Financial freedom should be fun!

In our quest for financial freedom, do we feel even more stressed to work on our jobs or businesses, save and invest and seek new ways to save money or to generate multiples sources of income?

Stop, pause, wait!

You may find the road towards financial freedom filled with challenges and obstacles, but it doesn't mean you cannot have fun and enjoy the journey!

Here is some of PanzerGrenadier's 3 ways to make financial freedom fun for you so that you will find it sustainable to commit to the various ways to grow your net worth to a sum where the passive income from it more than covers your living expenses.

1) Treat it as a game!

When you play video games or sports, don't you tally up the scores to see who is winning or losing? It is the same thing for financial freedom! When you set goals and targets, each month or year where you see your net worth growing and the gap between your targetted investible savings amount and your current amount narrowing, it gives you a certain feeling of satisfaction that you are moving ever closer to your goal!

Seeing it as a game also allows us to inject more humour and fun into it rather than seeing it as deadly serious. Some readers may disagree with me on this approach but I found that life is too short to be all serious all the time. Yes, we need to be serious about setting goals and targets and about taking the disciplined approach to do the necessary things such as spending within our means and saving as well as building up our investments prudently. But no-one said it has to be done WITHOUT humour, a sense of fun that it really is a game that we play to allow ourselves the option to retire earlier than the statutory retirement age set by the powers-that-are.

2) Learning and earning

As I learn about investments and ways to make my investible savings grow, I also embark on hobbies that generate some additional source of income. For me, AdSense has allowed me to explore my interest in writing and articulating my thoughts into something that has a tangible economic value as it helps to bring in some small kopi-money even as it is both fun and rewarding in many senses of the word. In addition, my public speaking endeavours are aimed at gearing me up with skills that help me in my current career but also prepare me for a second career when the time comes.

My blogging efforts also exposes me to a slew of new technologies relating to Web 2.0 that I would not have experimented with if I had just chosen a more traditional hobby such as vegetating in front of the television or xbox (or is it xbox 360 now!?) ;-)

3) Laugh at yourself once in a while

If I counted the number of mistakes or wrong paths I had taken in my journey towards financial freedom, I would run out of fingers and toes to count them. No-one is perfect and has fore-knowledge of what is to come. My adventures in this journey towards financial freedom has its ups and downs. I realise that you have to sometimes just laugh at yourself when your portfolio goes underwater due to sub-prime or risk of US recession and count your lucky stars that you have some of your investible savings in defensive assets such as bank deposits, treasury bills and fixed deposits. At the end of the day, all these efforts towards financial freedom mean whether we can retire earlier or later but not life and death. So I try not to frame things in terms of life and death unless they truly are e.g. driving safely IS a life and death issue.

I do hope that you will also consider the fun part of achieving financial freedom, as it gives you more options in life to explore it in its wonder, splendour and candour.

Be well and prosper!

Financial freedom is a journey and not a destination

Life is about processes and journeys rather than a destination
Some of my readers may know that I am an avid toastmaster. You get to learn many things at toastmasters meetings and one of them is that life is about processes and journeys rather than destinations.

The toastmasters experience too has been described by many toastmasters both old and new that it is a journey. In the spirt of lifelong learning, the old adage in mandarin, "活到老学到老" (as we grow older, we continue to learn), rings true in any worthwhile human endeavour.

And so it is with financial freedom. Many of us see the end point or the destination of this process of financial freedom as being able to quit our jobs and do what we REALLY want in life instead of our work and business. The absurdity of it all of being in a rat-race is that we trade our time for money and use the money to buy back time, all the while forgetting that it is the experiences we gather through the journey that is life, that is living.

That is not to say that intermediate milestones are not useful in allowing us to consider how far we have moved along this journey for financial freedom. Setting targets and destinations focusses the mind and the will. But it is equally important to enjoy the process that leads us towards financial freedom.


The journey is preceded by what we first see in our minds
I see this journey towards financial freedom as a continuous process. I do not think there will ever be a time that I will say, I have "made it". In my journey, I have managed to reach some intermediate goals which become the stepping stones for even more exciting journeys in allowing me to have a measure of my finances.

One of the critical intermediate goals I have set and achieved is to own my home by fully paying off the mortgage. The satisfaction that I get from achieving this is starting to permeate through my consciousness. My debt-free status allows me to have a quiet sense of confidence about my financial situation. To know that for once in my life, I have one firm hand on the steering wheel of my financial life. I can now truly say that I work for my family and for myself and am not an employee who works for the bank. I can truly say that every dollar that I earn now goes towards accumulating my retirement fund and not towards paying off interest and debt. I can truly say that I am not a slave to my job.

Can I quit my job now and live off my accumulated capital? Of course not. Not at this point in time. I still need to work a good 10-15 years more as my living expenses will increase with a new addition to the family. However, I now can say that whatever I invest in my family is for them. It goes into building up their financial assets for their future prosperity and not to repay the consumption that I have taken up today.


Liberation and release is part of my journey
Just as my full-time national service run-out-date was one of the most liberating moments in my life. My release from long-term debt ranks up there along with my completion of 10 years of reservist service in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) resulting in me being transferred to Mindef-Reserve (MR) status.

While your day-to-day life may not change, it is really the knowledge that you are rid of a BURDEN that stays with you in your heart. When I relaxing at home in my place, I can finally say that is is MINE instead of being subject to all the legal claims by the banks, CPF etc. if you cannot service your loan. Just like my status as a civilian in Singapore, the SAF cannot touch me short of wartime operations and the feeling is priceless. No amount of money can replace that feeling of having done my duty and not be bothered by the State's incessant meddling with my life!


Liberation and release is within your grasp too
I encourage you to continue to be disciplined, to continue to save, invest and pare down your debt even as you maintain your standard of living. Invest in your health too as our quality of life is strongly influenced by good health.

Live and enjoy life.

Save and invest, but also spend on the things that matter to you.

Ultimately, we choose how we want to travel on this journey. Aggressively, conservatively or passively. Choose based on your own values and principles.

Be well and prosper.