Leaving Behind Legacy

Leaving behind legacy for your loved ones is definitely a bonus. No one aim to cripple their family members. What is really important...is cultivating the right values. Without the values, there is no point owning a whole lot of fortunes.


Be kind to people. Poor people deserve it because they are lazy or don't work smart enough?

爸，我放学了！

金山银山不如人情山

Life is Unpredictable

For you who are planning for retirement fund till eternity, bad news. My cousin passed away recently at 41 years old. Rest in peace...

Not to fret, our life expectancy are increasing:

Life Expectancy at Birth

*Data from 1980 onwards refer to the resident population.
Data for 2014 are preliminary.

- See more at: http://www.singstat.gov.sg/statistics/visualising-data/charts/life-expectancy-at-birth#sthash.4puPpFz1.dpuf

This reminds us that it is an art to live every day like it is your last, and plan your finance like you live forever. To learn this art is a lifelong journey.

Averagely, we are expected to live to >80 years old. Who knows how long our journey will be? Go chase your rainbow!

Focus is One of the Key to Success

I am not a smart person. The reason why I am still progressing well in whatever I do is, to keep everything simple. It helps me focus, reduce distractions, eliminate unnecessary work processes / day-to-day hassles and enhance my understanding. I believe anything that can't be simplified, mean we don't know the subject matter well enough.


We all wear many hats. I am wearing the hat of a :

1. Husband;
2. Father;
3. Maid;
4. Son;
5. Full time employee;
6. Blogger; and
7. Many more other roles (Investor?)

Every day, my wife and I have to juggle with:

1. House chores;
2. Spending time with child;
3. Working full time;
4. Preparing daily breakfast; 
5. Buying/cooking dinner;
6. Washing laundry;
7. Feeding my child; 
8. Washing milk bottles; 
9. Learning new skills and 
10. Rushing to pick up child from infant care centre.

On top of these, we have to buy groceries, write blog and run day-to-day errands. My wife and I only have 1-to-1 dating time once every quarter, when we placed our child at care centre and we took leave together. The rest of our leave are spent on child's sick leave, care centre rest day, vaccination and maybe once-a-year vacation (horray!).

I have never been so busy before in my life. Even busier than when I was juggling work and study since secondary school. I think my time management skill should be great, given that we have no maid and parents support with both of us working full time and maintaining a pretty high standard of hygiene for the family.

I considered myself with higher than normal dedication to my family. I spent all my personal time with my family and I rarely go out with friends or attend events without my family. I enjoy moments with my family. Another dedication is my house chores. I pride myself to higher level of hygiene and maintaining minimalist.

I find myself distracted in the past 1 year. I no longer focus and productive as before. Partly because to begin with, I have left with very little time for distractions with my high level of child, house work, and family commitments. on top of my day job, I am now learning new skill to transit into freelance so that I can quit my day job sooner than 5 years to financial independence, or 5 years. My distraction comes from whatapps and my little room of time left, I guess.

So in order to help myself, I did contemplate whether to pause blogging for a while. However, the good news is I am using my blog as a platform to learn new skill and to vomit out my thoughts. Which help me to gain clarify and better self awareness. Definitely not for viewership and income (I don't mind if there is).

How to focus? As usual, I have to identify key priorities. I will rank them by sequence in broad categories:

1. Family time
2. House chores
3. Work
4. Freelance

My current job is giving me pain. Other than spending time with family and doing house chores, I will have to put aside time to find a better job and learn new skill. My action plan is to spend about 30 minutes for job search every day, about 3 hours a week learning freelance and 1 hour a week to write a post.

Back to my distraction from whatapps. I actually honoured to be part of this wonderful financial friends support group. I love them more than many other things. I realised from time to time that I am addicted to chatting with them. This group has more than 2000 messages daily! They value-added to my life. However, I have to moderate and focus on my life. So, I will only chat with them after I completed all my tasks for the day or have pocket of free time to spare in between. It is so painful, it is like quitting drug (I never took drug before, by the way).

I don't drink caffeine anyway.

The Simple Reason To Be Financially Independence

Nothing is free. If you can let go, everything is free - Frugal Daddy

The reason for financial independence in my context is simple, to spend time doing the things that made me happy.  Ancient Chinese and English people already provided you the answer before you are born :

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” ― John Lennon



桃花塢裡桃花庵，桃花庵下桃花仙。

桃花仙人種桃樹，又摘桃花換酒錢。

酒醒只在花前坐，酒醉還來花下眠。

半醉半醒日復日，花落花開年復年。

但願老死花酒間，不願鞠躬車馬前。

車塵馬足顯者事，酒盞花枝隱士緣。

若將顯者比隱士，一在平地一在天。

若將花酒比車馬，彼何碌碌我何閒。

別人笑我太瘋癲，我笑他人看不穿。

不見五陵豪傑墓，無花無酒鋤作田。

- 唐伯虎

Layman's chinese

桃花塢裡有一個桃花庵，桃花庵裡住著一個桃花仙人。
桃花仙人種了很多桃樹，春天時摘下桃花賣就有了喝酒錢。
酒醒了就坐在桃花下，喝醉了就在桃花樹下睡覺。
醒了醉,醉了醒,一日又一日，花落花開一年又一年。
只求伴著花與喝酒兩件事度過一生,只到老死，
也不願意衝著乘著馬車的人點頭哈腰。
乘車起馬是顯貴者的事，喝酒賞花是有隱士的緣分。
若將顯者比隱士，一在平地一在天。
若將賞喝花酒和坐車騎馬比較，他們何等的庸庸碌碌,
我是多麼的幽閒。
別人笑話我,說我瘋瘋癲癲，
我還笑話他們對人世間的事情沒有看透。
難道你們看不見葬在西安五陵(泛指葬死人的地方)那些豪傑(泛指顯赫人)的墳墓嗎，勾心鬥角一輩子,還不是埋在那裡.那裡沒有花也沒有酒作為農夫鋤下田地了。

Trading Away Your Happiness Now To Earn Money

How many of us are trading away our happiness now to earn money, in hopes that if you make enough, you will be able to buy it back later?

I am sure this is a common thinking, consciously or subconsciously. This is akin like, if I strike lottery, I will resign immediately and pursue my passion.



There will not be a conclusion and there will never be a conclusion in this topic. It is a journey. The only time you know the conclusion is when you are in your dying moment (*touchwood).

If you know you are going to die tomorrow, what will you do different today? If everyday, you know you going to die tomorrow, what will you do different everyday?

Here are some quotes:
1) A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty – Unknown

2) If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money - Abigail Van Buren

3) Don’t educate your children to be rich. Educate them to be happy, so they know the value of things, not the price – Unknown

4) No amount of money or success can take the place of time spent with your family – Unknown

5) You can retire from a job, but don’t ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life - Stephen Covey

6) The goal isn’t more money. The goal is living life on your terms – Chris Brogan

Pre and Post Financial Independence Schedules

Here is my Post Financial Independence schedule. I have a list of around 100 items that can be done in my inventory. For example, cycling, jogging, reading, writing, visit mount faber, etc. The drag and drop fields is to inserted by the list of 100 items in my inventory. I will pre plan the schedule at least 1 week in advance.

I am not going to wait until post financial independence to live a fulfilling life. As mentioned in my previous post on purpose of your ultimate dreams.

Here are some of the examples that I have done earlier for things to do annually from now. It is on an annual basis as it is easier to plan since we have a full time job. Similarly, I have a list of things to be drag and drop into those empty fields:

Have your ideas awakened?

Frugal Daddy

Purpose of your Ultimate Dreams and Goals

Recently, I have done an "workshop" with my wife. This exercise has given much vision and guiding principles to our hectic lives nowadays. Frankly, I personally felt my self-awareness abilities have reached another level and my inner peace is so great that I can overcome more challenges. This is not the first time I had such sentiment, as I constantly looking for way to seek "enlightenments". Another most recently "workshop" I have done is the self-leadership practice, which i have shared earlier. So, what so special about this most recent "workshop"? Maybe, I should give it a name so that it is easier to reference and It should be named as Dreams and Goals Planner.  Ok, I know this is not a catchy and creative name, but this is the first name that come across my mind while I am writing this post.



Basically, we sat down quietly for an hour during our hectic schedules just to brainstorm what are our dreams and goals. First, you must understand what are dreams and how it differ from goals. To me, dreams that are not huge enough to impress yourself are not truthful enough. Goals can be any small or big objectives that can satisfy your needs and wants. Clear enough? I would suggest to use a pen and paper to write down free flow about your dreams and goals.

If a break interval will help, go ahead. Get that enough mind rest and continue to organise your list. Review it with your spouse if you are married. It will be good or practical that most of the events for married couple will evolve among themselves. Ok, I know some couples have a lot of private time. So you can also segments into family time section and by categories. For example, family time, food, enrichment or explore Singapore. The activities categories will be the X-axis and your age will be the Y-axis. The age columns will guide you what to achieve or accomplish when. I hope you can visualise what I am sharing as I am not going to upload a sample for your reference. Read again if you need to.

Ok, what so special about this? Yes, if you are truthful in this exercise, you will find purposes in your financial or life goals. I have been spending a lot of my personal time on personal finance, but what is lacking is to add a bucket list of events or things to accomplish to the financial planning. This list can involve various big and small events, such as eating tim sum at xxx restaurant, visit taiwan and fly a lantern, plant a time capsule, and so on. Now, I am fully confident in answering any question on "what you going to do if you retire at 40s? You will be bored!"

Come on, give it a try. In fact, I have done similar versions years back. The result was great but after revisiting it and compared both list after that, it is so much an enhanced version. The lesson? Do it years after years if you need to.

I hope you also find your purpose in life!

Cheers
Frugal-Daddy

Use Halloween to Teach Kids Money Lessons

How can one thing mean two totally different things to different people? Take Halloween treats for example. Kids are delighted by it. Parents, not so much. Candies filled with high fructose corn syrup and food coloring, and kids that are hyper-active with so much sugar intake that they literally bounce off the walls. It’s every parent’s nightmare and the perfect scary ending to the Halloween holiday! But here’s a trick that will sound more like a treat – this unsavory situation can easily be turned into a money lesson for kids!

Let me explain.

The day before Halloween, you make a deal with the kids. When they return back from trick or treating, you will buy their candies from them for real money. From the day after Halloween they can buy the candies back from you. For every day past Halloween, the price of candies falls by 5%. Each day, they can spend only a preset amount of money on buying back candies. Knowing kids, they will want to eat the choicest candies in the first few days and in the later days as the number of candies they can have for the preset amount increases, the candies are no longer their favorites and so may choose to keep the money instead of throwing it away on candies they don’t like. They learn a few important money lessons while at the same time eating fewer candies. It’s a win-win situation.

Here is an example.

Say your daughter has collected 110 pieces of candy. You set the price of each piece of candy to say, a quarter. So if you can convince her to sell you 100 pieces of candy, then she will earn $25. Each day she is allowed to spend $2 of that money to buy back the candies. Each day the price of candies falls by 5%. Say you round up the number of candies she gets. Then for two days after Halloween, she will be able to buy 9 pieces of candy for $2. For two days after that, she will be able to purchase 10 pieces of candy for $2. And so on, until the candies run out on day 10. So, she gets to have all her candy back over a period of 9 days for $18. That leaves her with $7 to keep. Pretty good deal. Here is a table that I generated using excel to explain it better. You can do something similar with the exact numbers that work for your family and print it out so your children can easily understand the concept and keep track of it every day.

Day	Price per candy	# of candies for $2	Actual candies bought	Money in Hand
On Halloween	0.25			$25
1	0.2375	8.421053	9	$23
2	0.225625	8.864266	9	$21
3	0.214344	9.330806	10	$19
4	0.203627	9.821901	10	$17
5	0.193445	10.33884	11	$15
6	0.183773	10.88299	11	$13
7	0.174584	11.45578	12	$11
8	0.165855	12.05872	13	$9
9	0.157562	12.69339	13	$7
10	0.149684	13.36146	2	$7
		Total	100	$7

The beauty of it is, you can tweak it indefinitely to suit your family’s needs. For instance, if you want to teach the concept of interest, then instead of discounting the cost of candies by 5% you can let them charge you interest of 5% and let them earn more for their money. The math works out to be the same as above.

Or, you can match what they save at the end dollar for dollar, and that way entice them to give away some of the candies they don’t like. So, if they only buy back candies worth $1 a day for 10 days and have $15 left over they get to keep $30. It’s a very nice way to have them eat less candy.

Or, you can vary the price of the candies based on the calorie count. So the higher the calories, the lesser the price drops and so it will be less lucrative for them to buy back high calorie candies compared to healthier ones.

Depending on your child’s temperament you can make any number of changes. As long as you make it a fun game and not a math exercise, kids are bound to love it since they get to eat their candy and make some money too. All of it while learning the valuable lessons of delayed gratification! Small lessons like this can go a long way in protecting them in the future where credit comes easy and temptations are strong!