A financially savvy former refugee will retire next year at the age of 50 despite never having earned a university degree.
Tung Nguyen, 49, fled Vietnam by boat to Australia with his mother and father in 1979, when he was just three years old.
He now works in Sydney’s inner west as a senior corporate finance manager at Link Group, specializing in investments and equities.
His wife, Sylvia, is a project manager, and the couple plans to retire when their daughter finishes high school at the end of next year.
The secret behind Nguyen’s wealth is how he leveraged the use of his self-managed retirement fund to invest in gold and cryptocurrencies.
Tung Nguyen, 49, came to Australia from Vietnam when he was three and has now earned enough money to retire with his wife when he turns 50.
The finance guru said he has been investing in gold for as long as he can remember.
“We were on the losing side of the [Vietnam] war and mom got dad out of a prisoner of war camp using gold, so… I understand the value of gold in a crisis,” he told the Australian financial review.
Nguyen’s mother had bribed a prison guard in South Vietnam to release his father from the camp before the family could flee to Australia.
His mother has since died and his father remains in Sydney.
Nguyen explained that he got tired of paying ‘average financial advice’ from professionals in 2015, which led him to start investing on his own.
The secret behind Mr. Nguyen’s wealth is how he leveraged the use of his self-managed retirement fund to invest in gold and cryptocurrencies.
While neither he nor his wife have financial qualifications, they managed to start filling their self-managed super fund with investments in bitcoin and gold.
Cryptocurrencyspecifically bitcoin and etherium, represent about 20 percent of Nguyen’s wealth.
Typically, gold and cryptocurrencies are not ideal for a retirement investment due to their volatility, but Nguyen is confident that now is the time to buy them.
He said money printing during the pandemic and wars in Ukraine and Israel are destabilizing the value of the dollar.
Nguyen plans to spend his retirement traveling with his wife while helping others learn tips on how to make a fortune like he did by writing a book.
He recently created a Facebook group with the goal of advising people how to invest to save a million dollars.
“It seems like a good ending to the chapter, my wife and I could continue working… and have more money, but we wouldn’t be happier,” Mr. Nguyen said.