Participants in a quiet learning setting

What Participants Say

Accounts from the grove.

The people who completed our programmes describe what they found, and what changed. We have not selected only the positive ones.

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400+

Participants

4.7

Average Rating

Years Running

91%

Would Recommend

Participant Reviews

Their words, not ours.

Lim Hui Ling

Queenstown · Household Trunk

I had a vague sense of our household finances but could not have told you what our actual CPF balance was or how the mortgage fitted into the picture. The first two sessions alone were worth the fee. I left with a balance sheet that I actually update now.

March 2025

Rajesh Kumar

Bishan · Tending the Canopy

The format is different from most courses I have attended. The discussions are substantive because the group is small and everyone has skin in the game. The behavioural finance sessions were uncomfortable in a useful way. I understood, for the first time, exactly why I had made certain choices that had not served me well.

February 2025

Soh Cheng Wei

Tampines · The Roots

My mother passed without a will and the estate took eighteen months to settle. I enrolled in The Roots because I did not want to leave the same thing to my children. The instructor was very clear on the practical steps. I now have a completed documentation folder, which I have already shared with my eldest.

January 2025

Nadia bte Azman

Jurong West · Household Trunk

Solid course. I wish the session on insurance had been longer — we covered a lot of ground in a short time and I still had questions at the end. The CPF session was excellent and gave me a clearer picture of what we actually hold and what the numbers mean. The summary document is something I have shared with my husband.

March 2025

Tan Wei Chong

Serangoon · Tending the Canopy

I had been reading about investing for several years but had never assembled a coherent picture. The portfolio construction sessions helped me see what I actually had versus what I thought I had. The fee analysis week was a bit confronting but necessary. The workbook is the most useful thing I've produced from any course.

February 2025

Patricia Lim Siu Kwan

Bukit Timah · The Roots

The instructor made the legal framework accessible without oversimplifying it. I appreciated that she did not pretend the process was straightforward when it has genuine complexity. We spent a full session on the LPA, which was the part I had been avoiding for years. I have now registered mine.

March 2025

Participant Journeys

What brought people here, and what they did with it.

Challenge

A couple in their early fifties had been putting off the estate planning conversation for several years. Neither had a current will, the CPF nominations had not been reviewed since 2009, and they had no clear picture of what their family would face if something happened to either of them unexpectedly.

Programme

Both enrolled in The Roots together, attending the same cohort. The shared experience allowed them to work on their documentation as a pair, with each bringing different parts of their household picture to the exercises. The instructor provided specific guidance on CPF nominations where the couple's circumstances were non-standard.

Outcome

Within six weeks of completing the programme, both had updated wills, reviewed CPF nominations, and registered their LPAs. They produced a household reference folder with their adult children's names on the cover. One participant noted it was the most useful thing she had completed in a decade.

"We had been meaning to do this for years. The course gave us a structure and a deadline."

Challenge

A man in his mid-forties, recently retrenched, was using the transition period to reassess his household finances. He had never looked at his CPF account in detail, was uncertain about the mortgage position on his flat, and had a sense that his insurance coverage was inadequate but did not know how to evaluate it.

Programme

He enrolled in the Household Trunk programme. The balance sheet and CPF sessions provided the most value — he discovered that his CPF Ordinary Account balance was significantly higher than he had believed, and that his insurance gap was more modest than he had feared once it was mapped clearly.

Outcome

He completed the household financial summary and subsequently enrolled in Tending the Canopy in the following term. The two programmes together gave him a comprehensive view of his position that he described as the most useful work he had done on his own finances in twenty years.

"I started the course expecting to feel anxious. I left the first session feeling clearer."

Challenge

A retired teacher in her early sixties had received a lump sum from her Medisave top-up and CPF Life activation, and had accumulated some savings in an investment account that had been managed by a third party for several years. She had not reviewed the fee structure or the allocation in that time.

Programme

She enrolled in Tending the Canopy. The fee analysis session prompted her to examine her existing investment account carefully for the first time. The portfolio documentation template helped her see that the allocation was not suited to her current income needs — a point she had not been able to articulate before the course.

Outcome

She did not make any immediate changes during the programme — the course explicitly discourages reactive decisions. Over the following three months, she had a clearer and more productive conversation with her existing adviser, resulting in a rebalanced allocation she now understands and monitors.

"I am not in a better portfolio because someone told me to change. I'm in one because I understood what I was holding."

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Telephone

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