"Take time to smell the roses, my son..."

Our journey towards financial freedom brings us to many different places. The places are not necessarily physical or geographical; rather - they are places within our minds as we broaden our experiences in the many paths and roads that bring us ever closer to what financial freedom means to us.

The voice that tells me...

As I work and make progress towards my goals in financial freedom, I become increasingly aware of the distant voice inside my head that tells me to slow down and smell the roses. No, I am not schrizophrenic nor pyschotic, I do not literally hear voices but I am increasingly guided by this sense that I should explore a little bit more about what this world has to offer to my family and myself and not to just to focus on saving and investing just to grow my investible savings to that established target.

Targets and goals are critical in any endeavour worth pursuing  and you will find that I am very feverent in my goals of achieving financial freedom. I aim to achieve this target long before the statutory retirement age or 62 or even 67 depending on when the government changes the minimum withdrawal age for the Central Provident Fund (CPF).

... To take it easy

There is tremendous flexibility in how we can achieve our targets in this journey. I used to belong to the school of thought where I relentlessly pursued many means to reduce my personal expenditure and maximise my investment returns. The years of 2003 to 2007 were years of reasonable returns beating fixed deposits and CPF special account interest rates even though I was not (and am still not!) an expert in investments and personal finance. I have tried with varying degrees of successes investing in fixed deposits, treasury bills, stocks and shares (equities) and unit trusts (mutual funds).

My personal status has changed  from student ==> employed single ==> employed married (no children) ==> employed married (with 1 child on the way). In each of these episodes of my life, I have tried different ways of growing my net worth bit by bit, little by little.

What has changed since I have learnt from each episode until today is that MANY PATHS LEAD TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM. And one of the paths that has opened up for me is to take time out to smell the roses.

Smelling the roses

What this means to me is that I need to sometimes allow myself to enjoy a bit of my net worth WITHIN MY MEANS and while still keeping my goals of financial freedom FIRMLY IN MIND even as I sample the sweet nectar that life offers for those who are able to delay instant gratification for a deeper sense of appreciation and enjoyment of life.

Ideally, if our investible savings yields some returns, you can decide if you want to channel these returns back into investments or perhaps partake in a percentage of it for personal consumption of the little luxuries in life.

My own experience of buying my Suzuki SX4 Sedan to provide a more convenient form of transport for my family and myself comes at a price. The capital cost of my car does delay my goals of financial freedom by about $55k  (and more if you compute future value of investing this amount for next 20-30 years!!!). My living expenses will go up because of petrol, maintenance, road tax, insurance, ERP, parking and a whole host of myriad costs that maintaining a car involves.

The car to me is a different path I have chosen to take in my journey towards financial freedom. It is time to smell the roses as I have worked for 13 years without owning a car. It is time to allow myself a little luxury in life in transportation as I can afford it and it makes sense (maybe not cents! :-) ) for my upcoming family addition!

 

What is the rose in your life?

What is the path that you may want to take in your journey towards financial freedom. Remember, you are in control of this journey you take. You decide if you wish to take a straight line from here to your targeted goal of $xxx,xxx amount to be financially free or to take a longer path.

It is about balancing today's needs and wants with tomorrow's needs and wants. There is no prescribed text book answer. You decide on the outcome, retire at 55, 62, 67 or 83. It is all up to you.

Have a great Lunar New Year with family and friends and as always, be well and prosper.