Our Story
How Tarrith Came to Be
Tarrith was founded in Singapore after a small group of educators noticed a recurring pattern. Adults in their forties and fifties — people with considerable professional experience and well-developed instincts — often described feeling at sea when household financial vocabulary entered their lives in a more pressing way. Conversations about CPF Life, the SRS account, drawdown strategies, or the Singapore Savings Bond programme tended to produce uncertainty rather than clarity. Not because these people lacked intelligence, but because they had simply never had the vocabulary explained to them in a measured, non-pressured setting.
The founders of Tarrith — most of them former educators with backgrounds in adult learning, adult literacy, and civic reading programmes — decided to address this gap through the format they knew best: the structured reading group. Rather than presenting information as a lecture or a sales presentation, Tarrith programmes distribute reading materials in advance and then convene small cohorts to discuss what they have read. The conversation does the work. Participants arrive with questions, share their interpretations, and leave with a clearer picture of terms and frameworks they will use in their own household conversations.
Since opening our premises at Gateway East on Beach Road, we have run programmes for adults across a broad range of occupational backgrounds — retired civil servants, small business owners, mid-career professionals, and individuals preparing to step back from full-time employment. What they share is a desire to understand the landscape around them more fully, and to do so without being sold to.
Our mission is straightforward: to provide a calm, well-organised space in which adults can build familiarity with household financial language and Singapore-specific savings frameworks at their own pace, in company with others who are doing the same.
The People
Programme Team
Each Tarrith programme is facilitated by an experienced adult educator familiar with the Singapore financial landscape and the particular pace that suits mature learners.
Li-Shan Teo
Programme Director
Former adult literacy coordinator with fifteen years of experience designing reading-led programmes for working professionals. Leads curriculum development and cohort scheduling at Tarrith.
Rajan Murthy
Senior Facilitator
Spent twelve years facilitating civic education workshops across Singapore community centres before joining Tarrith. Leads the Pre-Retirement Reading Programme cohorts.
Siew-Lin Wong
Materials Coordinator
Responsible for sourcing, preparing, and distributing all programme reading materials. Background in library services and educational publishing in Singapore.
Our Standards
How We Run Our Programmes
No Regulatory Boundary Issues
All programmes are designed and reviewed to ensure they remain within educational scope. No advice, product recommendations, or regulated commentary is offered at any point.
Participant Privacy
Participant details are held securely, used only for programme administration, and not disclosed to third parties. Our data practices are detailed in our Privacy Policy.
Materials from Public Sources
Reading materials draw exclusively on publicly available documents — MAS publications, CPF Board materials, and government scheme documentation. Nothing proprietary or commercially produced.
Small Cohort Policy
We enforce cohort size limits on every programme. This is not a marketing position — it is a pedagogical requirement. Discussion quality depends on manageable group size.
Facilitator Preparation Standards
Facilitators complete a preparation session before each new cohort cycle. This covers the reading materials, likely discussion points, and any changes to referenced public scheme frameworks.
Participant Feedback Review
Each cohort completes a written feedback form after the final session. Responses are reviewed by the Programme Director and used to revise session structure and materials for future cohorts.
Our Values
What We Hold to in the Work We Do
Tarrith operates from a position of considered restraint. In a field where adults seeking to understand their household finances are frequently approached by people hoping to sell them something, we take a different posture. Our programmes have no sales element. Facilitators are instructed not to recommend any product, service, or institution, and not to comment on individual circumstances. The reading materials speak for themselves; the discussion that follows is the participants' own.
We believe that adults — particularly those navigating the years between fifty and retirement — deserve access to accurate, plain-language vocabulary without being put in a position of commercial vulnerability. The CPF Life payout structure, the SRS withdrawal rules, the conditions attached to the Singapore Savings Bond — these are matters of public record. Understanding them should not require an appointment with an adviser.
Our cohort model is built on the recognition that adults learn well alongside peers. Questions that might feel too basic to ask an expert become natural in a group of twelve people working through the same chapter. This peer dimension is not incidental to our programmes — it is central to how learning happens in the Tarrith room.
We are committed to keeping our programmes current. When public scheme documentation changes — when CPF Board updates its published materials, or when new scheme details become available — we revise our reading packs accordingly. Participants can be confident that what they are discussing reflects the current public record.
Enrol With Us
Begin With a Programme Enquiry
We respond to all enquiries within two working days. Cohort availability varies by programme; early enquiries are encouraged for the twelve-week reading programme.
Get in Touch