Over the past few months, I have been thinking quite a bit about liquidity. Not liquidity in the financial markets. But liquidity in our personal balance sheets. This thought came to mind after reviewing a few recent statistics about household wealth distribution in Singapore. Singaporeans are known to have one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. But what is perhaps less discussed is how much of our wealth is concentrated in property. And more importantly, how little of it is actually liquid. The Illusion of Wealth For many Singaporean households, a large portion of net worth sits inside property equity. On paper, this looks impressive. Someone may have:

• $1M property
• $200k CPF
• $100k investments

This person technically has a $1.3M net worth. But the reality is quite different. If we break it down, less than 8% of net worth is actually liquid. This raises an interesting perspective- Are we actually wealthy? Or are we simply asset rich but liquidity poor?...