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How Peer-To-Peer Lending Supports Financial Inclusion

Financial inclusion is increasingly becoming a buzzword in the finance arena. While crucial in setting a strong foundation for development, the Southeast Asian (SEA) region and the world still has a lot of room for improvement. This is where Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending can step in to steer the money lending economy in the right direction.

Why is financial inclusion important?

Financial inclusion refers to people and businesses having access to affordable and useful financial products and services, delivered in a sustainable manner. This can include access to transactions, payments, credit, savings, and insurance, just to name a few.

A crucial foundation

Financial inclusion is important as it contributes directly to the ability of communities to develop and grow. It equips people with the tools to manage their wealth by having savings and enabling the allocation of resources to various aspects of their lives such as health, education, and business. According to the American Economic Review, financial inclusion can aid in the reduction of poverty through an increase of one’s income potential and asset-building capabilities. Financial inclusion also acts as a safety net to let companies survive financial emergencies through business loans.

The state of financial inclusion in SEA

Despite the importance of financial inclusion, many individuals and businesses still lack access to quality financial services. Global Findex Database found that 1.7 billion people worldwide do not have access to basic financial services, like a bank account. Deloitte reported that less than 60% of Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have access to bank loans as a means of financing. Shockingly, the region around us continues to use personal funds as a dominant source, particularly in Indonesia.

The reality is that SMEs’ financial requirements are more often than not too large for microfinance, yet too small to be effectively served by corporate banking models. As such, there are many underserved companies with poor access to mainstream financial services and need to rely heavily on alternative financial services.

How does P2P lending support financial inclusion?

The presence of financial exclusion reveals a potential market for lenders. In particular, P2P lending can help address the issue of accessibility while providing an alternative form of investment.

Accessibility upgrade

P2P lending brings lenders and borrowers in direct contact through a common platform. By skipping traditional financial institutions through a convenient digital platform, the P2P lender is able to enhance access to much-needed working capital. Lenders and borrowers are not bogged down with the same degree of bureaucracy and regulation imposed by traditional credit providers, and other measures of assessing creditworthiness are in place. Instead of waiting for a week to process loan applications, a more immediate relief can be provided through P2P lending for business emergencies in the form of SME loans, bridge loans, invoice financing, and more.

Viable investment opportunity

On top of the improved access to funds, P2P lending also adds more options to the pool of investment types available. As opposed to a large starting capital of $10,000, P2P lending allows easy entry with affordable options starting from $20. New and seasoned investors alike can look forward to diversifying their portfolio through this form of alternative investment.

In this digital age, there are lesser excuses for financial inclusion to remain problematic. Banks and Fintech businesses need to ensure that the underserved community is not left behind. P2P lending has the potential to reinvent the funding sphere.

Read Also: Step-By-Step Guide To Investing With Funding Societies In 2019

Singapore Fintech Association Launches New Marketplace Lending Committee

In response to the dynamic growth and future potential of the P2P lending space for both companies and retail investors, the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA) recently announced the creation of Marketplace Lending Committee. Kelvin Teo, CEO and co-founder of Funding Societies was appointed as Co-Chair of this newly-created committee.

P2P Lending: A Growing Sector

The alternative finance industry, or marketplace lending, has become increasingly popular regionally in recent times and has been growing at an impressive pace.

In 2016, Southeast Asia’s alternative finance market grew 363% from 2015 to a value of US$215.94 million, with marketplace business lending amounting to more than half of the market’s value. Further data showed that the market size of Singapore’s marketplace business lending grew almost 10x from US$9.43million in 2015 to $88.4million in 2016.

In 2016, MAS created regulations for securities-based crowdfunding. Funding Societies was one of the first to acquire a CMS license and has grown significantly to become the leading platform in Indonesia as well as Malaysia.

Singapore Fintech Association’s Marketplace Lending Committee

Marketplace Lending Committee aims to represent all marketplace lenders, nurture and build relationships, design and promote good practices, and play a part in ensuring that the industry remains a reliable and viable source of alternative financing for business owners.

The committee is made up of online lenders licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore of the Capital Market Service License.

The Marketplace Lending Committee’s initial tasks are to design and promote best practices, industry guidelines and codes of conduct in a collaborative and open manner. This is to encourage transparency between market participants.

Kelvin Teo, Co-Chair of Marketplace Lending, CEO of Funding Societies, stated:

“Working together, we believe this is the first step towards building a healthy and sustainable marketplace lending industry.”

To find out more about Marketplace Lending committee or the Singapore Fintech Association, please visit their website.

(Images Credit: Singapore Fintech Association)

P2P Lending, on a Global Scale

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, banks started making consumer lending stricter. Cheap, quick loans became difficult to acquire. Some consumers found it difficult to get loans even though they had good credit history. The environment of scarce credit and lengthy approval process became an opportunity for the alternative finance market, resulting in the growth of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending space.

P2P lending utilizes online platforms to connect investors and borrowers, solving the issue of costly and time-consuming credit approval. The business model offers a cheaper and more accessible alternative credit solution. P2P lending has grown worldwide, and has become one of the fastest growing areas of alternative finance. But will this growth continue in the future?

The Growth of P2P Lending

P2P lending connects individuals with surplus money to invest with those seeking a loan. Depending on the P2P lending platform, one can apply for personal loans or small business loans. Add technology and alternative data utilization to the mix and you have a powerful new credit solution.

What was once a form of alternative finance is now entering the mainstream. The P2P lending industry is transitioning from its startup phase into adolescence and is moving fast towards becoming a high growth, mature, and stable market, which will bring great benefits to consumers of financial services.

So far, the industry has grown up without any significant growing pains. Defaults have stabilized and the market has continued to grow.

Global Opportunities

Globally, the market has shown tremendous growth. While the P2P lending industry has not fully matured, the situation has created enormous investment opportunities worldwide due to lending gaps and borrowers’ increased interest in P2P lending services.

In different parts of the world, P2P lending is looked at differently. In Canada and the UK, for example, P2P platforms are regulated as an intermediary, while in Germany and France, regulators regard P2P lending as similar to banks. In the United States, regulations vary from state to state. India has a significant estimated worth of P2P lending volume in just two years while China’s P2P market has grown exponentially over the past few years. The above shows how far P2P lending has grown since 2005, when the first P2P platform began operating in the UK.

Challenges for the Industry

As good as the P2P lending market appears right now, there’s still a long journey ahead to tackle. The P2P lending market hasn’t yet reached its full potential. There are many out there who still aren’t comfortable enough with the relatively new business model to use its services.

Additionally, there are several factors that will determine the future growth of P2P lending.  If interest rates rise, the number of loan defaults may also increase. Leading P2P lending platforms need to work around this or risk having the bubble pop. Either way, if the economy is overall doing well, the number of defaults would remain stable.

Another factor is competition from banks and other financial institutions. As P2P lending platforms gain mainstream attention, financial institutions have begun to take notice. However, many banks have chosen to partner with strong P2P players to widen their reach to the underserved segment at a lower cost.

So, will P2P lending continue to grow in the future? All signs point to “yes” – as any market experiences a transition to reach maturity, new risks will emerge. But so long as platforms continue to guard and innovate against such risks, the future of P2P lending is bright.

This article was written by Funding Societies, Singapore’s leading peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform. They provide working capital loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with attractive investment opportunities to the broader public.  To learn more about them, visit their website here.

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. You can find out more about what they do on the DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.

Success Story – P2P Loan To Manufacturer

This article first appeared Lets Crowd Smarter, a digital publication about crowdfunding and investing in Singapore and Asia.

Not all crowdfunding schemes are fraudulent. We (the Let’s Crowd Smarter Team) have invested in over 50 crowdfunding schemes across different platforms and our overall experience has been great.

Yes, there are a few problem loans whose repayments are always late. And we’re lucky not to have encountered any outright default yet. But we have seen more successes than failures.

We believe that as long as investors stick to the more established crowdfunding platforms (such as Funding Societies, MoolahSense, Capital-Match, Crowdo and New Union) and have a widely diversified portfolio, the overall returns should be positive.

As an example, our p2p loan portfolio is earning a cash return of about 1.5% per month, or about 12% so far this year.

Read Also: Spotting Red Flags in Crowdfunding Schemes

Crowdfunding Success – A Real Story

Here, we’ll share with you a crowdfunding success story – a p2p loan that we participated with Funding Societies in December last year. The effective interest rate was a cool 23.6% per annum. (We also have similar successes with other platforms and will share them next time.)

The loan ID is SB-1512005 but we’ll respect the borrower’s confidentiality and not disclose its identity. Below are some of the key features of the loan.

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To summarize, this company is borrowing $100k as working capital for a $780k project. It promised to repay over 6 months. Effective interest earned by the lender is 23.6% per annum. As this is a 6-month loan, the actual  interest earned is roughly half of that.

Funding Societies provided further financial information and comments on the borrower. We did a quick review and find the risk to be acceptable. Hence, we decided to lend $1,000 on this loan in December last year.

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Prompt Repayment

Over the next 6 months, this borrower repaid promptly every month. The final repayment was in June 2016. On this loan, we earned the 23.6% effective interest rate per annum – exactly as promised.

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Verifying Our Return On Investment

Now let’s verify that we are indeed earning 23.6% effective interest per annum.

But before we do that, we’ll need to explain the difference between effective and simple interest rates.

Effective interest rate refers to the interest earned on the outstanding loan. When the borrower repays its loan every month, the outstanding loan balance declines. The interest earned by this declining loan balance is known as the effective interest.

On the other hand, simple interest is basically the total interest earned by the loan as a percentage of the initial loan amount. It does not take into account the declining loan principal or the repayment every month.

We prefer to use effective interest rate. Using Excel’s IRR function as shown below, we easily show that the effective return is indeed 23.6% per annum.

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Is it really so easy?

If crowdfunding is so easy, why are there still plenty of negative news about defaults and frauds?

In our view, most of these platforms that ran into trouble are poorly managed. Many are fly-by-night operators that nobody has heard of. Their loan underwriting process is not credible at all. For the recent First Asia Alliance case, there were so many red flags, including the fact that the director of the crowdfunding platform is also the shareholder of the investee companies.

But there are also well-managed crowdfunding platforms that already have or in the process of getting CMS licenses from MAS. This includes Funding Societies, Capital Match, MoolahSense, New Union and Crowdo.

We (at Let’s Crowd Smarter) are comfortable with and have invested our own money with this second group of crowdfunding platforms. Overall, our investing experiences have been great. Of course, we do have some problem loans and late repayments, but these usually form less than 10% of our total portfolio. Success stories still far outnumber the failures we had.

If investors choose the correct platforms, investing into crowdfunding schemes can generate attractive returns without too much risk as shown in this example.

Read Also: Traits Of A Successful Trader

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. Funding Societies is Singapore’s leading peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform. They provide working capital loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with attractive investment opportunities to the broader public. If you are interested to know them better, you can find out more on what they do on our DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.

How To Manage Your Investment Portfolio Like A Pro

Managing an investment portfolio is a lot like managing a business. With a disciplined, patient, and proactive approach, you can preserve and protect your wealth while attaining financial independence. Your investment strategies might differ, but you’ve to begin with some principles that are consistent at its core, which not only match the markets but your individual characteristics as well.

It’s also important to remember that not all investments in a portfolio may generate returns. It’s a lot like a badminton match – you will lose some points, but to win a game you’ll just have to win more points than you lose. Read the following keys to investing and know how you can ace those points!

Invest only in assets you understand

In many cases, retail investors take action in the fear of missing out on a “sure-shot” investment opportunity. The key is to avoid any frantic decision. Don’t worry about what you don’t know, worry about being sure on what you do know. If you don’t know how an investment actually works, you can’t know whether you really need it. There are plenty of alternative investment opportunities like P2P lending, which are easy to understand and implement. Consider investing in those.

Diversify

It is a prudent approach to create a basket of investments that provide broad exposure within asset classes. It spreads the risk and reward within your investment portfolio. When it comes to investing, the more diversified you are, the better.

We also advise diversification within an asset class or sector. For example, if you invest in P2P lending, you can distribute your investments across as many SMEs as possible to prevent loss in case an SME defaults. Even defaults hardly disturb your rate of return.

If you’re investing in stocks, make sure to not put more than 4% of your total portfolio in one individual stock. This will ensure that if a stock or two faces a downslide, your entire portfolio doesn’t suffer.

Invest for the long term

We believe that a long term horizon is a necessary ingredient for investment portfolio success. Investing is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t get carried away with the ebb and flow of the market, and stay patiently invested. Also keep in mind that past performances are no guarantee of the future, and individual situations may vary.

Rebalance your portfolio regularly

Over time, your investments may fall out of sync with the original asset allocation. You may also want to restructure investment allocation. Re-assess your portfolio every six months or annually. Try not to tinker with your investment portfolio at short intervals of time – it’s also important to give time to investments.


This article was written by Funding Societies, Singapore’s leading peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform. They provide working capital loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with attractive investment opportunities to the broader public. 

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. If you are interested to know them better, you can find out more on what they do on our DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.

5 Steps to Digitise Your Business in a Tech-Savvy World

Today’s technology grows at such breakneck speed. Compare the gadgets and online tools you are using today to ten, or even five, years ago. Technology is inseparable from daily life. Take online shopping. These days, many people prefer it to brick-and-mortar shops.

Business owners must adapt to the new digital age to stay afloat and thrive. Everyone needs to digitise their businesses. How to do so? Here are 5 steps:

Set a goal

Never build anything unless there is a set goal. Why do you want to digitize your business? What are your goals? Do you want to gain more sales? Do you want to create awareness for your business? Setting goals will help you decide which digital strategy you need to utilize.

Create your own sites

Invest your capital in creating your own business website. Make the address as simple as possible, preferably using your brand name as the web address. Prioritise design. Don’t hesitate to hire a web designer if you can’t do it yourself. Your company website is your business face. People will assess how professional your business is based on your site interface.

It doesn’t stop with design. You also need clear and useful content on your business website. Make sure that your content is related to your target market. You will gain more leads if you have high-quality content aimed to your target market.

Read Also: 5 Tips to Create & Manage the Best Business Website on a Budget

Use the power of social media

Now that you have your own website, you need to spread the word. This is where social media will help you in the most effective way. Create a Facebook page, an Instagram account, a Twitter account, even a LinkedIn page – utilise as many social media platforms as long as the platform is still within your niche and your company has the capability to maintain these accounts.

Invest in advertising. You can also broadcast your website’s high-quality content via social media accounts for branding.

Create a mailing list

Creating a mailing list will help you to keep in touch with customers. Hold promotions and discounts to attract more people into subscribing. You can also use referral campaigns to gain more subscribers from loyal customers.

Arrange your projects online

If possible, start digitising manual processes. By making your company more digital, you can cut down on inefficiencies and evaluate the overall workflow. Schedule periodic reviews to continue streamlining and evaluating your operations to keep your processes up to date.

Digitising your business is easier than you think. And the benefits are many. Adapting to digital technology will lessen the possibility of human errors and develop more efficient business processes. In the long run, digitising your business saves both time and money.

Read Also: Grow Your Business Without Breaking The Bank

This article was written by Funding Societies, Singapore’s leading peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform. They provide working capital loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with attractive investment opportunities to the broader public. 

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. If you are interested to know them better, you can find out more on what they do on our DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.

Default Rates in Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms

To paraphrase Crowdfund Insider’s “The Ultimate Crowdfunding Guide,” with peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, the risk an investor accepts is default. Every P2P lending platform has its own policy on default, and all investors need to take the time to understand these policies in order to protect themselves.

Because every P2P platform has its own default policy, and because the P2P lending business model is relatively young, we must be cautious when making generalizations about default rates across all platforms. Specific to Funding Societies, we fully aim to keep default rates close to banks – not exceeding 4 to 5% of loan amount to secure healthy returns for investors, even accounting for the cost of default.

The industry’s youth may cause investors with low-risk tolerance to view P2P lending as an unpredictable instrument. Generally, there is a consensus among investors that P2P lending constitutes a higher-risk, but higher-reward investment.

Is this belief true and valid? Let’s take a look at the global trend of default rates in P2P lending platforms.

Default Rates on P2P platforms in the USa

Let’s begin with default rates in USA platforms. In this fascinating article, the author analysed historical trends of default in two well-known USA platforms, then drew conclusions about the default rate of the P2P industry.

(Note that the article was published in 2014, so some might find it dated. However, the analysis within is worth a read)

The writer pointed out that from 2007 to 2008, the USA economy was doing very poorly and that both Lending Club and Prosper were operating under their earliest and most imperfect credit models, which means the default rates of 2007 and 2008 can be waved off. Since 2010, both platforms have averaged a 5% default rate and are likely to continue having solid repayment rates in the future.

The article ends with a positive conclusion about the P2P lending industry. The author wrote: “I see refined underwriting algorithms and mailed borrower marketing, encouraged investor capital and purpose-built technology all repositioning itself over and over for the past eight years until they are arrive at the stable place they hold today. I see analysis and sweat and reanalysis in these charts, and in the end I see it culminating into one of the most simple and creative investments our country has ever seen.”

His statement underscores that under the right circumstances, which includes an innovative team and rigorous credit policies, P2P lending platforms thrive and provide attractive returns while lowering default rates. The key is in selecting a trustworthy platform to invest in.

Read More: 5 Reasons To Invest in Peer-To-Peer Lending

DEFAULT RATES ON P2P PLATFORMS IN THE Uk

Moving on, let’s focus on a well-known and respected P2P lending platform from the UK: Funding Circle. In their statistics page, Funding Circle claims that its average annual default rate stands at 2%. The rate has also remained solid over the years (calculated from 2012-2017), showing that platform maturity and good credit underwriting will stabilise default rates.

funding societies’ DEFAULT RATES

What about our own platform, Funding Societies? Here is our own statistics page. Historically, our default rate across the region has lowered overtime, which reflects the analysis of P2P lending platforms in the USA: continuous platform improvement and rigorous credit policies will lower default rates.

Another worthwhile read about the risks in P2P lending is the study released by the UK Peer-to-Peer Finance Association (P2PFA). Some of the study’s pertinent points include:

  • The P2P industry has created more choice in the financing and investment market.
  • P2P lending platforms conduct credit risk assessment using the financial industry’s best practices.
  • P2P lending does not create systemic risk. Platforms are well-placed to weather a downturn in the credit cycle – defaults would need to increase at least threefold to reduce average interest rates for investors to below zero.

So let’s go back to the question we asked earlier: is P2P lending a higher-risk investment? Not necessarily.

However, the P2PFA study presented two caveats: that there is a good regulatory framework for the P2P industry and that investors are educated. For the first point, MAS has begun setting up regulations for P2P lending platforms. Funding Societies has always been compliant with regulations; we hold the CMS license required by MAS to operate, along with taking due diligence and our credit assessment process very seriously.

For the second point, there will always be risks in investing, including risk of default in P2P financing. But there are ways to mitigate such risks.

Read More: Investing In An Uncertain World

how can i diminish p2p investment risks?

How do you diminish P2P investment risks? You diversify your investment and reinvest your returns.

Diversification means distributing your funds across as many investment opportunities as possible to prevent loss in case of default. The more diversified you are, the more protected your investment. Even defaults hardly disturb your rate of return. If you choose not to diversify, you stand to lose most of your investments should a default occur.

Meanwhile, reinvestment refers to the act of funnelling your investment gains into new investment opportunities to maximise your returns. Without reinvestment, you only receive the expected rate of returns. But with reinvestment, you can maximise (sometimes doubling, even tripling) your returns while minimising your investment risks in case of default.

For more information on diversification and reinvestment, see here.

When investors fully understand the risks of P2P lending and take proper precautions to protect their funds, the advantages of investing in P2P lending clearly outweighs the risks. In fact, it’s very likely that most investors who keep diversifying and reinvesting their investment will continue to earn positive returns.


This is an updated version of an article posted on this blog. Click here for the original article.

This article was written by Funding Societies, Singapore’s leading peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform. They provide working capital loans for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with attractive investment opportunities to the broader public. 

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. If you are interested to know them better, you can find out more on what they do on our DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.

Businesses That Should Consider P2P Loans

Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending is the practice of lending money to individuals or businesses through online platforms that match lenders and investors directly with borrowers. Anyone can take advantage of P2P loans, so long as they pass the required credit assessment.

P2P loans are particularly advantageous for small businesses and SMEs; applying for financing through a P2P lending platform offers a faster, simpler process – very useful for small businesses that need quick hits of working capital and cash flow aid. Whether or not you need a business loan depends on your financial condition, but if you are looking at financing options, P2P loans can be the loan product for you if you fit the categories below.

Businesses Looking to Grow

Looking to expand your business? P2P lending platforms can be the financing source for you. P2P lending platforms often target small businesses, with the appropriate revenue requirements and loan sizes to prove it.

Businesses Looking for More Working Capital and Cash Flow

A small business, no matter how profitable or healthy, needs constant cash flow. Because P2P lending platforms provide faster processing and approval notification time, businesses can get their funding faster than from a traditional financial institution. This is useful for certain businesses, as they need running cash flow more than others. Wholesalers, for instance, always need to buy more stock inventory.

Read More: 5 Useful Tips To Keep Your Business Finances Healthy

Younger, Smaller Businesses

Why is P2P lending an excellent option for young SMEs? Because even though they may be financially healthy and are generating good revenue, they usually have no suitable assets for secured loans. P2P loans generally have competitive rates and no collateral requirements, making it ideal for small businesses hungry to expand their companies (or maybe just need financing to fund a new project). P2P loans have a structure that is short-term with competitive rates.

Read More: When Should Your Business Apply For A Loan?

5 Reasons You Should Invest in Peer-To-Peer Lending

As peer-to-peer (P2P) lending grows in popularity as an alternative investment option, people pay more attention to the opinion climate about it. However, the hype surrounding P2P lending mostly talk about how the system enables SMEs and borrowers to get funds with less restrictions, by cutting out the traditional middlemen (banks and other financial intermediaries). Not much has been said about what is in it for the P2P investor.

This video explains the advantages P2P lending brings to the investor, and how they can increase their returns while helping out SMEs.

Read also: 5 Reasons To Invest In Peer-To-Peer Lending

Find out more about P2P lending at Funding Societies here.

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. If you are interested to know them better, you can find out more on what they do on our DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.

4 Things About Your Personal Finance To Handle Before Thinking Of Starting Your Own Business

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong made a trip down to Silicon Valley earlier this month to visit some of the top start-ups in recent years. During his trip, he met some of the top entrepreneurs in the world over including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla & Space X CEO Elon Musk.

Starting your own business is not easy, especially if you are not born with a silver spoon. Aside from needing a top notch idea, a great team for execution, the perfect timing, the right investors and a nice dose of luck, you also need to get your own personal finance in order…first. Failure to do so would cause unnecessary stress to an already stressful career.

Before you think of taking the plunge to be your own boss, here are some personal finance matters that you should consider first.

Read Also: 5 Signs You Are Ready To Change Your Job

1. Can You Embrace A Simple Lifestyle?

When you run your own business, a large part of the effort you put in is to grow the business for tomorrow. Start-ups or new businesses do NOT work for today. They work for tomorrow, while balancing today’s need.

When you hustle, you hustle for tomorrow.

This has two main implications.

The first implication is that if (and that’s a big “if”) the business succeeds, you get to enjoy the long-term value that it brings to you, its shareholders. That could be in the form of passive income to shareholders or a big exit through an eventual sale of the business.

The second implication is that you are not going to be paid well (if any) for running this business of yours today. And that “today” can easily last 4 to 5 years.

Forget about flashing your CEO namecard at clubs or buying expensive bottle of drinks for your entourage, you wouldn’t be able to afford it. Those restaurant meals that your friends are enjoying may also be out of the question.

Rather, homecooked dinners followed by cheap coffee are likely to be the norm. So would squeezing onto the train to get to work each morning.

Billionaire Elon Musk once lived on about $1 per day in his college days. The reason for him doing so was to test himself if he really had what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and be able to survive under extreme circumstances. Elon Musk rational was that if he could survive on $30 per month on food, then it shouldn’t be too difficult for him to earn and survive on that amount as an entrepreneur.

He could. Can you?

2. Are You Able To Endure Being Underpaid?

Businesses take time to grow. If you are creating a start-up (i.e a business that nobody has done successfully), you will need even more time to grow it.

People who work regular jobs expect to be paid salaries that commiserate with their average output. When we are worth $3,000 per month as a fresh graduate, we expect to be paid that amount. When our skills and experiences increase, we expect to be paid more.

When you are working on your own business, this logic needs to be thrown out of the window. Even if you are the super employee/boss of the company doing everything from closing business deals, delivering great products and services to your clients and being a one-man accounting team, you might still be paid $2,000 per month – for doing a great job.

You might be working harder and smarter than all of your peers and still be earning the least amount of money among everyone whom you know, at least for the first few years.

Can you handle that?

3. Can Your Family Cope Financially With Your Decision?

Most of us have financial commitments in life. Some of these commitments are long-term, such as paying for the home mortgage and taking care of the needs of our children and elderly parents.

Like it or not, financial commitment to our family is one thing that we cannot get ourselves out from. You might be able to live a simple life, but your family would need to be able to cope and live with that decision you are making.

The hard and unfair truth is that not all of us are born into family that can manage the stress of financial uncertainty.

4. Do You Have A Strong Savings Plan?

Even if your business eventually turns out to be sustainable in the long run, personal cashflow challenge is one aspect that you cannot ignore.

Most businesses have cashflow challenges. Account receivable is one area that finance managers are always keeping a lookout of because poor management of your cashflow can potentially sink an otherwise profitable business.

From an individual standpoint, there might be days where you might need to allow your business to owe you unpaid salary in order to stay afloat. Your personal savings will have to step in for these challenging days in order for you to tide over short-term cashflow difficulty.

Read Also: 5 Reasons To Quit Your Job Even If You Have Not Found A New One

Funding Societies is a DollarsAndSense Brand Connect partner. If you are interested to know them better, you can find out more on what they do on our DollarsAndSense Brand Connect Page.