STI: In this household, she gives the cue for investing

Apr 12, 2004

In this household, she gives the cue for investing
by Leong Chan Teik

IT IS safe to say that in many families, it is the man who controls the purse strings and invests the surplus savings.

But that is not entirely so with one young go-getting wife, Ms Mah Ching Cheng.

The savvy 24-year-old not only invests her own money, but also her husband's - as well as a sum of money belonging to her mother-in-law.

The brainy Ms Mah - who balances her high-achieving career by chilling out with a game of pool and by learning kick-boxing - is certainly in a position to be in charge.

As an analyst with Fundsupermart, an online distributor of unit trusts, she delves into investment opportunities day in, day out.

She writes about them for Fundsupermart's bimonthly magazine and for its website www.fundsupermart.com

She joined Fundsupermart last year after graduating with a first-class honours degree in banking and finance from the Nanyang Technological University.

It's not just unit trusts that she examines but stocks as well. 'I look out for good stocks and advise my husband on their potential.'

But when it comes to deciding on matters such as holidays and home renovation, it is her husband, Mr Edwin Teo, who makes the final decision.

After all, he is the one with more money and is paying for most of the expenses, she says. An insurance adviser, he started work three years ahead of her after graduating from Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

In investing, he recognises that she is driven to excel. It stems from a passion and need to be financially independent that began as far back as her student days in Commonwealth Secondary School.

'I wanted to free my parents from some financial burden,' she recalls. Her father was a taxi driver and her mother a housewife. They have another child, a boy now aged 10.

Ms Mah, who had virtually zero savings in her student days, began taking on temporary jobs from the age of 16. Her first such job, right after her O-level exams, was as a cashier at an NTUC FairPrice supermarket.

While studying at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, she gave part-time tuition. During vacations, she also worked in places such as Fu Yu Manufacturing and Standard Chartered Bank.

Still, money was seldom enough. 'I felt worried at times, especially during the end of the month when I needed $50 to buy a monthly bus stamp and my bank account was near empty.

'I tried to scrimp during hard times and managed to make ends meet,' she says.

'I felt envious of friends who were able to save quite a lot of money from the allowance that their parents gave them.'

However, the tough times helped forge her character.

'Being self-supporting at an early age made me grow up very fast. I was constantly thinking of ways to manage my time to excel in all that I was involved in - that meant studying, working and dating.'

In the polytechnic, one of the best things in her life happened: She met her future husband.

And she discarded her ambition to become a lawyer, chosing instead to study banking and financial services.

Subsequently, she emerged among a handful of students with results sterling enough to qualify for a place in university.

Her boyfriend and one of her aunts chipped in some money to supplement bursaries she had obtained to see her through university.

Learning about financial markets and investing became a passion. 'I learnt to look at numbers and make something out of them and to apply the theories to real life,' she says.

Beginning from about six months ago, she invested a total of $13,700 in the following unit trusts and the results are:

Aberdeen China Opportunities: Up 22 per cent;

Aberdeen Pacific Equity: Up 7 per cent;

HSBC Indian Growth: Up 7 per cent;

DBS Shenton Thrift: Up 14 per cent; and

OCBC Savers Thailand: Down 4 per cent.

The results look good, partly because she was lucky in her timing. Stock markets rebounded in the second half of last year.

She also invested $10,000 of her husband's money and reaped $2,500 in profit in just four months.

Early this year, she sold off half of the unit trusts that she manages for her husband in order to help pay for their new home. It is a $415,000 condominium of 1,250 sq ft near Paya Lebar MRT Station - a long way from the three-room Housing Board flat she grew up in.

And as she steps up her efforts to become a more savvy investor - she is on the way to achieving Chartered Financial Analyst certification - she will put far behind her those miserable days when she didn't have enough money for a bus stamp.