Category: Lifestyle & Hobbies

I wrote two entries towards the end of 2015 about slowing down (a.k.a. work-life balance) and de-cluttering.

Enter 2016 + Chinese New Year spring cleaning. Spring cleaning this year it is a big affair because I am moving house, so almost every corner of my house gets packed.

Here’s the top three surprises I’ve found in my home:

1. There are more kitchen appliances than you can ever imagine. The kitchen already has a hob and a built-in oven, but then there’s also an air fryer, mini toaster oven, microwave oven, juice blender, food blender, handheld blender (for baking?), pots, pans, more pots, even more pans, tea sets, even more tea sets (I don’t even drink tea, so they have been in storage for eons), dozens of cups/mugs/salt+pepper shakers from events or weddings.
2. There’s more gadgets than you can ever use in a day. Air filters. Fans. Radio… speakers… more speakers big and small. Earphones/headphones… lots of them. Old MP3 players, iPods, old iPhones, iPads, cameras. USB cables, power cables, even more USB cables. TVs — two of them. Ugh!
3. There’s more cleaning products/gadgets than you ever need. Vacuum cleaners, steam cleaners (this was really a bad purchase on my part), traditional mop, high-tech 3M mop. Long brush, short brush, big brush, small brush, weird shape brush. Febreeze, Dettol, Lysol, Clorox, 3M and about a dozen other cleaning solutions.

It’s NUTS! All the crap I bought. All the things I was made to believe work wonders when in fact all I really needed was probably a third or less of those. I sold/donated/threw a bunch of stuff away, and it was really hard to make some of those decisions, but I had to because the harder the decision, the stronger the memory. I am also making it a point to blog about this so I will never repeat the same mistakes.

But what really surprised me was my OCD tendency to keep track of all my bank statements, bills and other documents. To my surprise, I have every single one of my bank statements since 2007. Looking back at them reminds me of my past, and tells a better story than I can even recall myself:

I was living paycheck-to-paycheck back in 2007 and had close to no savings. I had maybe several hundred dollars balance at the end of every month (and it never grew). I remember I would look at my bank statements and make a note beside every transaction trying to figure out what it was for or where I spent my money, but a large bulk of it would be cash withdrawals at the ATM, so it was not clear if it was food, fancy restaurant meals (did not have credit card back then), cab fares or maybe even shopping.

The turning point was when I started tracking my expenses in detail. Having an iPhone 3G (2008) and an app was key. I tracked close to every single cent I spent and saw that food expenses made up around $600/month. I tried to reduce, but it was hard because I worked in CBD, and food was (is) generally expensive. I also ate out most of the time — including dinner. My transport expenses were also high, because I occasionally cab or drive to work and had to pay crazy parking rates in town.

I switched jobs in 2008. I worked outside of CBD but I drove to work daily and still had to pay for pretty expensive parking (averaging around $400/month) because I could not get season parking and had to pay hourly. However, food was cheap and I ate chye png almost every day for lunch and that brought my total expenses down. Together with an increase in salary, I started to see some savings, and with some excess money, I also bought basic life and health insurance.

The rest of the story will be for another day. Anyway, as I flipped through my bank statements, I saw how this similar pattern added on to my savings bit by bit. My income has risen over the years of course, and my lifestyle may have also gotten more expensive, but the key was that my lifestyle expenses grew less than my income, and I think this is really important. Hopefully, an old friend is reading this — YOLO is not the way to go.

I said in an earlier post that I would write about my resolutions for 2016. So here it is.

Be grateful. I am grateful for all the people whom I’ve met along this journey, good or bad because all that has happened made me where I am today. I do hope to continue having more exciting years ahead.

Reduce. Consumerism is scary and it will suck the life out of you. The next time I whip out my credit card, I need to think thrice. As a result, I’ve also reduced all my credit card limits. Banks are really insane these days to give out 4x your monthly salary.

Focus. I had little distractions during the early years of my work life and it allowed me to focus on what I had to do, so I could do it right. I’ve found this very important, and the lack of focus is the reason why a lot of people fail. Not being arrogant but I do get quite a fair bit of “noise” with people approaching me to become a tech co-founder. Do not take offence if I reject you because I can’t do so many things at once; if I were your co-founder, you’d want me to focus on your stuff too.

It’s December again. How time flies. Next year marks the 10th year of my “official” life as an economic hamster. It’s starting to become obvious that the “wheel of fortune” keeps spinning, but you seem to get nowhere — until you jump off.

I have tons of work and business related commitments. Now that I have a child, I have even less time for myself. I’m very tired and worn out.

To most of my peers, I would probably seem to have “made it”. I may have some wealth, but at this juncture I’d really love to have some time instead to do the things I want and spend more time with the people I love.

I never set out to work with the aim to become filthy rich. All I set out to do was to make some money so that I could do or buy the things that I want and then set aside some money as savings. Not that saving up is bad, but mindlessly hoarding money can also get out of hand pretty quickly. FYI, I found out that obsessively hoarding money can be some rich people’s hobby — some rich people don’t spend; they just store more and more to an extent they have so much money that they do not know what to do with it.

When I first set out to work, I made barely enough for myself to get by. However, I spent my time (and money) on things that I enjoyed, such as R/C helicopters, computers, gadgets, music, games, books, etc. It may sound absurd, but these little things also helped build some of my knowledge/skills and even my (social) network. It was also one of the best times I’ve had — I would stay up on Fridays to repair my R/C helis and wake up early on Saturdays to meet friends at a “fun fly” where a few enthusiasts would gather at an open field to chit chat, share knowledge, and watch each other fly our R/C helis, crash them, then spend our Sundays buying parts and repairing them, then the week starts all over again. The point is: having something you love/are enthusiastic about makes your life meaningful and keeps your energy (“qi”) flowing.

But I had no savings. That was the only miserable part.

These hobbies started to take a backstage as I got busier with business and work. I knew that having no savings was bad and I have definitely come a long way from then. Today, I no longer struggle to pay my bills; I can easily afford the gadgets I want, and can even afford to have people clean my house on weekends — a luxury to most people. I’m no where near to being a millionaire of course, but the point is that I do not feel poor either.

But what have I given up? Time. Lots of it. I have given up lots of hobbies and personal projects. I know that I am losing traction trying to keep up with technology —  the core of my livelihood. I don’t have much time with friends, and likewise they don’t have much time for me either.

The worst part of all this is that it’s hard to get out of the spinning hamster wheel. If you jump off, you may fall and hurt yourself. The hamster wheel may also be spinning so fast that you may never be able to get back on. Slowing down is the hardest thing to do.

I went to KK last weekend for grandma’s funeral and during my stay there I took my mind entirely off work. I spent a day chatting with my cousin whom I probably have not spoken with in 10 years. He shared about his small business (in Sarikei, East Malaysia) and how he makes just enough to get by. RM2,000 every month (S$700) would allow one to live very comfortably in his opinion. He spends his free time with family, friends and church. It seems to be the way he is going to live the rest of his life. It struck me that in a small town where life is simpler, people were indeed happier because they found the right balance between money, time, and spiritual dedication and that is the way life should be.

It is ironic that we all trade our time to work for money, and once we have (some) money we want to trade it for time. Some people, though, use money for things that consume all their time instead (in an unfavourable manner) and that is when it gets really fucked up, and I hope none of my friends are doing that.

Every Chinese New Year I clean my house and pull out my old R/C helis and camera equipment. I pack them in nice boxes, hoping that some day I will find time to play with them again. Year after year, I never did. Once reality sets in, you will see some of these items on Carousell.

Right now I just want to get things I need to do done and over with so I can get them out of my head. I will use the rest of December 2015 to think through what I would like to do for 2016 and blog about it when I have a better idea.