Participant Accounts
In Their Own Words
The accounts below come from adults who have attended Maranth programmes. They are written in the spirit of honest reflection rather than endorsement.
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Years Running
340+
Participants
4.7
Average Rating
88%
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What Participants Say
Cohort Reflections
Names are real and used with permission. Dates reflect when participants attended.
Siew Lin Tan
HR Manager, Toa Payoh
I joined the Personal Finance Reading Series mainly because I felt embarrassed that at 52 I still couldn't properly read a bank statement. The vocabulary alone was worth the six weeks. The group was small enough that I didn't feel judged for asking what probably seemed like basic questions.
Personal Finance Reading Series · April 2025
Rajesh Kumar
Civil Engineer, Bishan
The Document Literacy Workshop was practical in a way I hadn't expected. We worked through actual CPF statement pages rather than invented examples. I'd been filing those statements for years without reading them. The weekend was dense — I needed a few days after to go back over my notes — but the reference card has stayed on my desk since.
Document Literacy Workshop · March 2025
Michelle Woo
Secondary School Teacher, Tampines
What I valued most about the Reflection Circle was that nobody tried to tell me what to do differently. The reading opened up conversations I hadn't had — with myself, really. The journal has entries in it that I return to. Four months sounds long, but the pace was right.
Mid-Career Reflection Circle · Jan–Apr 2025
Bernard Lim
Retired Logistics Director, Bedok
I was suspicious before I started — I've been to financial education events before that were just sales pitches wrapped in slides. This was completely different. Nobody tried to sell anything. The reading was genuinely interesting, the other participants asked good questions. I'm doing the Reading Series next.
Document Literacy Workshop · February 2025
Priya Chandran
Pharmacist, Jurong West
I came to the Reading Series thinking I knew the basics already. I was wrong about several things. The glossary cards have a precise way of defining terms that I hadn't encountered elsewhere. The cohort included people from very different professional backgrounds, which made the discussions richer than I expected.
Personal Finance Reading Series · March 2025
Helen Ng
Accounts Manager, Queenstown
My second Maranth programme. I did the Document Literacy Workshop last year and came back for the Reflection Circle. The format is consistent — reading first, discussion second — and I find that suits me better than being lectured to. The facilitator knows when to step back and let the group work through something.
Mid-Career Reflection Circle · Jan–Apr 2025
Participant Journeys
Before and After a Programme
These accounts trace the experience of three participants through one of our programmes — what they arrived with, what shifted, and what they took away.
Andrew Tan, 49 — Personal Finance Reading Series
Business owner, Clementi · Attended February 2025
The Starting Point
Andrew had run a small business for twelve years but described himself as someone who relied entirely on his accountant to interpret financial documents. When the accountant changed, Andrew realised he had no way to evaluate whether the numbers he was being shown made sense. He joined the Reading Series to build enough vocabulary to ask better questions.
The Six Weeks
He found the first two sessions focused on vocabulary slower than expected but said by the third session — which covered statement structure — the pieces started connecting. The cohort discussions drew out questions he hadn't thought to ask. He kept notes in the margins of each week's reading and returned to them between sessions.
What Changed
Andrew described being able to follow — rather than just nod at — his accountant's explanations after the programme. He enrolled in the Document Literacy Workshop three months later. "I'm not a finance person and I don't intend to be," he said. "But I can read the documents now, which is a different thing."
Janet Loh, 54 — Mid-Career Reflection Circle
Nurse manager, Ang Mo Kio · Attended Jan–Apr 2025
The Starting Point
Janet described her household finances as something her husband had always handled. After he took an extended posting overseas, she found herself looking at statements she had never engaged with. The Reflection Circle appealed because it framed the experience as a slow reading process rather than a rapid skills course.
The Four Months
She found the monthly format suited her pace. Between sessions she used the journal to record questions and observations. The worksheet cards each month prompted her to look at specific aspects of her household financial picture without prescribing what to do. She described the facilitator as patient with questions that circled back.
What Changed
Janet noted that the change was more in confidence than in knowledge. "I knew more than I realised, actually. The programme helped me trust what I already knew and identify the specific things I didn't." She has since arranged a review with a MAS-licensed adviser, which she said she would not have felt ready to do before.
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