RGS girls see themselves as "daughters of a better age".
Sadly, we live in the Age of Incels, where anonymous trolls seem to be extremely salty of her in various chat rooms. Jean has now joined the ranks of Female financial influencers who somehow, rubbed many single men the wrong way. You can read about her here (link).
Criticisms of her are largely unjustified. I find it quite unfair the incels picked on elite school status and concluded that she had a lot of privilege. Others were fixated on her childless status, only to admit that their own male FIRE role models are also single and childless.
I don't think Jean Voronkova is privileged personally, wealthy families will not be so fixated on their daughter's professional status. My bet is that she's firmly middle class.
With so much hypocrisy around this case, I think Jean deserves a more balanced analysis of her approach to FIRE, so this is what I intend to do with this article.
a) How Jean earned her money
The first point of analysis will always be the way someone who succeeded was to earn her money. There seems to be some jealousy of the fact that she's a lawyer. Her salary was $120,000 after six years so my guess is that she's some kind of senior associate-level lawyer. While the pay is high, the hours are brutally long, and most importantly, we have to accept that logically Jean would not have saved that much given only 6 years of work. Folks who worked longer with lower pay may have more due to the effects of compounding.
The second phase of her life is not bereft of income, Jean started multiple businesses which I doubt were roaring successes because, in the end, her passive income was around $2,000 USD from various properties she has.
If we look at the complete picture, FIREing in Singapore would be hard for the Voronkova couple even at this point in time, which leads us to the second point of the analysis, which is about saving money.
While I am not Jean, I thought exhausted senior associates should try in-house legal counsel work first for more pay and less work before jumping to any conclusions about the profession. But that's just me.
b) How Jean saved her money
It is this second point that is the most instructive for readers. Too little credit was given to Jean for the fact that she is GEP by the incels from social media. It takes a high intelligence to understand that a situation is unsustainable and an even higher one to adapt to a new country to solve a problem.
Jean is outstanding she shopped in multiple jurisdictions like a good lawyer should.
Getting out of SG is smart because you leave that toxic workplace where divorce lady lawyers battle with Chanel bags. In class reunions, you also would have to put yourself in groups where other lady lawyers start to talk, and compare lives and spouses. If she is a classic INTJ FIRE seeker, she would actually really hate doing this. ( NB: We cannot conclude her MBTI with such scant data )
Geo-arbitrage in Bali is smart, but ERM students know Kuala Lumpur is even smarter these days as digital nomads have started to really ramp up the prices in Bali, but Jean obviously puts a lot of emphasis on lifestyle and Bali really looks good. According to research from my students which I do every course, you need about $1,500 SGD per month to lead an ex-pat lifestyle in Bali.
But Jean is smart, she shopped for a future home and has spent time in Vietnam and Bali, so this is something we can all learn from.
c) How Jean Invests
This section is one that had me the most stumped. We have very little data on how Jean derives her passive income.
Overseas property generating $2,600 SGD would barely support the couple as a family unit even without kids, so I suspect they are running thin. Bali is also a favourite place for digital nomads so I expect inflation to be increasingly an issue. With this amount of information, it seems that Jean's version of FIRE is threadbare, so the content creation on Youtube may be the start of a new business initiative.
Personally, I think the forex risk and inflation should justify maybe adding a home into the rental mix but I admit that rents can increase in tandem with inflation. This is an area of risk I would not like to get myself into.
Is there a way for the couple to load up some REITs in SG and wire dividends to their expenses account? I think it's worth exploring that move.
All in all, I'm glad young folks are coming out of the woodwork with their version of FIRE. Hopefully, the older folks will have their back when they come under FIRE from Incels.
I'm definitely biased towards Jean as she is almost an inverted version of myself.
She pursued Law to become Financially Independent.
I pursued Financial Independence to do Law.
Heng I did not watch her videos, I might throw a fit ! Maybe one day she will reveal more about her source of passive income. I think that's more important that the fluff because it completes my analysis.
ReplyDeleteLikely a few Vietnamese properties since she was operating a surfing biz there for a number of years. Foreigners can buy Viet land or properties on 50 yr leasehold with a 1- time renewal for another 50 yrs.
ReplyDeleteHopefully she can depend on Viet development (and inflation) for higher rental appreciation over the years. If she had S'pore property, she could depend on currency arbitrage with the strong SGD.
KL not suitable as they still operating surfing biz. Almost certainly targeting angmoh & other foreign clients in Bali.
It's more of a barista FIRE than total retirement.
The Asiaone article, not unlike Jean, took us on one huge unnecessary loop before arriving at a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, if her goal was to retire in Bali with a meagre 2k passive income a month, she could have done so much much earlier (and dare i say easier) by working as a lawyer for just a few more years. Much ado over nothing.