As I am aware, people generally do not like egotistic people, that is why I have delayed in writing this article for many years. Since I am nearly 86 years old, I feel that it is important and useful to write this before I die.
My intention is to remind people that they are not immortal and sooner or later they all must die. When they die, they cannot take away their money along with them. It is better to spend their money effectively while they are still alive. This is how I spend my money to create more happiness and when I see happy faces, I am happy.
Very often a lot of people, especially some of my scholarship recipients asked me how did I make so much money that I can afford to give away so many scholarships to help poor students to complete their tertiary education. Since my retirement from IJM Corporation Bhd about 30 years ago, I have been investing in the stock market. It is the easiest way to make money from the stock market if you know how to do it but it is also the easiest way to lose money if you don’t know to invest.
Among all the criteria such as NTA, Cash flow, healthy balance sheet, money in fixed deposit in the bank etc, the most important criterion is profit growth prospect which is the most powerful catalyst to move share prices. When a company reports increased profit, investors will rush to buy the share to push the share price higher. That is how I made so much money.
Up till now, I have given more that 300 scholarships. When they graduated, they do not need to return the money I spent on them and they are not required to work for me. But I want them to remember that when they were poor, I helped them so when they have spare money they should help other poor students. By this chain reaction, I am creating more and more charity workers.
The above 2015 publication shows that I am one the Malaysia champion philanthropists. Although my wealth is the smallest by comparison, but my method of offering scholarships can create increasingly more charity workers as time goes by.