WHY
Why are we doing this? We have friends struggling with their daily lives, trying to make ends meet, facing retrenchment, experiencing difficulties in keeping up with bills and demands in life. We wish that through this website we can educate friends from all walks of life on different financial knowledge and business ideas that they can utilize the information to improve their financial well-being.
Meanwhile, this website chronicles a journey of our different approaches towards financial freedom. We believe in accumulating financial assets and different sources of income to achieve financial freedom.
The objective is to achieve through:
Investment
- To act as a platform for my investment ideas
- To share what I had learned based on my success and failures
- To document my investing results
Business
- To share what I learned based on my failures
- To document my business journey
Teddy Roosevelt’s quote “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Who am I?
I am an engineer trained by a local university and end up in the oil and gas industry, working since 2007.
I aim to let my wife retire in another 2 years’ time. At least, she will be given the choice to work, spend time with the family, or start her own business. Freedom is the choice to do something you like.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference
–Robert Frost [1916]
Idiots do things that they don’t like to do, suffer their whole life because they think it’s needed or they think it’s their duty.
Intelligent people do what they love to do. They enjoy their life to some extent.
But a genius learns to do what is needed joyfully. That’s when your genius flowers.
-Sadhguru
Why do we want to achieve financial freedom?
Below is documentation of why we want to achieve financial freedom over the years. I wrote this list in 2015 and it is an ever-growing list of WHYs.
You need to find your WHY
WHY you need to be FINANCIALLY FREE
- I want to be able to travel with my family and stay at Ascott Service Apartment. It is a very family-friendly hotel. We can cook and travel to see the country. (Inspiration came when I traveled to KL in 2016)
- I feel very sad when I am away from my family on overseas business trips. I want to have the freedom to choose where and when I want to work. If I want to work, I need to be close to my family. On Facetime earlier, I saw my wife holding the baby just now. He was very excited to see me on the screen. Before you know it, my son will grow up and I want to spend more time with my wife. It is unfair to them for me to be away for so long. Also, he is able to walk a few steps and stand up without holding on to support. I do not wish to miss out on special moments like this. (This was written when I was in KL Malaysia in 2016)
- I want to be successful and financially free so that I can travel for leisure and not for work. I don’t want to be on the road as I was drenched earlier and needed to gush down my dinner to catch a flight. It wasn’t a good feeling.
- I want to be financially free because I do not want to work with idiots who waste my precious time. I can choose whom I want to work with.
- I want to stay alternate months shuttling between HK and SG. This needs some urgency as my wife shared with me that her brother’s condition has worsened slightly.
- I want to have the financial capability to bring my parents to see the world before they are getting old. Likewise, I want to be able to bring my parents-in-law to see the world too!
- I want to bring my family to see the world!
- I want to provide job opportunities for people
- I want to improve the quality of life for my employees and in turn, impact their families
- I want to have quality time with my family
- I want to enjoy quality food with my family
- I do not wish to continue to live a life working for people, making the bosses richer
- I want to have the choice to choose who the colleagues I work with
- I want to have zero office politics
- I want to build mobile libraries in developing countries
- I want to build orphanages in developing countries
- I want to be financially independent so that in dire times, I can provide my child with an education, and my family with medical and housing
- I want to improve the quality of life for my family and close friends
- I want to choose when and where I work
- I want to pursue what I am passionate about
- I want my son to know the power of being an employer compared to being an employee
- I want to be able to stay in whichever country I desire
- I want to be able to shuttle between Singapore and Hong Kong and rotate my stay between these two countries so that my wife and I can spend sufficient quality time with the family
- I want to use my knowledge to help others. I want to empower them with the knowledge of investing and how they can lead a better life
- I want to be financially free so that I can take care of my parents and parents-in-law during their golden years in terms of food, medical, and well-being.
- I want to be financially free so that one day I can travel together with the family 4 times a year to see a new place that we have never been to
- I want to be happy and healthy now while embarking on this journey toward financial freedom. It is not after I achieved this goal then I will be happy. I need to be grateful for everything that I have. I don’t need to grow my wealth very fast but I need to know this is a journey and it is a personal one just between my wife and me.
- I want to have time to pause and think
- I want to have time to drink coffee while watching the world go by
- I want to enjoy a few luxurious goods such as a good watch like Patek and a Birkin bag for my wife (lifestyle inflation => not good!)
- I want to have time to exercise and maintain a strong physique
- I want to have time to meet up with my friends and extended family
- I want to be financially free so that my wife can retire and doesn’t need to take the train during the peak hour in the morning and after work. I am willing to suffer this ordeal of taking public transport if it means a better life for the family.
- I want to be financially free so that my wife can have more rest at home. She has worked many long hours for the past few years.
- (This was written in 2017) I dislike having to justify to people why I leave work at 3.30 pm and they will say,” Why do you leave work so early? Your pay is higher than people and this is not fair.” Did they realize there are days I need to wake up at 3 am to board a plane? Did they realize I had worked over several weekends? Did they realize I was away from my family for more than 8 days? I believe in the freedom to choose when and where to work and I do not need to answer anyone about my work.
- I need to be financially free because I can do more sharing without the need to depend on it for income. This serves as an independent consultant. Then only I can provide an independent opinion and not biased ones.
- I want to be financially free so that I can have time to read newspapers, financial books, financial statements, and detailed studies on companies, visit them during AGM, put them on my watchlist, and acquire stronger companies.
- I want to have the choice to spend on my family, providing them with a better quality of life. For example, my wife requested for higher maintenance fee which comprises hair and facial, which can be costly. I want to have a surplus for this indulgence for my wife. I know that more wants will cause delays in completing my financial freedom quest
- I want to be financially free so that I will not depend on my month-end paycheck to plan my finances. Currently, as I am writing this, it is 5/7/2017 and I have not received my salary for the month of June. I need to follow up with my accountant daily to see whether we receive the fund. This incident is a blessing in disguise because I can appreciate if the money doesn’t come in and how I can manage the cash flow. I need to get used to not having a salary.
- When my parents-in-law were in Singapore between 4/7/17 to 7/7/2017, I could not take annual leave to bring them out because of a work commitment. There are a lot of happy moments which I missed. Upcoming week, I will need to travel from Monday to Friday, and I will miss spending time with my loved ones. All these come at the expense of trading time for money. That is a key reason why I need to be financially free earlier rather than late. Time is more valuable than money. Time cannot be bought with money in this aspect.
- I want to be financially free so that I do not need to work for another salary. I am too used to working for a salary which is a very bad habit. I get very insecure when I didn’t receive my salary for June and again I felt it will be late for July.
- We don’t need to wake up at peak hours to squeeze MRT with people. I don’t mind taking the train but when it is off-peak hour will be ideal
- All our parents are getting older, and they need us to spend time with them.
- I want to spend time pursuing meaningful projects and not what others tell me to do. If I waste my time on spreadsheets and do not get any useful things out then it is a waste of my life. If the spreadsheet is able to help me increase my wealth then it is good. Gives the world what they want and you will be rewarded for it.
- I still dislike it when I need to go for dinner with people related to work in the form of entertainment. Yes, it is free and often good food. I just want to have time with my family after work without all these. However I believe even as remisier there will be many occasions when I need to meet clients after their work. This weekend I will not be at home and I cannot see my ah boy tonight.
- I don’t know if am I just ranting here but I had a meeting today and it felt like I was at fault because there was no progress. Yes, there’s no progress because partly there’s some element of fault from my side as always, but you didn’t give me time to go through things in order to clear my doubts. I was at the point of snapping just now, why do I need to answer 27-year-old guy on all his rants targeted towards his elder brother as well? Now I know how it feels to report to someone younger than you. It is an ego issue. Another problem is I have some money and I don’t really need to stand up to this type of insolence. Or maybe I do need the money if not I could have just walked out immediately just now. I need to be free from all this nonsense.
- I want to utilize fully what are the talents that are given to me.
- I feel good when I shared my beliefs on investment and ideas on financial freedom with people and they have the “ah ha” moment.
- I want to help more people become financially free or better off than before. Encourage people to take action towards their goals.
- I want people to have a better life.
- I want to be financially free because, in FY2018, I experienced two occasions of job losses. I was retrenched before Christmas in 2017 by the CEO of Company D, I was jobless for about 4 months until I start work at company BS in April 2018 and was let go towards the end of November 2018 because I had a disagreement with the MD. I started work in January 2019 with the company SS. In early April, I was looking for another job, and the MD of the company SS asked me to leave. Subsequently, I returned back to work for him. I want to be financially free because I do not want to be retrenched by another company. I want my own definition of stability.
- In 2019, I want to be successful on my own terms because I do not want to be an employee who is filling the MD of the company SS’ pocket. We work on two projects and make a total of about SGD 300k profit to the firm and he intends to pay me for only SGD 50k max including my salary and CPF contribution. He is taking the lion’s share and I am just taking a portion of it. I want to be in my own business creating my own livelihood. I can be in control of how much I can give to myself. (In 2021, I reflected that this is fair because he took the risk and finance the project as a business owner, that’s why he takes the lion’s share. That’s why I should start my own business if I have the capability)
- I want to do something which helps to provide value-added services to their lives.
- I want to achieve financial freedom so that my wife can quit working and she does not need to be yelled at by unprofessional colleagues. I don’t want to see her cry, it breaks my heart.
- I want to achieve financial freedom so that my wife can stay home to look after the children
- I want to achieve financial freedom because right now I have 2 children, and there are more motivated for me to work hard for them
- In 2021, I return back to Singapore after quarantine. Right out of quarantine, I went to pick up my son from school. It was 5 months from 1st September 2020 since I last saw him, and I could not recognize him. I don’t want to be away from the family for an extended period. I did not accompany my wife to see the doctor while she is having our 2nd child. By the time I return, a baby girl was about to be delivered. The tummy was small when I left, it turn into a balloon by the time I was home. I lost 5 months of time away from family.
- I would not be a wage slave. I would not take “no” for an answer. I would not give in. I was going to be rich. Somehow. Someday soon. And I would not retreat to the safety of a decent job until I was starved out of house and home. I would not give in.
- I am a deeply unhappy soul muddling along in a profession or career for which I am patently unsuited. Worse still, by continually wishing and never delivering, I am risking denting my confidence, beginning a vicious downward spiral that appears to draw misfortune like a magnet. The assumption that I might be able to achieve some goal if I only wished hard enough is not just a fuck up. It is a potential personal tragedy. Life is not a rehearsal. My misery is made all worse by the realization that lack of enthusiasm early on and being stuck to my guns, my life might well have taken a far more congenial course.
- Our lives are way too short. my friend was diagnosed with cancer in 2020. This is a good reminder that we will not live forever. He passed away in 2022 at age 42.
- In the corporate world within a large organization, I need to spend countless hours attending meetings to get a common consensus. We are wasting time in endless meetings.
- In the corporate world, we end up as tools for others’ strategies toward office politics.
- There are things deemed unethical such as requesting a discount after the job is completed. I do not agree with it. I was even quoted as mediocre in terms of negotiating, then why ask me to negotiate?
- Currently, I am been requested to work on the London hours project while working on an APAC project. This means longer working hours from morning till midnight. It is a thankless job, you are required to perform at your optimum for long working hours. Why not spend the same amount of time working on your own business making yourself rich instead of others? The last time when I was doing this long working hours stretch was 29 years old, now I am 39 years old, and it is a completely different world. I am running low on energy level. At 41 years old, I update this again, I am working 9 am to 11 pm, which is very tiring.
- I want to be free from the corporate world because I am feeling burnout. I will vent my frustration on my child which is unfair to him.
- You cannot have both time and money when you are trading time for money!
- I do not want to work over the weekends writing non-sensical papers to satisfy clients and need to go over different permutations with internal stakeholders. This is just not a good use of my time.
- Living frugally can loosen the yoke of necessity that binds one to a job, and while not having to work for a living appeals to everyone
- I don’t want to miss baby girl’s growing-up years, and nor do I want my wife to miss it
- I want to be around to send my son to his school
- I don’t want to rely solely on work income as the sole source of income. Remember the chair theory, if you only have work income only, you are seating on 1 leg chair. Do not give yourself excuses on how to create multiple sources of income. The driver should be bigger than your how, once your work income is taken away from you, you will fall because your chair has only 1 leg.
- Don’t always use God as an excuse when you are not taking action to grow your wealth, remember the parables of the servants, if you bury the gold and do nothing, you get nothing. God wants to provide us with everything that we need but we need to take action.
- Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end. I want to get rich enough so I can read books for an entire day if I want
- Rich people invest their money in assets like stocks and crypto. You can’t see their money because it’s doing the hard work of compounding so they can have zero meetings in their calendar. Their goal isn’t millions of dollars. Their goal is passive income that pays for their living costs.
- The best part about life is having the time to do whatever you want. It is having time to explore your curiosity and not be stressed out by silly money-making goals that please nobody. I just want to do something I like.
- I want to have complete control over my schedule. If I wanted to take four weeks off for family reasons, I could put a red X through those dates on the calendar. Then I could work backward and build my schedule around that. I didn’t need to go through a manager to see what was available after the senior employees choose their time off or due to project requirements. I was working on the things I wanted to work on, and I felt like what I was working on had a greater purpose. Even more amazing was that my income had the potential to grow based directly on the work I put in. Instead of an annual 1-3% raise from my day job, we could grow the business week by week. The awesome thing is you aren’t limited to one path. Life is the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure story.
- I don’t want my wife to have sleepless nights to satisfy an internal management report on a monthly basis. This is bad for her health.
- I want the children to travel so that they can increase their global quotient. The world is their oyster.
- I want the option to live in different countries and not be geographically bounded.
- I do not want to be working throughout the entire day on a job for >12 hours. I want to have my own time to pursue my side hustle. I don’t want to apply for another job, I should be creating a business to solve unmet needs. Money is made when a problem is solved.
- I do not want to be told by my employer where to work. I do not want to be scrutinized by cost control on my employment contract for small costs like handphone bills.
- I want to gain control of my time to play with the children in the evening instead of working.
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