By Lorna Tan, Senior Correspondent

A self-confessed fashionista, Ms Tjin Lee says she is doing what she can to help Singapore grow into an international fashion hub.

The founder of boutique events management and public relations firm Mercury organised the Singapore Fashion Festival for the Singapore Tourism Board in 2004 and last year. Mercury was also behind this year's Audi Fashion Festival in May.

Ms Lee, 35, set up Mercury in 2001 with two former colleagues from high-end fashion retail outlet Club 21. She worked there as a marketing communications executive for six years, from 1995.

The three put about $50,000 into the business. Ms Lee's partners left in 2003 before the firm broke even in 2005. It now boasts a seven-figure annual turnover.

Ms Lee also keeps tabs on her stock portfolio and gets tips from her mother, who used to be a remisier. Her portfolio, which is worth a six-figure sum, got a boost when her grandfather gave her Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) shares as a wedding gift last year.

In May, Ms Lee became a shareholder of music school Wolfgang Violin Studio at UE Square. Its two other owners are her sister, celebrated violinist Min Lee, 26, and their mother Annie Lee, who is in her early 60s.

Ms Lee holds a Bachelor of Arts (English Literature) honours degree. She graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1995 and is married to Mr John Lim, 29, who works in Swiss oil trading firm Glencore.

Q: Are you a spender or saver?

I'm both a spender and saver, but I'm more of a spender. Life is too short to spend your time hoarding money. I work hard so that I can spend on food and travelling. Yet I do have forced savings that I invest in property as well as a portfolio of stocks.

I don't have a fixed monthly savings target. Whenever I have spare funds, I put them in the stock market so that they are locked up there. I consider my property rental income and stock portfolio as forced savings for my retirement.

Q: How much do you charge to your credit cards every month?

I charge five-figure sums to my cards monthly as I put 90 per cent of my expenditure on my cards, including company expenses where possible.

I make my credit cards work hard in collecting airline frequent flier points, so I don't have to buy air tickets. I carry four credit cards to capitalise on opportunities offered by the respective merchant partners. I always pay my credit card bills in full.

I visit the ATM once every two weeks and withdraw between $200 and $400 for incidental spending.

Q: What financial planning have you done for yourself?

I handle my own financial planning, managing my own stock portfolio, which is a mix of conservative blue chips and some more volatile mid-sized counters.

Examples of the blue chips are CapitaLand, SPH and OCBC Bank.

I have little time to monitor the stocks, so I buy blue chips and hold them for the long term. When I have the time, I monitor the volatile stocks like Ezra and Ausgroup.

When picking stocks, I look at volume and I look at charts to check out the historical price range. I may average down if the stock prices fall as long as I have the holding power. For insurance, I have basic hospitalisation cover.

Q: Money-wise, what were your growing-up years like?

My father is a doctor and my mother was formerly a remisier. I have three sisters and I'm the second child. My father is sensible and down to earth. From him, we learnt to be practical with money and the value of hard work. My mother doesn't spend much on herself, but she would not hesitate to splurge on her daughters and grandchildren. I may have inherited a bit of both values from my parents.

We used to live in bungalows and semi-detached houses. We moved house more than 10 times, but have kept within the Holland Road and Bukit Timah areas.

Q: How did you get interested in investing?

I started my own stock trading account in my early 20s when I got my first job. I am lucky that my mother is a former remisier and a savvy investor. I have always looked to her for stock tips.

Her advice to me when I first started out was 'never invest what you can't afford to lose' and that the stock market is the world's biggest casino. My first stocks were all blue chips such as City Developments, SPH and OCBC.

My mother also taught me when to let go and cut losses. That was the hardest thing for me to learn as a young investor because I got emotionally attached to the stocks and was against the idea of letting anything go at a loss. She showed me how it is much more effective to recover those losses from a faster-moving counter. That was a very valuable lesson.

Q: What property do you own?

I made my first property investment when I was 30 in 2004. It was a 550 sq ft studio apartment next to Farrer Park MRT station. Within a year, the property price shot up more than 30 per cent from the $355,000 I had paid for it, so I sold it and invested the profit in a studio apartment in the River Valley area. It is being rented out.

Q: What's the most extravagant thing you have bought?

My husband and I splurged a five-figure sum on our honeymoon in Cape Town last year. It included a safari in Kruger Park and a road trip in Cape Town. The memories are truly priceless. No regrets.

Q: What's your retirement plan?

I have too much energy to think about retirement. I would get too restless just sitting around.

A perfect plan would be to work in a consultative capacity well into my golden years.

Another plan for financial independence would be to indulge in my love for decorating - buy older properties, refurbish them and sell them for a profit. I would need about $10,000 a month in my golden years.

Q: Home is now...

A 5,000 sq ft three-storey family home in Neil Road that my parents bought two years ago. I live there with John, my parents and two younger sisters. My elder sister, a doctor, lives with her family in the western part of Singapore.

My husband and I are tracking the property market and waiting for the right opportunity to invest in another property.

Q: I drive...

A red Mercedes-Benz C200. We plan to buy an Audi Q5 or A5 by next year.

Q: My worst investment to date...

I have accumulated stocks over the years. Those that I bought at a peak over the past two years would be worth less than half of what was invested. An example is Hotel Properties, which I bought at $6 a share two years ago. I'm still holding on to it. I bought it based on a tip and I've learnt that I should do my own research.

However, so long as I have the holding power, these are only paper losses. I have also hedged some of these investments, picking up additional lots at below current market prices.

Q: My best investment to date...

The $10,000 I invested in starting up Mercury in 2001. It has been eight years since and as with any small business, the journey has been rocky. But the rewards of growing your own enterprise, which now has a seven-figure annual turnover, are immeasurable.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.