While I can still give pro bono financial seminars, I would do my best to present to any secondary school willing to have me. Even so, only Raffles Institution has a systematised programme to invite speakers from around the country to talk about special topics like Finance as part of their Gap Semester programme, which targets 16-year-olds exempted from doing the O levels by being ultra-smart. Picking someone to speak in another secondary would require a lot of red tape, and perhaps my slides, which do have controversial material, would not pass the scrutiny of the more orthodox educator.
However, Raffles Institution thinks that my material is acceptable for their students, so this is the fourth time I'm conducting "Millionaires of a Better Age." In 2024, I was invited twice due to the positive feedback from the students themselves.
This time, I have to be careful as some folks managed to find my blog, so teenagers will be reading my posts these days.
Firstly, I tried using the very crude MBTI survey tool I built myself for my investment courses and found that the smartest teenage boys tend to be INTJs/INTPs. They are incredibly logical, and some may not be as conscientious as the RI brand name would imply.
Next, I wish to address something strange that happens when I openly talk about volunteering in RI. I get brickbats from social media, implying that I am helping the rich get richer. I agree—teaching dividend investing will always give the folks with more investible capital an advantage. But it is unfair to talk about this when I volunteer in RI because I've been asking around to help even in my own secondary school.
There's no system for me to do a similar programme elsewhere because O level preparations are more important.
I have, in RI's defence, conducted a survey on pocket money they receive.
The majority get about $100-$200 monthly, so parents can decide on pocket money based on this data. Do note that there will be outliers. I detected two whales who get over $500 monthly, but about 4 have very little pocket money.
The savings data is also quite interesting.
Except for the same two whales (maybe they were from ACS Primary), most teenagers find it hard to save money.
Finally, folks must remember why presenting ideas to intelligent teenagers can be rewarding. Some specific points in this latest encounter left a deep impression on me.
a) When I entered the classroom, the kids updated each other that Iswaran had been sentenced to 12 months. I got the news from them because they actively monitored it throughout the day, whereas I wondered why the bubble tea in the school canteen was so expensive at $4! They must be trained well to be intrinsically motivated to follow current affairs. At their age, I'm more interested in who the current WWF Heavyweight Champion was. ( Those days, it was always Hulk Hogan or The Ultimate Warrior. )
b) The first really great question was whether knowing some kind of URA 15-year master plan can lead to the possibility of buying houses that increase in value over time. I was stunned because even I didn't follow the master plan when I bought my EC. To answer the question, I explained that knowing public information may not lead to outsized gains because other people see the information as well, which I had to explain second and third-order thinking to the audience.
c) The second impressive question was whether introducing Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs would be a bullish or bearish indicator of cryptocurrencies. It was not designed to impress because students thought about both scenarios in painful detail. I told him I didn't know the answer, but I am more inclined to agree with his argument that transparency in digital currencies will drive grey and criminal use cases to employ existing crypto or Monero even more fervently.
I have graduated with 700+ students in my ERM class, and my students include PhDs in finance, board directors, and MAS regulators. I can't get the high-level Q & A participation like what I get from these 16-year-olds.
At this juncture, just to entertain readers, let me share the stupidest question I ever got from someone 2-3 years older than the RI youths who study in a tertiary institution I will not name on this blog. The question was," You are a millionaire, but I want to make my first million earlier than you. Can you teach me how to do this?" I was stunned like a vegetable for a moment at how dumb this was; I could only mutter, "Maybe you can do some sales job because of the unlimited upside." Even today, I pray that the person who asked me this was a troll, not an idiot.
I can't, honestly, coach someone on something I cannot do myself.
This gives readers an idea of why I always make some room in my schedule when RI contacts me.
But that should not stop other schools. I've also been dying to do a pocket money survey on ACS and Chinese High.
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