SINGAPORE - Ernest Tan fishes out a package from his bag in the lobby bar of a hotel in Bugis.
It is a family heirloom, he says, before carefully peeling away several sheets of old newspapers to reveal a rusty curved knife. The contraption is precious because it reminds him of where he came from.
For six years, since he was nine, he used it daily to dehusk 150 coconuts at his grandmother's stall in Beach Road.
"You need at least 30 strikes with this thing to dehusk a coconut. I did 150 coconuts a day," he recalls.
His studies took a back seat; helping the family make ends meet was more important. He left school with abysmal O-level results but a keen sense of self-awareness.
"I had a good pair of hands and I knew if I was willing to work, I'd be okay," he says.
And beaver away he did - from plumber to taxi driver to karang guni man to computer technician - before he found his niche in sales and financial planning.
Today he is the director of two companies: Jopez Academy, which conducts financial literacy courses and workshops for adults and children; and Ernest Resources Agency, which sells motor insurance.
He has a net worth of about $3.5 million.
"It's nothing to shout about but I'm proud of it," says Mr Tan, 54.
He is the eldest of five children.
"My mother was illiterate. My father came from Swatow in China and tried his hand at all sorts of things - soya milk hawker, illegal taxi driver and contractor - to make a living."
Together with his paternal grandmother, the family lived in a one-room rental flat in the MacPherson area.
"My grandmother was really entrepreneurial. She sold vegetables at a market in Beach Road but somehow managed to get a contract supplying freshly grated coconut to prisons, the army and hospitals. She sold 900 coconuts a day," he recalls.
The former student of Sennett Estate Primary and St Thomas Secondary had to help out at the stall from the age of nine.
"I was expected to be at the stall every day after finishing school. I didn't finish until 11pm. It was hard and dirty work," says Mr Tan, adding that he had his daily shower at the market because he would be covered in dirt and bits of husk.
"I'd be so tired I would fall asleep in my father's truck on the way home every night."
The hard labour not only affected his studies, it also took a toll on his health.
"My grandmother was very frugal. When we had chicken rice for lunch, we would just have rice, cucumber, sauce or, at most, offal." The irregular meals and the lack of nutrition resulted in gastric problems and, eventually, a bleeding ulcer when he was in his teens.
"I ended up in hospital and needed 13 stitches. I was just passing out blood. I had to be warded for a week, and was given seven bags of blood."
His grandmother made a decent income but unfortunately Mr Tan's father did not have a head for business and treated his grandmother like an automated teller machine.
"She gave my father money to start a contracting business. The construction industry was booming at that time; the government was building a lot of flats. My father's business was good but unfortunately, he really did not know how to manage money."
In fact, when she died, the old woman left behind a pile of debt because she had also borrowed heavily from a tontine to help out her son. (A tontine is an informal micro-financing scheme; members make regular contributions to a common pool and loans are given to those who make the highest bid.)
With her death, the older Mr Tan's financial woes became even more dire.
"He often fought with my mother, who took over my grandma's business, over money," Mr Tan says, adding that his father eventually died a bankrupt.
These incidents traumatised him and made him resolve he would never let money floor him the way it did his father. Mr Tan left school with just four O levels, and failed his English.
In the two years before he was called up for national service, he helped out with his father's business. A fast learner, he was soon a competent carpenter, plumber and electrician.
"I'm a pretty good handyman. Do you know I do all my own plumbing and have never paid for an electrician?"
His two-year stint - unpaid - as his father's right-hand man put paid to any ideas he had of taking over the business.
"I saw how tough it was and how he struggled. But my father was not exactly a role model, especially in the way he handled money," he says.
In the army, Mr Tan was deemed unfit for combat training because of his ulcer, and put on special projects involving a lot of computer and IT work.
He proved to be adept at it and, after his national service, found work in the virtual display unit of Singapore Refining Company.
Although his starting pay was just $405 a month, he managed to save $20,000 in five years to get married in 1985.
Things hummed along nicely for the next few years. Mr Tan worked hard, enrolled in computer schools to pick up all sorts of programming languages and also earned himself a diploma in computing. He changed jobs several times, each job more senior and better-paying than the last.
To bump up his bank account, he also freelanced as a plumber and even started a karang guni business collecting used computer paper and old newspapers.
But in 1992, he was retrenched from a major oil company.
"We were expecting our third child, we had an HDB flat coming, and we had a maid," he says.
He drove a taxi for six months before getting another computing job.
"I took the opportunity to also get a bus and a crane licence. I wanted to have as many options as possible. I may not have much of an education but I have a pair of hands," he says, adding that he also boosted his income by selling educational videos at shopping centres during weekends.
A friend unexpectedly changed his life.
She asked him to sit an examination to sell financial products. If he passed, she would get $200 for referring him, and she would give him $100.
He passed and signed up to become a part-time insurance agent as he felt he had nothing to lose.
He started out selling single-premium products - which worked like fixed deposits - and in the first year was selling as many as 80 policies a month.
"I guess I was good at it because I understood the language they spoke and the sort of financial issues they faced. Many were going through what I went through in my childhood."
Within two years, he hit the Million Dollar Round Table, a prestigious group of high achievers. In 2001, he became a member of the even more prestigious Court of The Table, which boasts the top 3 per cent of financial practitioners.
"I easily earned more than $20,000 a month then."
But he wanted to do more than make money. He wanted to understand it.
"The Chinese, for instance, say that talking about money breeds bad feelings, but seriously, is money that bad?"
So he assiduously started attending money management courses and talks by financial and motivational gurus such as Robert Kiyosaki, Anthony Robbins, T. Harv Eker and Deborah Price.
Many of the talks are expensive so Mr Tan hit on the ingenious idea of becoming part of the volunteer crew of Success Resources, the company which brings many of these speakers to Singapore.
"I'm a slow learner so by becoming a volunteer crew, I could attend the same workshop a few times to absorb what I've learnt," he says.
In 2008, his career suffered a setback. Then a consultant with an independent financial advisory, he had bought a database with contact details of insurance agents and had invited some of them to find out about a new business model.
Another financial advisory company complained that he was poaching staff, and Mr Tan's boss fired him, accusing him of being "wanton and reckless", which led to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) suspending his licence.
"In those days, it was common practice and there was no Do Not Call Registry or any law prohibiting consumer lists," he says.
Feeling aggrieved, he twice approached his Member of Parliament during a Meet-the-People Session. "I just wanted justice and my MP said, 'If you want to prove that you are innocent, take them to court'."
Mr Tan did. On the first day of a five-day trial, the judge called the two parties to his chambers. They reached a settlement. Mr Tan also got back his licence from MAS.
By then, he had started to conduct financial workshops where he would play games like Kiyosaki's Cash Flow but with a Singaporean twist - with elements such as Baby Bonus - to teach financial literacy.
A supervisor at a childcare centre who attended one such workshop was so impressed that he asked Mr Tan to conduct one for children.
That led the father of three to come up with a boardgame for pre-schoolers called Money Jr.
"I came up with a simple concept to teach children about saving, spending and sharing. The game requires parents to play it with their children. It is good for bonding and I also want parents to know what exactly we are teaching their children," says Mr Tan, who became a millionaire at 47.
His children - one son and two daughters - are aged between 22 and 27.
The game proved to be a hit with parents and has since been played at several childcare centres, including those from the Blossom Education Group and Cherie Hearts Group.
He followed this up with a book Raising Financially Savvy Kids, which he took two years to write.
"I hope to do two more," says Mr Tan, who also holds talks on money management for corporations such as the Central Provident Fund, Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and Ministry of Manpower.
"People always say it takes money to make money. I say it takes guts and ideas."
This article was first published on June 8, 2014.
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