Recent Interest In Passive Investment

My life has been pretty smooth sailing until the time when I went for my National Service. My parents have been brainwashing me with examples of the friends having no burden as their children are good enough to get scholarship and fund their own studies. Examples of rich people who retired and have no income but yet their children still live off them. Hence, their point is to ask me to get a scholarship and give them money when I start earning money. 

During my NS life, I adhered to their advise; I gave them and my grandmother a total of $250 which increased to $320 when my rank was increased. I tried to spend my weekends with them and also with my friends. However, it took me a long time before I realised that my bank account was stagnant. It dawned on me that I actually do not have much savings. What about university? Do I have the money? Then my friend talked to me about POSB Invest Saver about how the dividends will beat the savings account interest rate. I didn't pay much attention to it initially until towards my ORD when I heard more people talking about how they did investments and earned from it.

I started reading up a bit on passive investment. Being the lazy and risk adverse me, in the form of  'gambling', which is speculative investment, I believe that passive investment is the way to go for me. I would not have to spend a lot of time staring at the computer screen and timing the market, or even read all the different financial reports of different firms. Luckily I have a friend that is interested in investment for retirement and we shared our knowledge which really helped us to cover some blind spots that we might have missed.

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT ADVOCATE PASSIVE INVESTMENT. ANY FORM OF INVESTMENT HAS TO BE DONE ON YOUR OWN DISCRETION AND I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOSS.