Flickr image "Bungee" by jgraham

The more I experience the journey towards financial freedom, the more I realise it is to live an unconventional life.

Why unconventional?

Conventional wisdom teaches us to pursue materialism, to benchmark our success by seeing how big our homes are. How much income our careers generate and how are we keeping score in the game of “keeping up with your neighbours”.

Think back at your previous family gathering during Christmas, Lunar New Year, Deepavali or Hari Raya Puasa. Were the family discussions about how to live a meaningful life aimed at pursuing your life goals or was it a comparison of who is in what job, drawing what type of pay and living in what type of home?

There is nothing wrong with such topics, it is expected of the mindset of people living in Singapore Inc. But such conversations doesn’t help you discover more about yourself, more about what motivates you in life and more about how you can go about being financially free to pursue your dreams and passions.

How’s Life?

I once asked a neighbour of mine, “how’s life” and was floored by his honest answer. “Not so good” was an understatement. His unborn child didn’t make it to full-term and he lost his job around the same time. Yet, he could tell me that he was okay and still taking it one step at a time.

That brief conversation reminded me of what’s truly important in life. It is our relationships with family and loved ones. It is about health and happiness of ourselves and our loved ones. Financial freedom is an enabler but not the ends in itself.

I am thinking more about, “what next” when I’ve achieved my target of being financially free. This leads me to consider my life list more. Chris Guillebeau, whose blog “The Art of Non-Conformity” shares his own life experiences in travelling to more than 100 countries of the world and about not having a regular ’9-5′ job for most of his adult life. He shares his latest manifesto “279 Days to Overnight Success” about how he manages to live an unconventional life in terms of writing and consulting to earn his living while freeing himself to continue on his quest to travel all the countries of the world.

The experiences shared by Chris has really triggered my own search for my own project to live an unconventional life. In some regards, I’m living an unconventional life in that I’m not carrying a mortgage and own the home I live in. I do have a regular job and a car loan to be paid but I’ve managed to live within my means for most of my working life.

I count myself blessed with a daughter and experiences volunteering in a non-profit organisation as well as my five year involvement with toastmasters. Each of these experiences has transformed me into a better person with new skills acquired through those volunteer engagements and they have brought me to where am I now…the unconventional road towards financial freedom.

To be financially free is to be unconventional

I believe that if you are serious about being financially free, you have to shake free of some of the unconventional attitudes towards money. Some of these include learning about personal finance and knowing how to manage your own money. Being disciplined to track and understand where you income and expenses go to. Understanding that the more you consume now the less you have to build up your investible savings for tomorrow. Realising that the balancing act between enjoying life now and deferring spending later requires understanding your own motivations in life.

To carry on this journey towards financial freedom is to see that we have the means to determine the direction our finances go through acknowledging that we can make sacrifices now and then by spending less on consumption and saving more. We can enjoy life more in seeing fulfillment and joy in the simplest of things that doesn’t cost much money.

Share with Panzer what ways you are conventional or unconventional in your journey towards financial freedom?

Be well and prosper.

Flickr! image "Otter Cliffs" by climbnh2003

I was inspired by Chris Guillebeau’s post “How to write a life list” on his blog “The Art of Non-Conformity“. For those who have never heard of Chris, he describes his blog as:

The Art of Nonconformity (AONC) project chronicles my writing on how to change the world by achieving significant, personal goals while helping others at the same time. In the battle against conventional beliefs, I focus on three areas: Life, Work, and Travel.

Who is Chris Guillebeau?

He is someone who is living the unconventional life by most yardsticks, especially if benchmarked against the materialism of Singapore Inc. He has travelled to many countries as part of his plan to travel every country in the world (literally!)

As I’m writing my second eBook, “Panzer’s Road Map to Financial Freedom”, I find that the WHY is as important as the HOW. The reason why I’m pursuing financial freedom is because I want to live an unconventional life. The typical life in Singapore is to study up to University or Polytechnic, get a good job, work for next 30-40 years, pay off your home (asset rich) but retire on your CPF balances and CPF Life annuity. It is to forever work and work and not truly living the life that you want. It has been for too long about following the script of the “Singapore Dream” also know as “Get Rich or Die Trying Singapore Style”.

How has living unconventionally helped me

My unconventional thinking has resulted in my achieving the following:

• paid off my housing loan (in full) by age 35
• being able to work in a less stressed and more relaxed manner
• being able to focus on my health and family
• having time to think seriously on accelerating my efforts towards financial freedom
• understanding that financial freedom is about generating passive income or alternate sources of income to free up time

Developing my life list

I’ve decided to come up with my life list and to put on it the list of things I’ve always wanted to do. Now it doesn’t mean that I need to be financially free to achieve them but the process has freed up more of my financial resources to consider them as part of the realm of possibilities:

Here goes Panzer’s life list (in no particular order):

1. Travel business class on flight of at least 10 hours for business/pleasure
2. Eat black ink squid rice in Korea
3. Visit two of the places featured in Japan Hour
4. Work for a local non-profit organisation full-time for 1 year at minimal pay
5. Become the audit committee chairman of a listed company
6. Run the half-marathon successfully and recover from it without injury
7. See my daughter living an independent,  healthy, happy and productive life
8. Obtain a class 2B licence
9. Complete a triathlon safely
10. Generate $50,000 passive income in 7 years’ time
11. Take a train ride from one end of Australia to another
12. Be a published author with sales of 20,000 copies of my personal finance book
13. Be the champion of table-topics contest for toastmasters at district level
14. Speak conversational Japanese
15. Improve my mandarin to be able to blog in Mandarin

I’ll be revisiting this list now and then to refresh and refine it and goals and targets are meant to be reviewed periodically to see if they are in line with our life’s mission and values.

Have you considered developing your own life list?

Be well and prosper.