Stable incomes and homeownership fail to ease young people’s financial anxiety

In her post, Trang said she majored in business and opened a fashion boutique after graduation. By age 29, she owned two suburban apartments and had a bank loan of around VND1 billion (US$37,972)

In the last two years, business difficulties forced her to pause operations and reassess the situation. With her active income virtually gone, her family now relies entirely on her husband’s salary and apartment rentals.

Trang worried not just about the drop in income, but about losing control because all her assets are concentrated in a single place. She wondered how to find additional investment channels to build an emergency fund with a small amount of money and without creating extra financial pressure.

Facing a similar dilemma though under different circumstances, Hoang Nam, 37, and his wife in Hanoi have a combined monthly income of around VND70 million. After paying for housing, school fees for their two children, living expenses, and insurance, the family has about VND8 million left over.

For years, this surplus regularly went into a savings account. Nam often considered investing but kept putting it off, partly due to work and family commitments and partly due to a lack of confidence in his market knowledge.

Looking back, he realizes that child-rearing costs are growing, his home-buying plan remains unfinished, and retirement is no longer a distant prospect.

“My family still saves every month, but I always feel like I am just putting money aside rather than truly preparing for the future. Meanwhile, savings returns are quite low compared to inflation.”

Both forum posts drew numerous responses, with the majority offering the same advice: reallocate family finances and set aside a regular monthly amount, at least a small one, for investment.

From saving money to building assets

Luong Thi My Hanh, director of domestic asset management at fund house Dragon Capital, says the two stories are far from rare and reflect a growing mindset among young people that a stable income or asset ownership no longer guarantees financial peace of mind.

The core issue is not the amount of money one has, but the mindset regarding asset classes that allows cumulative cash flows to truly work for them.

International studies reinforce this perspective. In a 2012 OECD report on savings behavior, experts pointed out that an individual’s financial capability largely depends on three factors: understanding one’s risk appetite, saving early to leverage compounding, and diversifying asset classes to avoid concentration risk.

The study also found automation mechanisms such as automatically deducting a portion of income for savings immediately upon receiving a salary effectively help people overcome procrastination and reduce reliance on consumer credit when unexpected events occur.

Hanh believes that to build family finances effectively, the primary shift must be in mindset: moving from saving money to building assets. To understand why, one can look back at the evolution of asset classes in Vietnam over the past 50 years.

For instance, before the 1990s, opportunities to build wealth came mainly from import-export businesses or specific specialized industries before the economy opened up. Following the introduction of the Land Law, real estate quickly emerged as the next asset class and remained the preferred choice for most citizens for many years.

Over the past 20 years, a third asset class has emerged and grown steadily: the stock market. Unlike real estate, stocks offer liquidity advantages, allowing flexible trading with small capital, and directly reflect economic growth through corporate business performance. Large-scale listed enterprises typically achieve growth rates at least double the nation’s GDP growth.

“However, only a small percentage of the population currently participates in investing, meaning the majority of the community remains excluded from this narrative of growth and asset accumulation,” Hanh rues.

Discipline matters more than prediction

Referring to the two stories, Hanh says the greatest hurdle for Trang is finding a suitable channel to start with a small amount of capital without adding financial strain. For Nam, she says the issue lies in having regular savings but not knowing how to invest them given his limited time to monitor the market.

Neither lacks the ability to save; rather, both lack an investment method simple enough to maintain over a long term. Consequently, the question is no longer how to time the market perfectly, but how to begin with existing funds and maintain discipline through periods of market volatility.

Hanh added that the biggest barrier for beginners is loss aversion, which leads many to make emotional decisions to withdraw capital during short-term market fluctuations.

To ease both psychological pressure and knowledge gaps, combining an open-ended fund model with a periodic investment strategy like dollar-cost averaging serves as an effective tool.

Through open-ended funds, non-professional investors entrust their capital to a team of fund management experts who actively invest and diversify portfolios to spread risk.

With periodic investments, consistently setting aside a fixed monthly amount, as Nam and Trang do, automatically averages the cost of capital over time without requiring constant market surveillance.

For individuals like Trang and Nam, the first step does not require waiting to acquire deep expertise or finding the perfect entry point, she says.

Anyone can begin by identifying a suitable amount of idle cash, choosing products aligned with their goals, and maintaining a regular investment routine without impacting their emergency funds or essential expenses, she adds.