My weekends are nowadays tied up with helping my wife take care of my daughter who is all of 3 months old. She is a beautiful baby and I feel blessed to have her in my life. Just as I am grateful for the presence of the next generation for Panzer, I realise that I can leave her a financial legacy because all that my spouse and I have as at right now is all hers.

Other than a $19,000 outstanding car loan. I have no other debt.

No mortgage (home fully paid up).

No consumer debt.

No personal loan.

Thus, should anything happen to my spouse or my wife, even without factoring in our insurance payouts, my daughter will co-own along with the surviving spouse, 50% stake in a fully-paid up executive condominum.

How’s that for a start in life?

Of course, my dreams and aspirations for my daughter is for her to develop into her fullest potential and chart her own destiny in this world whether within Singapore or outside into the whole wide world. Whilst she can look forward (but not rely on) to a decent inheritance, I would want her to learn the lessons about financial freedom even as her papa took 30+ years or so before he understood how it could be achieved.

Even as I have built up something to give away to my daughter when my time on this earth is up, I am appreciative for my parents whose hard work, frugality allowed me to learn the lessons condusive in development a mindset and to live a warrior, entrepreneurial businessman or tycoon, consider the type of legacy you will leave your children as you built up your own net worth.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr! photo by Panzergrenadier

Panzer’s weekends

Weekends are now spent helping my spouse take care of my baby daughter. She is an exacting mini-boss but is priceless to me. My daughter is a huge responsibility, financial investment as well as the carrier of the hopes and dreams of her parents for the future. In short, she is a life that money cannot buy.

I am thankful for her presence in my life because I am not getting any younger and I realised I am truly blessed by her coming into my life.

Your motivation in life and in financial freedom

In your search for the motivating factor in financial freedom, there can be many things or persons who are the models for your own life. That which motivates me may be very different from that which motivates you.

In the early mornings, when I carry my daughter and pacify her, I smell her hair and the distinctive baby smell permeates and connects with something deep within my soul. It reinforces the bond between papa and baby. How much does the scent of my daughter cost? A lot in terms of actual dollars and cents spent on her so far… But ultimately, priceless as she is my reason for living the life towards financial freedom so that I can spend MORE time with her.

Be well and prosper.

Recently, I have been under more stress than normal surprisingly not at work but at home due to my daughter coming into my and my spouse’s lives. This has made the difference. There is now a very human dimension to the financial decisions that come into my journey towards financially freedom.

As I was drafting out some of the key components of my will, I realised that my daughter will inherit a significant amount of assets should her old man kick the bucket one day. Now that she is in my life, I am still afraid of dying but not so much because at least I know what I have worked so hard to achieve can be bequeathed to her to some extent.

My daughter’s arrival means that financial freedom takes on a different dimension. Her needs, especially future needs in education and where she is to be brought up is now more important than my spouse and mine’s wishes. I realise that what some people talk about financial freedom is true, i.e. once you have children, it becomes more difficult to retire early and to retire young.

I guess one advantage of achieving some small measure of financial freedom, at least from the perspective of housing debt is that I am in a better position to offer my daughter the better things in life, e.g. pampers new born at $16.20 a pack of 36 without breaking my bank account. Also her formula costs more than stuff I drink which is the cheap cafe21 coffee that accompanies my simple rolled oats breakfast most working days.

What is the point of this post on a weekend? The point is that life is unpredictable and whilst we can plan and plan for financial freedom, there is this degree of unpredictability that will turn the plans of mice and men awry. I have learnt to enjoy the ride more and to reflect more about the path we take.

Will there be mistakes and mis-steps in this journey towards financial freedom! Of course, there will be. We are not machines programmed to function without errors or omissions. On the contrary, mistakes (unless catastrophic) are the ways that human beings learn. I learn everyday to become less concerned about myself and more concerned about my daughter. To be honest, some days her crying drives me insane… But, in 20 years time, all this will be worth it.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr photo by Rick Harris.

Calculate your net worth this weekend

Your net worth is a critical piece of information to track on your journey towards financial freedom. To know how far you have travelled on this journey, you need to know how you have fared in the key indicator that charts your performance towards financial freedom. Net worth is not the only thing important in financial freedom as by itself being financially free as a end does not satisfy. What satisfies is how your time and life is freed to pursue other areas that give you better satisfaction whilst not having to worry about finances and earning a living.

CNN money has an interesting net worth calculator based on USD and US market. Of course, it is not strictly comparable to Singapore but you can use it as a gauge on how you are doing vis-a-vis many US residents. Input your age and annual income (in USD) and see how you fare against others in similar age bracket and income bracket. Are you above the median or below it?

Know your net worth so that you can improve it
Knowing your net worth is not an exercise in numbers, but rather it is one of the means by which you measure your own performance to a benchmark. That benchmark is how close or far you are to your targeted nest-egg for financial freedom or financial independence.

Unless you are aware if you are moving closer or further away from your target, you won’t be able to take effective corrective measures to steer yourself towards your ultimate objective.

I deliberately put in photographs from flickr of places that are beautiful and real. These are places that I would visit one by one as I become more financially free. I recognise that one of the benefits of moving closer to financial freedom is that I will become less trapped in the time-money trade-off that binds us all to our careers, jobs and businesses.

I have recently put in a simple chart in my Excel worksheet that is used to track my own personal net worth as well as my investment performance for the last 5 years. It is a bar chart that shows the first bar as my target in financial freedom, and the other part tracks my actual net-worth (excluding my home). So far, I have reached 40% of this target and have 60% to go and still many years ahead of me to work at it.

The chart helps me focus on what is important to me, that is to actively pursue living within your means, saving and investing, growing my means and protecting my means. It is kept deliberately at the front of my Excel worksheet to emphasise the destination I am moving along towards financial freedom.

Even as you are sipping your cup of coffee or tea and reading the Saturday newspapers. Why not try the net worth calculator and get yourself thinking about if you are on track or not. It’s not so much knowing if you are ahead or behind the curve but rather what next actions you will take to move yourself forward in the curve.

Be well and prosper.

What is financial freedom?

A picture sometimes paints a thousand words. Financial freedom means different things to difference people. Perhaps one way to share what Panzer thinks are the key ideas behind financial freedom is this bubbl.us bubble-map.

The key elements are living within your means, savings and investing and growing your means. I am sure many of you are able to think and draw out your own Bubbl.us map of what financial freedom is to you.

Spend some time this weekend thinking about financial freedom

You want to enjoy the fruits of your labour. The weekend is here for you to spend quality time with yourself, your loved ones and family and friends. Whilst you are out there relaxing whether at home or outside, consider that the journey towards financial freedom is driven by your own desires. Your destination is for you to design, to develop and to dream.

What will your dreams be?

Walt Disney shares with us,

If you can dream it, you can do it…

Be well and prosper.