Dear readers,
This week, SG Budget Babe was named the #GoTo platform at the SGX Orb Awards 2026. I wanted to take this moment to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been supporting my work throughout this journey.
While I am incredibly grateful for the award, what I felt most when I heard the news wasn’t excitement. It was gratitude, and a sigh of relief that even those who work as full-time professionals in the finance and investing world acknowledged my work as worthy.
Awards capture a moment. But they rarely capture everything it took to get there.
SG Budget Babe has been part of my life for 12 years now, and I’ll be the first to say that this journey hasn’t been easy. More than a decade of researching, learning, questioning, making mistakes, changing my mind, and trying to become a better investor and communicator. 12 years of sitting down at my laptop – sometimes late at night, sometimes after putting my children to bed, sometimes when I was exhausted – and showing up to do the work.
When I first started SG Budget Babe, I never imagined it would become what it is today. And I certainly never imagined that 12 years later, people would still be reading.
The SGX #GoTo category looks at platforms that empowers audiences with engaging content that raises standards in financial literacy and investment education. The judging criteria specifically looks at how the publisher’s content has helped audiences better understand money and markets, and build the knowledge needed to make informed financial decisions.
That’s why this award is so meaningful, because it captures why I’ve been doing this for so long: to help you guys learn to become better investors yourself.
Investing is one of those areas where intelligent people can look at the same facts and reach very different conclusions.
Hearing an opinion that challenges my thesis is great when it forces me to rethink my investment and check whether I might have overlooked any risks in my optimism. That’s what makes it exciting. But it also means that you’ll encounter a lot of people whose views oppose yours.
The bigger your audience becomes, the more exposed you become. It takes a lot to stick to your beliefs and continue on anyway.
Some of you might already know this, but I’ve been writing since I was 6 and teaching since I was 17. And as a teacher, when I taught General Paper to JC students, my biggest pride came from them jumping grades rather than whether they got an ‘A’.
Running SG Budget Babe is a combination of my 2 biggest loves – writing and teaching. And what makes it so meaningful is when I get to share in your joy when you guys tell me you managed to clear your debts, save your first $10,000, cross your first $100,000 invested, or cheering alongside you when you get your first multi-bagger stock.
Knowing that something I wrote might have helped someone make a better decision, avoid an expensive mistake, start investing earlier, or simply feel a little more confident about money — that is what makes the work worth it.
Along the way, SG Budget Babe stopped being just a place where I documented my own financial journey. It became part of yours too. That’s why this award belongs to you too. Every article you read, share or discuss has helped me to continue doing what I do.
And I truly hope that as you’ve watched me build my finances – from the girl who saved $20,000 in my first year of work to crossing $1 million in my investment portfolio – it has shown you what’s possible. More importantly, it proves that you don’t have to be (or rely on) a finance professional to understand investing.
In this day and age, financial knowledge should not feel inaccessible. You shouldn’t need to come from a wealthy family to learn how to build wealth. You don’t need to work in finance to understand investing. And you shouldn’t have to blindly follow what someone else tells you to do with your money.
That’s why I never tell you what to buy. I’d rather help you learn how to think. How to ask better questions, recognise risks and understand where your money is going. How to distinguish investing from speculation, and eventually become confident enough one day to do it all by yourself.
To everyone who stayed
So this post is really a thank-you note.
To those who have been reading since the early blogging days, thank you.
To those who discovered me only recently, thank you.
To everyone who shared one of my articles with a friend, saved one of my posts, sent me an encouraging message, attended one of my talks, challenged my thinking respectfully, or simply quietly read from the sidelines, thank you.
And especially to those who stuck around during the difficult periods. You may never know how much a kind message can mean when the voices on the other side are particularly loud.
SG Budget Babe would never have made it this far without you.
So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Here’s to continuing to learn, grow and make better financial decisions together…for many more years to come.
With love,
Dawn
