Build Wealth Slowly: An Immigrant’s Journey

A Letter to The Frugal Doctor

It’s been 15 years since you left medical school and 23 years since you left The Motherland for a life in Australia. What a journey it has been for you.

Count yourself very blessed to have had the opportunity to leave your birth country to pursue a dream in another country. Not many people on the African continent see that dream come to fruition. You were only 18 years old when you left.

Your family is unconventional by many standards. You don’t know how many siblings you have; there could be twenty or more, who knows? There are four of you born in the same year, all to different mothers. You have a “twin” sister who is 8 days younger than you. Your parents separated when you were 6. Your mother had to work in the city whilst you lived with your grandparents. Your father had to work hard to support all his children. Be grateful that you are among the known children he supported financially. This is the reality of your family life.

Your early years in Australia were a challenge. Do you remember some of the jobs you had to do? Factory work packing vegetables in a cold room, and assembling door locks. Do you remember the office cleaning job and smell of the male urinals? That was the part you hated the most, but you had to do it. When you got the debt collecting job, that meant you could work in an office; you were on top of the world. You didn’t have to labour much. When the clients you called enquired if you were calling from India because of your accent, you shrugged it off and did your job.

Whilst in medical school, you did all you could to get some income whilst not letting your grades suffer. You looked for opportunities and got a research scholarship that meant that you could publish your research in journals. What an accomplishment; that would help with securing employment once you became a junior doctor.

Do you remember the holes in your shoes as you walked to your hospital placements? You had the one pair of shoes for placements that were so worn that they had holes in them. As you walked in the rain, your feet would get wet. As the hospital rounds occurred, your mind was preoccupied that your feet were going to smell and that your colleagues might find you smelly.

For many months you wore those worn-out shoes because you couldn’t afford to get a new pair of shoes. The job you had as a shop assistant only paid enough to cover your food costs. You made the sacrifice to go with very little food so you could buy some new leather shoes that would last longer. If only you knew about opportunity shops then, you would have bought the shoes for less.

You were fortunate that your father was able to pay the tuition fees. As a result, when you finished your studies you didn’t have a student loan. However, you carried the weight of knowing that you would forever be “indebted” to your father and have the responsibility to look after family in The Motherland.

So when you were finally working as a doctor, you felt like you had arrived. You could earn a good income. When you started your medical career, you had $5,000 in your superannuation account, thanks to the employer contributions from all the work you did in your student years. You were starting in the green and had no debt. Some of your colleagues were not so lucky.

You knew you wanted to build wealth. After all, you were an immigrant; there was no windfall to come. You saved diligently, given you were used to living on less as a student. You followed the suggestions of society: buy a car, save for a house, travel and build some investments. You were not sure how to go about the investment side of things. You tried to meet with financial advisors, but they couldn’t help as you didn’t have money for them to manage.

So you started learning what you could about money and investments. Do you remember when you made your first investment? You said you would only invest money that you could afford to lose. So you bought some blue-chip shares with $370 in 2013. That was your way of trying to get some knowledge. Over the subsequent 4 years, you would put a little more money that you could afford to lose. This was because during that time, your focus was on building a house deposit.

You bought your first home soon after you turned 34. That was a sense of achievement in its own right because you had broken the cycle. Your parents had failed to own their own homes; now here you were making a mark for yourself. In those early years of getting your mortgage your focus was on clearing the mortgage. As a result, you didn’t invest into your long-term wealth. Fortunately, your superannuation was working in the background as your employer continued to make contributions.

You then had a light bulb moment in 2021 when you found out about Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE). You were house rich and investment poor. So you resorted to paying yourself first and investing. Fortunately, you had realised by then that the share market was not a gamble. If you bought the market through index funds, you would build long term-wealth.

Now you can see the progress you have made. You are not too far from having 1 million dollars invested. You have heard about compound interest and that it works. Now you are seeing the compounding working for you already. When you started your investing journey it didn’t look like much was happening initially, but something had started already. You had your first 100K invested at age 34, 500K by age 39, and 958K by age 41.

Your money is making more money; that is the wealth engine you have built now. You can see the growth above the blue line in chart above. Now that you have a money-making machine, you can continue to buy back more of your time. You are now in your peak earning years, but you have decided to reduce your hours and not chase more money.

You are no longer house rich; you have a wealth engine. Your wealth engine consists of superannuation which you can only access after age 60, and the Freedom Portfolio, which you have immediate access to. You can continue to add to the wealth engine and it will grow. But now you don’t have to add as much; that’s the beauty of such a machine. If you stopped adding to it today, you could fully retire at age 51.

So here we are, all these many years later; you have successfully built a money-making machine. Congratulations.

You have come a long way. Remember: you are a wealthy person who once had holes in their shoes.

With love,

The Frugal Doctor