My Route to Financial Freedom

One of my university majors was Finance. The reason for me on choosing this was that I like to explore all the possibilities and probabilities. I like figures and get around with them but I hate Accounts. I don't mean Accounting figures are meaningless but, to me, the process of doing this is rather boring. One good thing on Finance is that I could justify the figures by adding in assumptions with is not allowed in Accounts. In short, Finance allows me to carry out some assumptions to justify my analysis.

The Real Meaning of Early Retirement / Freedom

When talk about early retirement, I come across many books and internet articles on how to achieve this financially.  As a matter of fact, finance is only part of the equation.

Here, I would like to share what is the real meaning of early retirement (at least to me):

1: Am I wanting to have early retirement and why?

A: YES, YES, YES.  I have been planning for this for years and I finally achieved this at the age of 40 financially.  Why?  This is because I would like to have more time to do what I like to do which I can't do so when my time is sold for living.  When I was an full-time employee, at least 8 hours of my day are sold.  Therefore, beside full-time job, I did not have sufficient time for myself as I would be occupied by other tasks in my life (sending/picking up kids to/from schools and/or tuition classes, settling bills and other family matters etc) while I still need at least 6-hour resting time every night.  My life was busy but created no value as I could not enjoy it at all.  Routine tasks had been making me felt so dull.  I could only enjoy my life if I become the master of my time.  That is the motive of me for early retirement.

你50岁还要烦钱吗？Are you still struggling for money at the age of 50?

栽自新洲日报投资致富2017年11月6日第27页

看了这个报章标题，有些感触。就在几天前，我去了间银行去存放定存。因为我要得到更好的利率，我便向大厅的一位Officer询问。谈好后，该名Officer没让我拿号码排队，而是直接将我的资料及批准的利率交到收银员那儿处理。看来这位Officer的来头不小。在等待定存收据时，我便和她聊了起来。当她问我在哪儿高就时，我说我是自由工作者（Freelancer)。（其实我目前我还是全职工作者。那为什么我会说我是自由工作者呢？那是因为在不久的将来，我将会是我自己的主人。现在是时候让自己习惯这样说了，好让心里有个准备。）那位Officer好不羡慕。她说她也希望能像我一样。后来我才知道那位Officer是原来是该银行分行的经理。

Book Fair

My wife and I visited Popular Mega Bookfair Expo in JB yesterday. May be it is school holiday, the center was quite crowded even though it was just a normal working day.

To exercise the spirit of continual learning, we bought quite a number of books that have cost us a few hundred dollars. By the end of the day, we felt very happy about what we got although we were all very tired.

The photo was taken on 14th May 2009 at Guong Bok Kun (Seoul)