If you're new here, this is the page to read first.
Asia Compounder is a Singapore-based newsletter for people who've already done the basics of personal finance — maxed CPF, opened the SRS, set up a brokerage — and are wondering what comes next.
It's written by me, Zhi Jian Gan, a 31-year-old generalist in Singapore. Over the next 24 months I'm publicly building five compounding income engines from a starting capital of SGD $3,000. A trading bot. A stock screener watchlist. A dividend ladder. Micro-SaaS bets. And this newsletter itself — which compounds attention while the other four compound money. Every Sunday morning SGT I publish the real numbers, the wins, the misses, and the math behind what I'm doing differently.
This isn't a personal finance basics newsletter. If you're still working through CPF top-ups, there are better places to start. This is for the reader who's done that already and is hungry for the next layer.
Three pieces to read first, in order
1. Six places Singapore retail investors quietly leak 1–2% per year — Start here. If you only read one piece of mine, this is it. Three of the six leaks are almost certainly costing you right now. Plug them and you've earned a 1–1.5% raise on every dollar invested, every year, for the rest of your life.
2. The five-engine framework: how retail wealth compounds past CPF and SRS — Once you've plugged the leaks, the next question is structural: how is your wealth-building system designed? This is the framework I run mine on.
3. Why I'm publicly building five income engines from SGD $3,000 — Read this last. It's the why behind the brand — what I'm trying to do, what I'll measure, and why I'm doing it publicly.
That's about 25 minutes of reading. By the end you'll know whether Asia Compounder is for you, and you'll have already pocketed the recoverable drag from at least one of the six leaks.
If it lands, subscribe — the Sunday issue is where the running thread lives. Real numbers, real trades, every week.
— Zhi Jian