Basically what this means is that from research, the differentiating factor between people who are very successful in their chosen fields i.e. competitive sports, musical performance artistes, professionals is that they put in the magical 10,000 hours or so to be good in their field.

What does that mean for us?

Practice Makes Better

A distinguished toastmaster I know Mr. John Sih likes to use this phrase, “practice makes better.” To achieve mastery in anything, we need to devote sufficient time and energy to it. Of course, innate talent helps but you need to be good enough and then work hard at it. My own journey towards financial freedom really started when I earned my first pay check back in 1995. I began to save earnestly and it sowed the seeds of  my current financial situation.

But it was really in 2003 that I started taking action to invest my own monies beyond fixed deposits and unit trusts. The learning that I got from dabbling directly in the equities market helped me grow in financial literacy and to be more aware of how I could get started on this journey towards financial freedom.

Taking 2003 as the starting point, I realise it has taken me from 2003 to 2011 or close to 8 years of being more proactive about taking charge of my investments and truly living the principles of living within my means, saving and investing, growing and protecting my means.

If I spend say 1 hour a day thinking about personal finance and financial freedom, those 8 years x 1 hour x 365 days a year translates into about 2,920 hours. That means I have another 7,000 plus hours to go. Realistically, I have enough of a runway to hit the 10,000 hours because I intend to work until age 68 or even beyond partly because of the ever-spiralling cost of living but also because of the inherent broken retirement system that is the CPF.

To be able to retire in the traditional sense of not working and living off retirement savings or income only works if you sell your home when you decide to stop working and downgrade. Then perhaps the unlocked value of one’s home equity plus the CPF returned could hit minimum sum and excess above minimum sum withdrawn after age 62/65 (eventually 68). Unless one is able to downgrade’s one’s lifestyle. The ability to continue earning cash flows from earned or passive income is critical.

Whilst I am continuing to build up my investible savings to generate that passive income, I realise because I have 3 mouths to feed (myself, my spouse working part-time, and my daughter), it is better to plan on the side of caution and be mentally prepared to keep myself in active employment.

How to Practice

My take on the 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in financial freedom means that I should continue to keep myself open to new ideas, thoughts and ways to accelerate my journey towards financial freedom whilst avoiding black-swan type of events that could wipe one’s assets away just like that. Inflation is now the real killer as our CPF balances only earn 2.5% mainly (and 4% for Medisave and Special Accounts) but inflation is nearing 4% and could hit 5-6% in early 2011.

How does one beat inflation and still avoid taking undue risks? That will be something I continue to explore in my journey towards financial freedom.

I also realise I need to read ever more widely to train my brain to make the connections to get the out-of-box thinking to re-imagine my paradigm towards financial freedom. The tried and tested way of relying on earned income is workable but relies on endurance and good health. One needs to work on one’s health as well as rely on genes and God’s grace to last the long journey.

There is no substitute from just writing in my blog, thinking and discussing with like-minded people on the options available to achieve one’s financial freedom dreams

Do you think you would spend 10,000 hours achieving mastery in financial freedom?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

I was catching up with three of my good buddies (ex-colleagues from my first job) over lunch and one of them remarked that he was not so sure that the growth and “good vibes” of the growing economy for 2010 was sustainable. He could see rising COE prices, prices of good class bungalows and private property as well as long queues for taxis and crowds thronging restaurants and cafes being signs that prosperity is flowing around. But can the tap continue to flow?

As I gain more little grey hairs and my skin starts to become less soft and flexible, I realise that age is catching up. But with age comes wisdom. Not because I can predict what will happen in the future, but because I have seen what had happened in the past.

Turning Back the Clock

Rewinding the clock back to 1997-98 and it was the Asian financial crisis. My buddies and I were having a similar conversation at Starbucks at Liat Towers and we were then remarking how despite the Asian crisis, we could still see visible signs of people spending money in Orchard Road. Perhaps they are tourists, or perhaps they are the truly rich that are not affected by the crisis. We were fortunate that then we were working in a Government agency so our jobs were relatively safe despite the serious downturn.

But we had accounts of friends, relatives and neighbours being laid off and hence that was the start of our awakening to the whole concept of black swans or rainy days. Times when great uncertainty reigns and you cannot have full confidence that your rice bowl is rock solid unless you were in a robust industry or sector that could withstand the ups and downs of market forces.

We also went through the 2003 SARS period as well as the dot.com internet bubble rise and fall. These key milestones in our careers taught us one thing, that is to have some savings for a rainy day.

Save for the Unforseen

If you strip away the concept of financial freedom, the core that is revealed focuses a lot on savings. It is only from spending less than you earn (living within your means) that you can save. This savings can then be put aside for unforseen circumstances. You want to protect and grow your savings because as a responsible steward of your own financial assets, you want to maximise their returns whilst minimising the risks that you are willing to accept for that potential returns.

The younger generation now has less propensity to save as consumerism is more entrenched among the young than the older generation. By itself, it is not a “good” or “bad” thing but it has implications for one’s choices of deciding when one can retire or when one can slow down the imperative to always be looking for ways to earn or make more money in life.

Spending more now and saving later means that one has less options when unexpected things happen. Many of us go through life assuming we will always be healthy, that our jobs will always be there for us or that our incomes will always rise. That is not a given. In fact, the older I get, the more I realise the opposite is true.

The world economics changes so fast that the challenges of an increasing aging population, relentless competition from within Singapore through local talent plus influx of foreigners into Singapore Inc. make many of our assumptions to be wrong. The signs are here if we choose to read them.

CPF withdrawal age has gone up. The Government is openly discussing raising the retirement age to even 68. The concept of “retirement” where you stop working completely and live off retirement savings is passe partly due to the the aging population and poor returns from your monies in CPF or other private pension plans or investment plans.

The reality is that more rainy days are in store for us.

Thinking Outside of the Box

One of the scenarios that I’ve envisaged in response to the trends noted of money no enough when we retire is to get even more aggressive in savings whilst I in the phase of life of having a decent earning capacity. I basically need to save even more from spending less or earning more and preferably to do both!

My previous post exploring retiring in Thailand is also one way to think of how I can lower my expenses in the future by relocating to a lower cost country. Businesses have been moving their manfacturing operations from Singapore out to Malaysia and then to China and India. There is nothing to stop us from applying the same principles when thinking about how to plan our transition to when our hairs are all silver

Technology has made such moves possible in that you can skype, SMS, email and continue to keep in contact with family and friends. Low cost airlines provide a way to physically stay in touch with Singapore even on tight travel budgets when we are past our economically prime years.

I’ve also started to read more widely as well as in-depth in my own career to deepen and broaden my thinking so that I can contribute more in my career. I also realise that I should actively considering building alternative sources of income but they may not be pure passive incomes and can be active ones that I spend my weekends and evenings on.

Saving for a rainy day is a key component of my strategy to be financially free.

But look for a bigger and better umbrella (i.e. alternate source of income) is also always on my radar.

What is your own umbrella towards financial freedom?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

We know in theory that health is truly wealth but how much do we practice it day in and day out?

I for one have been telling myself that I need to exercise and to lose weight. The irony is that the lack of exercise, coupled with a few late nights saw my body succumb to a bug that made me lose weight due to lack of appetite. I realise that I need to really sleep by 11pm on most days as I get up around 6.30 am for work from Mondays to Fridays. My health has been something that I neglected a bit as I indulged in more than my usual share of soft drinks, snacks and fried foods.

It took a toll and a 5 day course of medication made me re-examine how healthy (or unhealthy) my habits had been for the last month or so.

There’s no point in me rambling on and on about getting healthy if I don’t do anything. In terms of diet, I would focus on more soup based foods as they tend to be less oily and with lesser fried stuff. In terms of exercise, I am trying to get myself back into the groove of doing some light jogging at least 2 x a week and something more strenuous 1 x week. My stress level was high last week because my staff was resigning and another staff was on long MC. Fortunately, the one on long MC was able to come back to work today and now I only have to contend with a short period it takes for the replacement staff to replace my staff who is leaving by mid September 2010.

Ultimately, financial freedom still has to exist in the context of being healthy enough to enjoy it. No health means that even if you are financially free, your quality of life would be poor.

Life is about balancing one’s needs and wants and to be healthy and happy in relationships with people who matter.

The closer I get to 40, the closer I realise that this balance is something that one has to constantly work on to make it happen.

How do you achieve your own balance in life?

Be well and prosper.

Tweak. by digitalpimp

MM Lee’s comments about retirement has highlighted about the changing paradigm of retirement, in that it is increasingly becoming less of an automatic ritual upon reaching a pre-defined age and more of a lifestyle choice.

Traditionally, retirement is an age where one is able to stop working, collect a pension and to take time to smell the roses and to take care of grandchildren. My parents count themselves fortunate in that they were school teachers their entire careers and stayed in the pension scheme (and taking pay cuts in the last few years of their working life) even as it was slowly phased out by the CPF scheme.

However, the Civil Service has all but abolished the pension scheme except for a few select schemes e.g. Administrative service and some specialised services. Majority of public sector and statutory board employees are on the CPF scheme, as are virtually all the private sector and GLC or TLC organisations.

Thus, the concept of choosing not to work becomes one of income versus lifestyle needs than an age per se.

Retirement in the age of CPF

On paper, everyone can choose to retire i.e. to stop working if one has enough money to last them the rest of their lives. In theory you can, but in practice, it’s quite challenging because there are too many variables involved.

First of all, we cannot know for certain our life expectancies and health status over time and thus how much we need for lifestyle expenses and medical expenses. Secondly, CPF may not be enough for many of us have most of our ordinary account monies locked up in our homes and the remainder special account monies are not sufficient for minimum sum.

How then, can we choose to stop working if money is not enough?

Working till death

Not to sound morbid but I intend to work until the day I die. The catch is how I would define “work”. I intend to continue in my career as an auditor as long as I can to accumulate the savings that brings me closer to the target for financial freedom. But there would likely come a time where I would hit the “mandatory” retirement age and get hit with a pay-cut coupled with re-employment on a year-to-year basis. This may or may not be what I will enjoy doing when I’m at that age (probably 67 by the time I hit that age).

I don’t see myself doing the same old thing at that age. Instead, I choose to build possible paths so that when I’m close to “retirement age”, I will have alternative sources of income and a plan to live in a lower cost country other than Singapore. My post on retiring in Thailand talks about some of the considerations of such a plan.

MM Lee’s observations about keeping active resonate with me in that our minds and bodies are such that if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Hence, working until we die is not a “bad” thing if we enjoy what we do. That is the crux of the issue. Would you be able to enjoy what you do and be able to pursue the experiences you want to until the day you move on from this world?

I intend to experience life a bit more each day even as all of us walk towards our destiny with mortality. I intend to put myself in a position to choose what I want to do when I reach 67 and to continue to be active in mind, body and spirit. Working is fine as long as I choose what I want to do. I am prepared to monetise my home to fund retiring in Thailand if needed but am planning to do training and consulting and to be an independent director to fund my future lifestyle post “retirement”.

I don’t know for sure if I will achieve it but I know that I’ll have to invest time, energy and effort today to make it a possibility tomorrow.

The situation many people find themselves in is that when they reach the retirement age, they are forced to continue to work for the income to sustain themselves even when they hate their work. That is the situation that makes work a drudgery. I am thankful that my current job is a balanced one and enjoy coming to work daily. Hence, it is not drudgery but a privilege to be doing what I’m doing now. But I do not take for granted that things will never change so having a back-up is helpful before one needs to activate it.

Do you agree with MM Lee’s observations that we should abolish the retirement age and work until we expire?

What is your own plan towards “retirement”?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image "I am Here for the Learning Revolution" by Wesley Fryer

I’ve read the book, “The Art of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin and was completely blown away by some of his ideas as well as his personal achievements in the world of competitive chess and martial arts (Tai Chi Quan).

If you are interested to learn how we can learn better and to achieve peak performance in whatever fields of endeavour; which includes the field of personal finance and financial freedom, then you should consider reading his excellent book.

You can read more about Josh Waitzkin here.

His book makes for a compelling read for many reasons.

Financial Freedom is a Learning Journey

I have mentioned this concept a few times and it is important enough to reiterate here. The only way we can move forward and grow in our knowledge and skills of becoming financially free is to be in the continuous learning mode. Learning continuously does not mean just reading and reading and reading personal finance books. Reading personal finance books are an necessary but insufficient condition in us achieving mastery over our finances and ultimately ourselves.

Having a Beginners’ Mind

What we need to do in addition to reading is to integrate our learning into our experiences, i.e. do. To practice investing based on the principles we’ve learnt. One of the interesting themes I got from “The Art of Learning” from Josh Waitzkin was that peak performance comes from first starting with a beginners’ mind, i.e. to be open to learning the principles. When it comes to this journey towards financial freedom, I realise my openess to the principles allowed me to absorb what is to now become my principles of living within my means, to save and invest, to grow and protect my means.

His book takes a philosophical and yet practical look at how he achieved peak performance in his chess career as well as tai qi quan career. His world class performances in both these diverse and yet complementary (in spirit) disciplines allowed Josh Waitzkin to distill the learning principles he used to achieve his own peak performance.

Invest in Loss

I realise that for me to realise my own potential in financial freedom, I also need to reflect on my past investment mistakes and to learn from them in order to better avoid being wiped out in investing my capital. It is through such losses that Josh learnt more about performing better in his chess and martial arts career. So too would I grow if I let the lessons of my own investment failures teach me to make better investment decisions.

Develop Your Own Style

Josh also strongly encourages us to develop our own approach in our pursuit of excellence in our respective disciplines. Hence, to achieve my goal of being financially free with passive income exceeding living expenses, I should work to my strengths, beef up my weaknesses but most importantly to allow my innate personality to emerge into my execution of the principles.

Hence, investing by listening to personal financial consultants who read and know less than me in personal finance and my own investment goals is a recipe for disaster. I know my character best especially if I take time to reflect and think about my own mistakes. This knowledge which leverages on my own personality is what will get me to my goal of financial freedom.

By nature, I am relatively risk adverse. Hence, it is not for me to take one big bet on the market to hit my financial freedom target. I should work on the passive income portion while devleoping my other skills to monetise them in cash flows to build up my investible capital.

The reality is that I should make full use of my accounting and audit skills for maximum monetisation as I am my biggest income generating asset.

Ultimately, I realise that the learning and growth journey is what drives me towards financial freedom and not the goal itself of being financially free. Enjoying and appreciating the process that gets you there is just as important as the goal itself.

Have you read any books (especially non-finance related ones) that have shaped your thinking about financial freedom?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image Egg Sandwich by amanky

I am continually amazed at the power of the mind to control our destiny.

I thought for a change that I’d make my own lunches this week as work is getting busier and I wanted to experiment if I could actually make wholesome healthy lunches just using the office microwave and nearby supermarket.

I bought fresh eggs, lettuce, bread, cheese and ham that are perfect ingredients for a typical ham/cheese/lettuce sandwich. My office has a refrigerator so I could store the ingredients but I was thinking how I was going to cook the eggs. Turns out that cracking the egg and  microwaving it in a (micro-wave safe) bowl turns out a decent round shaped dry poached egg that is just the right size for a sandwich.

It all begins with the mind

What has making your own lunch in office got to do with financial freedom?The point is it all begins in the mind. I thought that it would be a great idea to make my own lunches for a change instead of eating at the cafeteria. After all, they were selling sandwiches made up of two pieces of bread with cheese and ham, a sliver of lettuce and mayo for $2.50 a pop. Might as well do-it-myself for about same cost but with fresher ingredients and fruit (bananas) thrown in.

The success of my little lunch project started in my mind by planning what I wanted to do, i.e. the PLAN part of PDCA (plan-do-check-act) Deming cycle for quality. Doing (DO) it was to go down to the grocery store and get the ingredients that I needed for my wholesome sandwich lunch. Checking was to see if it worked out as expected (CHECK) and ACT is to take corrective action if needed.

In my case, I at first wanted to have hard boiled eggs but realise that without a stove or cooking element to continuously boil water, hard boiled eggs was out by microwave eggs was do-able.

Applying PDCA to Financial Freedom

A similar approach has helped me move nearer to my goal of being financially free. I embarked on this journey back in 2003 when I finally took up courage to manage my own finances by investing in equities in addition to fixed deposits. I disposed my unit trusts that were not performing and used some of the freed-up cash to invest.

I was fortunate to ride the recovery from SARS but more importantly, learnt to start on this journey to live within my means, to save and invest, to grow and protect my means.

My plan hasn’t changed too much in terms of my objectives, i.e. to achieve $1 million in investible savings (excluding my home). But by doing and checking, I’ve come to realise that my earned income will contribute a lot to how I reach my goal. I’ve also realised that I need to invest in myself as well, i.e. to build up skills and experiences that will help me monetise myself the best so that I continue to be the income generating unit. But at the same time, I need to balance with my own happiness with family life, personal interests besides work and my profession.

Acting to refine my approach towards financial freedom has also helped me see how different elements of my plan fit together to bring me closer to my financial freedom goals aligned to what I am interested in life personally as well.

What life lessons have you encountered in your walk towards financial freedom?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image "Full Spectrum" by mdezemery

It’s coming to the close of the first quarter of the calendar year (or last quarter of the financial year for organisations with their financial year ending on 31 March 2010) and bonus time.

I was fortunate that my efforts in the last 12 months from January to December 2009 were recognised and received a decent bonus from my employer.

Comparing my passive (and semi-active income from capital gains and blogging) against my bonus, I realised that my bonus was still higher.

What are the implications for me in terms of my journey towards financial freedom?

Salaryman/woman Don’t Quit Your Day Job Yet

For many of us who are salaryman (and women) who earn most of our income from employment, it is a sobering reminder that active income will still constitute our primary source of savings and investible capital. Singapore is a place where you can get a job if you are still relatively young, have the relevant paper qualifications and experience for the jobs available in the industry.

Of course, there is global competition in the labour market given the lax immigration policies of the Government for the last decade or so which has made life quite challenging for the less educated and skilled.

Even though I have a decent job now that pays me a fair income to sustain myself and my family. I am driven by the constant worry about financial independence and freedom. Thus, even as my active income from employment is the main driver of savings. I continually push myself to look out for passive income opportunities.

From Active to Passive: It’s a Gradual Transition

I realise that passive and active income are still income streams. It is a continuum, i.e. your total income comes from both passive and active streams. You don’t have to choose, you have to develop both. For many of us, the active source will be the main one during the bulk of our economically active days when employment is available. The passive one comes in to pick up as we near to the time called “retirement”.

Except in today’s world, the concept of “retirement” is outdated. So long as I am healthy and able, I want to work. But my work may not continue as my previous job role and hence I need to generate income from more novel sources such as project-based, training and consultancy or running my own businesses or even punting in stock and shares.

Supplementing it would be passive income from interest, dividends and blog monetisation.

I intend to continue to work hard and work smart in my career. But I also invest in the time to read non-fiction in areas that help me build skills relevant for today as well as tomorrow’s challenges. I invest the time to try out new skills e.g. doing training as part of my job in my organisation to educate my fellow colleagues on internal controls and fraud awareness as well as to polish up my skills in public speaking and training.

For a long time in my life, I saw the world as a dichotomy. Black and white, yes and no, good or bad. Increasingly, age starts to mature my perspective on the world. It is a continuum and a continuous journey. It only stops when we die.

In the meantime, we can enjoy and experiment with the fullness that the continuum provides.

How are you experimenting between active and passive income?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image "beautiful stream" by holl_and

My blog monetisation efforts has been one of my greatest achievements in moving myself towards financial freedom. I started out serious blogging to see if I could establish an income stream that would allow me to quit my day job and to retire without working (as what many of those make money online scams and advertisements promise!)

Can Quit Your Day Job?

But the reality was that it’s quite difficult to make enough for you to quit your day job. Thus, my explorations into blog monetisation has been coming to 2 years and I am able to generate S$100 to $350 per month with minimal effort after the first six months. Nowadays, my main blog that brings in real income is fairly passive, I receive updates on the information from a forummer I know whom I give a share of the advertising revenue.

Some of you may scoff at the amount, but I am thinking ahead that if I can sustain this type of income stream with the level of effort that I’m already putting in, this could be one of my personal CPF Life type of scheme.

Your Personal CPF Life Income Stream

For those of you who may not know, CPF Life is the compulsory life annuity that will kick in when you hit the retirement age of 62 (now) or 67 (in the future). It pays you an income for life and is funded by locking away a portion of your CPF minimum sum amount.

Planning ahead means that I am also looking around and thinking of how to create such income streams that are self-sustaining and require minimal effort. In addition, I realise that I need to continually invest in myself in terms of skills, knowledge and relevant experience that can be monetised when my career transits from an 8-5.30 job to a freelance/self-employed basis.

On that note, I’ve volunteered to develop and deliver in-house training to my fellow colleagues on top of my regular work assignments. This initiative helps me to boost up my visibility within the organisation as well as to hone and develop my training skills. I intend to build up this skill set and the networking so that it could be a viable second career when my daughter becomes independent and can fend for herself.

It is these series of small steps in changing habits that result in more enduring change. My blog monetisation started out as a small experiment which I intend to continue so long as I have breath and it pays for itself and more. My experiment in eating healthily for breakfasts (rolled oats and raisins) for coming to two years have given me a figure that I once lost for many years but only regained from healthy eating and moderate exercise.

My investment returns for 2009 were the result of efforts since 2003 to invest in the Singapore stock market and to learn until I was competent enough to make 8%+ returns way above any “risk-free” returns on 1-2% on fixed deposits or money market instruments.

Take small but concrete steps.

Do, learn and grow.

Exploring Possibilities

The more I travel along this journey towards financial freedom, the more I realise it is about being open to possibilities and taking a plunge to do small experiments to see if an idea can work out or not in bringing one closer to financial freedom.

What are you thinking of during this Lunar New Year period that will bring you closer to financial freedom?

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image Planet - Jones Valley Urban Farm by Southern Pixel

Those of you who are readers of science fiction author Douglas Adams would know that the title of my post is taken from one of his book titles.

It’s a useful title because it can be used for more philosophical posts which touch on many topics and come back to the key theme of my blog, i.e. achieving financial freedom and the reasons we pursue financial freedom.

Knowing the Why is Important

The whys of doing something become increasingly important the older one gets because Death is literally waiting for us at the end of our lives. The day we are born is also the day we start dying.

For some, the dying starts in the 40s or 50s when mid-life crisis hits and we start to wonder, what has our lives been for? What has the slogging, hard work, providing for ourselves and family got us? Are we happy?

For others, the dying could only start when we are literally near Death’s door, in our 80s, 90s and even 100s when we have lived a life filled with purpose, reason and happiness.

I see financial freedom as a means and not the ends in itself. Being financially free allows you to get out of the rat-race, if you so choose, and explore other facets of life besides being stuck in a 9-5 life behind the desk or out in the world doing what others tell you to.

Of course, some already have lives of their choosing, i.e. they enjoy the 9-5 life if their interests, skills and passions are aligned with their careers and jobs.

The important thing I have realised in my own journey towards financial freedom is to define what financial freedom means to me and why I want to pursue it. My key reason is to be free to choose how I can retire rather than be constrained by the rules put up by the Government to lock up my Central Provident Fund (retirement savings) through the CPF Life and Minimum Sum schemes.

I want to be financially free so that I can spend a more time with pursuits that give me immense satisfaction, i.e. my toastmasters journey where I get to touch other people’s lives through public speaking. That ability to influence, motivate and inspire people through public speaking is something I only realised after 5 years in the toastmasters movement.

I’ve met quite a number of retired people who enjoy fulfilling lives with the help of toastmasters because it helps people who are no longer working in touch with a social group and a common purpose.

Moving Through Life with a Purpose

Your own reason “why” for financial freedom is personal. It can be as simple as the need for financial security for yourself and your family. It can be because you want to do whatever you want and don’t want to have someone i.e. your boss or your customers to tell you what to do.

But when you’ve set your own reason towards the path of financial freedom, your decisions in life will be guided by the goals, i.e. to live within your means, to save and invest, to grow and protect your means.

Going through life with a purpose beats meandering around it aimlessly and waiting for things to happen. One of the benefits of setting myself the goal towards financial freedom is that it prodded me to take action and gain greater control of my finances. I now tracking my income and expenditure and net-worth Mondays to Fridays.

It allows me to eliminate fuzziness on how much I earn from my career and receive from investments, how much I spend on myself and my family and how much is left to grow my net-worth towards my investible target of $1m (excluding residential home).

The interesting thing is that as I track my journey and inch closer to my target each day, month and year. I become more encouraged to do more to move myself towards my target. There is progress, there is growth and there is also knowledge that I am moving towards my objective.

Smell the Roses and Drink the Cappucino

Yesterday, my staff told me that her father had been diagnosed with cancer which looks likely to be terminal. Thus, she would be taking a break from work to spend more time with him. Her father is only 55 years old.

Life can hit us with unexpected surprises. You can plan and plan but you cannot predict what will happen.

I now realise more than ever that even as one moves towards growing our net-worth by saving and investing, we should also allocate some money e.g. 10% or more of bonuses, windfall gains and other investment receipts for small luxuries in life.

That cup of cappucino at Starbucks or Coffeebean. That nice iPhone 3GS. That good looking outfit in the store.

Yes, live within our means, save and invest while growing and protecting our means.

But also live a little, enjoy life a little and take deep breaths of air and give thanks that we have our lives, our families and our health.

Be well and prosper.