Company · Our Story
A reading room built on the belief that clarity is enough
Nakara Finance has offered financial education in Bangkok since 2017. The premise has not changed: adults who understand their own financial picture make more considered decisions than those who do not.
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How Nakara Finance came to be
Nakara Finance was founded in 2017 by Sirikanya Phirom, a financial educator who spent twelve years working in private banking before concluding that the format of her work — product-centred, commission-driven, often rushed — was not well suited to the needs of the adults she most wanted to help. She left the industry, rented a room on Surawong Road, and began running small reading groups.
The reading group format was chosen deliberately. Classic personal-finance writing — Bogle on index investing, Bernstein on the history of wealth, Graham on the temperament required to invest — does not lend itself to a lecture. It asks to be read, reconsidered, and discussed. A room of eight adults with different experiences and the same text tends to generate conversations that a workshop with slides cannot.
Over eight years, Nakara Finance has grown carefully. The reading programme has been joined by two further offerings: a one-day workshop on the practice of reviewing household finances once a year, and a two-session programme on the often-overlooked question of personal financial paperwork. The space on Surawong Road has been refitted twice. The group sizes have remained the same.
What has not changed is the founding proposition: that financial education for adults works best when it is calm, unhurried, and entirely free of anything to sell. Every programme is paid for in advance. No product is offered at the end. The facilitator's only arrangement is with the participant.
The People
The team in the reading room
Sirikanya Phirom
Founder & Lead Facilitator
Twelve years in private banking, now twelve years running reading groups. Sirikanya leads the Investing Reader's Shelf and designs the curriculum for all programmes.
Watchara Chaiprasit
Programme Coordinator
Watchara handles scheduling, participant communications, and the printed materials that accompany each programme. He joined Nakara Finance in 2020.
Nanthipha Rattanachai
Document Specialist
A former legal administrator, Nanthipha co-facilitates the Documents programme and researches the Thai-specific document types covered in each cohort.
Our Standards
How we maintain the quality of each programme
No product sales, ever
The facilitator holds no licences to sell investment, insurance, or savings products. There is no arrangement with any financial institution. This is a condition of working here, not a preference.
Group size capped at eight
No programme runs with more than eight participants. This is not a commercial decision — it reflects the belief that education of this kind requires a room small enough for everyone to speak.
Curriculum reviewed annually
Each programme is reviewed at the end of the year. Reading lists are updated, Thai case studies are replaced when they become dated, and workshop templates are refined based on participant feedback.
Participant privacy
We do not share participant names, contact details, or financial information with any third party. What is discussed in the reading room remains there. Participants are asked to respect the same principle.
Clear written terms
Every participant receives a written summary of the programme before paying. Cancellation terms are set out plainly. We do not use fine print to alter what was agreed in conversation.
Education, not advice
Nakara Finance provides financial education. We do not provide regulated financial advice. If a participant's situation calls for regulated advice, we will say so and point them toward the appropriate professional.
Our Values
What we believe about financial education for adults
Adults in their forties and fifties bring something to financial education that younger participants rarely have: a clear sense of what their money is actually for. They are not planning around a theoretical future; they are managing the present and beginning to think about the decade ahead. That specificity makes for better discussion, and better discussion makes for more considered decisions.
Financial literacy in Thailand has grown considerably over the past two decades, yet the formats in which it is most commonly delivered — large seminars, online video courses, product-attached workshops — do not serve the reflective adult learner particularly well. The reading group format, borrowed from the humanities, turns out to work rather better: it gives the text time to be questioned, it allows the Thai context to be introduced alongside the global framework, and it produces something the seminar cannot — a room of eight adults who know each other's questions.
The household review format was developed in response to a recurring observation: many adults approaching their fifties have never looked at their household finances as a whole. They manage the parts — the income, the bills, the occasional investment — without ever placing them side by side. The Annual Review template we use is designed for one afternoon, once a year. It is not sophisticated. It asks a few plain questions and requires an honest attempt at answering them. Participants consistently report that this is more useful than anything more elaborate they have encountered.
The documents programme addresses a question that financial education rarely touches: what happens to the paperwork? Thai households accumulate a particular set of documents — provident fund statements, land title deeds, social security records, policy certificates — that are essential when needed and invisible until then. The two sessions we run on this topic are among the most practically useful things Nakara Finance offers, and among the least discussed in any financial education context.
Take a Seat
Would you like to join the next cohort?
Places are small and fill gradually. Getting in touch costs nothing, and we will let you know what is available and when.
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