By Lorna Tan, Finance Correspondent

Eye surgeon Francis Oen's foray into financial investing began like a lot of other Singaporeans' ventures.

It was during the heady days when everyone was seemingly making a fast buck by betting on Malaysian shares trading on Singapore's Clob International.

'Many people were talking about quick money, and even in the hospital while at work, there were groups of people huddled around the TV teletext watching the share market,' he recalled.

But things took a nasty turn for investors when Malaysia unexpectedly banned trading of its shares on Clob in 1998.

Fortunately, he was not too badly burnt. He had limited the amount he played in the stock market, thanks to his prudent money habits.

In 2001, his interest in investing was again piqued when he attended an investment talk on options trading. It started him reading up on shares and options trading as well as on chart and trend analysis.

Today, Dr Oen, 47, has four investment portfolios, two of which are managed by professional financial advisers.

'Although I would like to be more active in trading, my job prevents me from monitoring the market as closely as I would like to. Hence, I tend to invest for the medium to long term so that I can sleep better even if there are daily fluctuations,' he said.

In April, he set up Singapore Eye & Vision clinic at Paragon with his good friends, Dr Wee Tze Lin, a cornea and Lasik specialist, and Dr Bobby Cheng, a retina and uveitis specialist. He invested $250,000 in the venture.

Prior to setting up the eye clinic, he headed the Glaucoma Service at the Singapore National Eye Centre.

He is married to general practitioner Janelene Leong, 42, and they have three sons - Timothy, 15, Nicholas, 12, and Jeremy, 10.

Q: What are your money habits?

Much of my money, about 60 per cent, is saved in fixed deposits and a money market account as I have just set up a new clinic and need the liquidity.

The balance of 40 per cent is invested in mutual funds, stocks and shares.

I am generally a saver although I do have some indulgences once in a while, especially when it comes to IT, electronic gadgets and golf technology.

I would say that I am rather prudent.

Q: When did you start your financial planning?

I started financial planning a little late in life. Doctors in training don't earn very much. After five years of medical school, I underwent six more years of ophthalmology training. This was followed by three years of sub-specialty training in glaucoma. I started to do proper financial planning only when I was more settled. I began my serious investments about six years ago.

Q: What are your current investments?

I had toyed with stocks and shares in my early days but after getting burnt a bit by the Clob saga, I had left it alone for some time.

I have four portfolios. There is one that I trade on my own and where I invest in small-cap stocks with good growth potential.

Many of them did well last year and I was fortunate enough to liquidate most of them by October, hence avoiding the downturn that followed. I am about 85 per cent up on that portfolio over the past five years.

I have two other portfolios which are managed by professional financial advisers. However, because of the recent downturn, the returns are somewhat muted. One, which was started five years ago, is up 25 per cent, and the other, which I set up three years ago, is up about 9 per cent.

I also have a small US portfolio which I used initially for options trading but over the last three years, I have used it to buy exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US market.

So far, I've bought a gold ETF, an agricultural-commodities ETF, an oil-related ETF and a China-linked ETF.

Q: What about insurance planning?

I bought two whole life policies after graduating from medical school. I bought two more when I got married in 1991. I also have a term policy which is to cover my family's expenses just in case anything happens to me.

I have other policies as well for health, crisis cover, critical illness, hospitalisation and surgery. In total, the cover is in excess of $1.25 million, but I intend to adjust this from time to time to suit my needs.

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

My younger sister and I were from an average middle-income family. My mum was a nursing officer and Dad was a medical sales representative. We learnt early in life that money didn't come easy and we had to work hard to achieve our current careers.

During our secondary school days, Dad told us that he would not send us to university if we didn't get scholarships to fund ourselves, since he himself didn't have the benefit of a university education. Hence, my sister and I had to work hard to get good results in our examinations.

I managed to do well enough to get a PSC (Public Service Commission) Local Merit Scholarship to study medicine at the National University of Singapore, while my sister managed to get a PA (People's Association) scholarship to study law.

Q: What has been a bad investment?

Two stand out. Shares in the Clob market, especially MUI Bank, which eventually was 'delisted' and the stock price was so low that it wasn't worthwhile to redeem them. The other was my foray into options trading. I lost about US$15,000.

Q: Your best investment to date?

Probably our property investments. My first property in River Valley Road gave me a good return. We bought it for about $288,000 in 1991 and sold it for $650,000 in 1998. We bought our current 3,300 sq ft intermediate terrace house near the Bukit Purmei area around the end of 1998 for $1.25 million. It is probably worth $2 million now.

Q: What's your retirement plan?

I hope to be able to work less when I reach 55. Doctors usually don't really retire. Most hope to still be able to practise, albeit at a less hectic pace.

I hope to grow our present clinic by recruiting new doctors in the years to come.

By the time I am 55, my youngest son would be 18 years old. In the case of my other two sons, hopefully one would have finished university while the other would be midway through it. They would soon be financially independent and therefore, hopefully, I won't have to worry too much about them.

My wife, who is a general practitioner, also hopes to be able to reduce her working hours and perhaps spend more time with me going on golfing holidays.

By still maintaining some clinical practice, we would have enough income to sustain us relatively comfortably in our later years.

Q: And your car is .......?

A four-year-old metallic silver Mercedes S280.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on July 20, 2008.