Millionaire Teacher - Andrew Hallam - An Inspiration

Andrew Hallam is the author of the book: Millionaire Teacher: The Nine Rules of Wealth You Should Have Learned at School. He teaches Personal Finance at Singapore American School. And yes, he is really a millionaire teacher.

A Teacher? A Millionaire? A middle class salary? Able to grow his wealth? These are probably the questions you have in mind.

I got to know about Andrew Hallam recently when i watched an uploaded YouTube video of his interview that was first broadcast in Singapore on Channel NewsAsia's program, Money Mind. Watch the video below (both part 1 and 2).

After watching the video, i went down to the nearest bookstore to purchase his book. I wanted to find out more about the man and how he succeeded. A little more about Andrew. He did not grow up in a wealthy family. His father was a mechanic and his mother worked part-time at a retail store. He had to basically work for what he wanted, even in his teens. At 20, he was working through summer washing buses at a bus depot to pay for his college tuition. It was there when he met an insightful mechanic who happened to be a millionaire.

To cut the story short and putting some spoiler alert in place, Andrew learnt that it was not always necessary to have a high paying job, in order to build wealth.

Of course, the rest is history.

A Teacher, can do it. A Mechanic, can do it. I will do it. You can too.

Many times, we just do not believe that is possible to grow our wealth when our monthly expenses are high. It is always easy to say: "I can only save if I earn more." The truth is that adopting responsible spending is difficult. You can be earning S$10,000 a month but not saving at all. Familiar? Somehow our expenses always catch up with whatever increment (from our jobs) we get. Differentiating the wants and the needs is difficult. I believe the journey taken by Andrew or the mechanic was challenging, yet achievable.

Forced monthly savings has been a habit for me. This allows me to spend only after I have saved. As the saying goes: "It is not how much you earn, but how much you save (then invest)!" Easy? No! Possible? Definitely!

Andrew Hallam is an inspiration. I hope you will be inspired to be more proactive in planning to be financially free.