Being Employed Is a Fulfilment

Hello there! Yes, I know, I am on blog vacation. I have a burning curiosity about a question and I happened to have some time to write now.

If you meet ALL these criteria :

1. Employed staff (exclude self employed); &
2. Would continue with your current job without being paid or paid only 50% of your current salary

Yes, this post is for you!

May I find out why do you enjoy being employed after taking away your salary from the equation?

These are some of the reasons I dislike working life, honestly:

1. KPIs;
2. Having to follow boss instructions regardless of you being agreed or not;
3. How to do your work in the way they want;
4. When to do your work and by when for submission;
5. Who to manage and sack, if applicable;
6. Which days to work in a week;
7. What time you have to report to work and end your work day;
8. Taking away time from your family, hobbies and running errands;
9. How many annual leave you have in a year;
10. Outsourcing big chunk of your short life (say 80 years) to your company by allowing them to tell you how to live your life;
11. And the list continues...

Would greatly appreciate if you can enlighten me why you love your job so much that you no need to be paid to follow the above conditions?

If the reason you work is purely because of money, then how much do you want? How do you balance between your time spent for yourself and time spent to earn money for your wants? Say from 25 years old till 65 years old where you got most energy and maturity, how many years of these 40 years will you spent earning for extra wants and how many years will you spent designing and living your own life for yourself?

Feel free to give your opinion but I urge everyone to maintain respect for each other. It is a discussion and please do not take it personal. No individual should be quoted or mentioned. Thanks.

My Definitions of Financial Independence

If you are reading the finance blogs, you will always hear the term "financial independence" popping out. Sounds boring? It sounded as if life can only goes on after achieving it. So what is financial independence?

According to Wikipedia, the explanation is : "Financial independence is generally used to describe the state of having sufficient personal wealth to live, without having to work actively for basic necessities. For financially independent people, their assets generate income that is greater than their expenses."



My definitions of financial independence is to live as per current lifestyles, except that I don't need to work actively for the money. This will free up time spent on work and more on events that are important to me. There is nothing more important than our lifetime. So, what is lifetime? Accordingly to Google search, the explanation of lifetime is : "the duration of a person's life." Let me know if you feel that your lifetime is too long or there is a money tag to it.

I always hear people saying they will have nothing to do if they are not working. Seriously? Let me help those people. Having nothing also means having everything. In the empty space of having nothing, there is plenty of room for limitless opportunities. You can stay in an island for a month, you can cycle around the world for a decade. You can challenge yourself to finish all the books in library. the list goes on. Whatever make you fulfilling with no regret at your deathbed.

For me, I have plenty to follow up with my family time. It is never enough just by giving my 100% of my time to them. There will never be enough time for them. I enjoy sports. I can swim every morning. Jogging every other day. Write and comments on blog. Meet up with like-minded friends. Travelling once a year, spending time to cook and enjoy the gift of cooking. Nurturing my child. The list goes on. Do I need to worry I got nothing to do after financial independence? Be my guest.

Ironically, there are people who will spent more while not working. Guessed they are confused after not working. I will actually have lesser fixed expenses if I don't work full time. For example, I enjoy cooking instead of dining out, less transport cost and able to tap on off-peak benefits, no income tax, no more leather shoes and so on. As I aged, I will have less insurance/annuities to pay and that offset the inflation cost somehow.

Nothing is free, but if you can let go, everything is free.

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

Can We, Minions, Achieve Financial Independence?

Now is the minions crave. My colleague have to finish 2 McDonalds meals at 1 lunch to get 2 minions toys for his 2 children. Why is minions so popular beside they are cute and funny? I think they are popular because they signify most of our day-to-day routines as a full time employees but in a naughty way.



Can we Minions, or should we, even dream of financial independence? What so good about financial independence? Recently, some bloggers have done some fun exercises for pre/post financial independence schedules. I have did one similar earlier too.

Basically, financial independence allow you to spend your time the way you want. Even you love your job, isn't it good to have more control over your lifestyle? Sounds good?

Achieving financial independence is possible, provided you know what is enough and be discipline about your lifestyle. I am not asking you to suffer to save for the extra 1 cent. Work out what is your comfortable lifestyle and keep the expenses to the minimum. Lead a frugal life and stretch your dollars. Be happy, and double up your money.

How Minions look like when they are no longer minions? It should look something like this :

Why work for a banana, when you can plant your own banana tree or own a banana plantation?

Frugal Daddy

Do You Have a Safety Net?

Do you risk it all when you are handling your hard-earned cash? (Many will say they are not so hard up on money).



I have a safety net, which you can refer it to my post on my basic retirement plans. To summarise the link, it is actually my "bond-like" instruments such as CPF Life, Private Annuities and Insurance. I know, you are going to be sceptical again as many against the cost and performance of insurance companies. Do you know something, I recently requested my NTUC Income agent to show me matured policies and all of them, yes, all of them, performed better than the 5.25% return stated in their benefit illustrations. So far, all my policies' have bonus declared yearly on par or better than the 5.25% that they used as an example.

I do know many companies don't perform well and their insurance / annuities are more costly and hence, resulted in less return. It is best if you find some senior friends who have matured policies with the company you are looking at to at least, understand their historical performance (which is not a sure thing for future performance but served as a reference).

I am not encouraging you to invest in these, but what I did was simply to diversify my asset with annuities and insurance, since I need financial protections anyway. The key, do your homework and assess how much you need to be protected and make sure you have sufficient emergency fund and liquid fund before you commit to anything long term like insurance and annuities. The next step is to convince yourself to act and frequently, people procrastinate.

So, what I am trying to say here? Definitely not about buying insurance or private annuities. Basically, If I am going to lose every single cent in stock market (Which is highly not possible unless I dump all into 1 stock and that stock is a Lehman Brother' friend), I still can retire at 55.

Having a safety net is important, as it gives you a sense of financial security. You know nowadays, financial security is the big thing to live your life with self esteem (I know, some will say they live spiritually and money don't affect their lives). Especially if you are already a working adult, let alone being a parent. You don't want to dig your children piggy bank and appear in the advertisement, don't you? I still remembered those days when my pocket and bank was $0. This is also when you know you don't need a lot to live a fulfilling life. Zen.

I would still think steady win the race. Read Hare and the Tortoise. I take my time to invest but I am not going to procrastinate. I am merely waiting for golden opportunities and I invest based on my asset allocation strategy, which consist of bond, cash and equity.

Do you have a safety net? Why not? Trampoline is not that bad, either.

Frugal Daddy