easy. Money Smart has been on The Straits Times non-fiction bestsellers list for six weeks, including four weeks at No. 1.
Senior technical supervisor Adriana Lim used to collect clippings of Tan's articles and said she found the session "enlightening, informative and very humorous".
"She brought up strategies for optimising your savings that I never thought of," said the 62-year-old.
Nan Chiau High School student Wu Shu Fei, 16, said she gained a lot of insights from the talk. "I usually find such things very complex, but she phrased it in a way that was easy to understand."
The Straits Times Book Club sessions will take a break next month and return in January.
• Money Smart: Own Your Financial Destiny ($28) is available at major bookstores.
