After earning my degree, I applied for jobs at two companies, one from Taiwan and the other from Japan. Despite having little practical experience, both offered me positions as their production manager. Fortunately, the work environment was great and my salary was the highest among my fellow graduates.
I gave all my spare money to my mother, who would buy gold with it. Every month, depending on my salary and spending, she would buy anywhere between a few taels (1 tael = 37.5 grams or 1.2 ounces) and a tenth of a tael of gold.
As she saved more, she purchased a 300-square-meter plot of land on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. At the time, the property cost just a few dozen million dong (VND10 million = US$384.62). My mother told me it was for me when I got married. That plot is now worth billions of dong and gold prices have also skyrocketed.
My parents used to say: “Many a little makes a mickle.” My family is risk-aversive so we often choose gold as a safe investment. The habit of buying gold has been deeply ingrained in my parents. For decades, they would always stop by a gold shop with whatever money they earned from work.
They were just ordinary workers, not investment experts. Their thinking was simple: gold is a precious, rare metal while land will surely be in demand as the world’s population continues to grow.
They would sell gold to buy houses and land when the price was right and then sell those properties to buy the precious metal after a few decades. Now that gold has soared, we can enjoy the fruits of our decades of hard work. When we need to buy a house, a car, or travel, we can simply sell a few gold bars. While we may not be extremely wealthy, our family lives comfortably.
A friend of mine, who earns the same salary as I do, spends all their money on alcohol and karaoke for self-indulgence. To this day, they still live with their parents. Meanwhile, with the gold and land my family owns, I can retire early without any hesitation.
*The opinions were translated into English with the assistance of AI. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match VnExpress’ viewpoints.
