Route to Financial Independence

Friday, March 4, 2022

8 workplace experiences summarized by veterans in the workplace

1. Don't tell your colleagues that you are planning to leave.

Don't tell anyone in the original company before leaving your job, so that you can protect your interests.

Resignation is a big event for the company. After telling your colleagues, it will get to the ears of leaders or supervisors. Then you eventually will have to leave.

2. Sharing too much with colleagues

Almost all people know that it is a taboo to share too much about ourselves, and the problem is that many people have not yet understood that their friendship with some people is actually very shallow.

But because they have the same views or practices on one or two things, they feel that they are very close. They get acquainted with others in a short period of time, say everything, and finally hurt themselves.

So the best way is not to tell any secrets to people who have known you for a short time.

3. Usefulness

In the workplace, the more "useful" you are, the more "restrained" others are towards you. If your boss can humiliate you in front of others, your colleagues can instruct you to do trivial things, not because you are not good. It is because you are "useless to them".

4. Devote your time carefully

Energy and time are limited. Often those who succeeded earlier knew at a young age that a person can only do a few things or even one thing well in his life. Thus they find themselves the right thing, concentrate all your energy on doing it, and then accumulate experience, and the compound interest effect of time allows them to be ahead of their peers.

5. Lose your temper at the right time

When you need to lose your temper, you have to lose your temper. Maybe you are not angry at all, but you can pretend to be angry. Although it will become a little awkward, but others will be wary that there is a threshold of you that needs to be respected.

6. Learn to have multiple income streams.

Learn a few more skills even if you are unemployed in the future, you will have a competitive advantage over others.

Just like if a salesman is developing multiple customers at the same time, he will not put all his hopes in one customer, and he will not be nervous about the gains and losses, so he will have more confidence to negotiate the business.

7. Don't tell your colleagues that you have other sources of incomes.

Be sure to keep confidential with your colleagues, to ensure that he will cause trouble to the entire company. Leaders think that you are not doing your job properly, since that you have other income anyway, so they will give you less promotion and pay raise.

8. No one is irreplaceable; people will be queuing to take your place.

Friday, February 25, 2022

Predictions in 2022

Time flies and we are in 2022.This comes a bit too late but well never too late as long as 2022 has not end. Here are some of the predictions in 2022.

01 Pandemic to Endemic

Although there are further mutations of the virus, mankind is inventing vaccines and booster shots to produce immunity against the virus. No one knows when the viruses could be wiped out but one thing for sure is that the pandemic could become just like common cold for more developed countries with high vaccination rates. Countries will not enter endemic phase at the same time. The faster the country enters the endemic state, the faster it can get back to pre –covid standards. It will create a larger economic inequality between the richer and poorer countries. Richer countries will be able to allow travel much earlier and this will get the economy back up.

02 Future of Work

Due to the pandemic, people realised that they have the flexibility to choose their working hours. Employees prefer work life balance which they know that they can work more productive remotely. It is also a win win situation for the employers as they can scale down their office spaces for substantial savings. This might lead to more people resigning and reprioritizing their lives goals.

03 Inflation and Rise of Cypto

Inflation is running at a nearly four decade high in the United States and Singapore is not spared from rising inflation rates. Higher inflation erodes the value of money in your bank account. Gold has been used as a hedge against inflation however crypto has been gaining popularity in recent years. Non fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse will continue to boom into 2022. Even Facebook is taking a claim in the metaverse. The blockchains and its impact is definitely a thing to note in 2022.

04 Travel worries

How many of us have not been travelling due to the pandemic, I think all of us are looking forward to being able to travel to far and exotic countries. However due to the impact of the lockdowns and travel bans, a lot of the travel related industries was impacted. Jobs are lost and reduced, time and money is required to attract the talents back into the related industries. Not only increased salaries, rising oil prices will cost travel fares to go up. Thus people will go and hunt for shorter trips within the countries or countries nearby instead.

05 Potential Business Opportunities

Online retail will continue to prosper, however due to the disruptions of the supply chain caused by the pandemic, there will be further delays in shipments, resulting in scarcity of resources and goods. This will give rise to the second hand economy. Consumers do not mind using second hand goods to save some money and to wait for new products to reach the shopping racks. The rise of the second hand economy is also fuelled by the consensus to create a more sustainable future to deter the impacts of climate change.

Friday, February 18, 2022

2 tips to make you spend money wisely

I don't know if you agree with this point of view. It is not easy to make money, and spending money is a form of knowledge. How to master the art of spending money? How to allocate expenses reasonably In the uncertainty of life?

Can you tell the difference between consumption and investment? For example, is buying a fitness membership an investment? Lottery tickets are irrational speculation, and why do so many people buy them? How to turn money into a valuable asset?

01 Distinguish three "wallets"

"Spending money smartly is as hard as earning it".

Regarding this point, there is actually a big misunderstanding in spending money. Most people think that spending money means saving money and buying cheap things. Living within your means, being diligent and thrifty are the ways to spend money.

However, to really utilise money, you must know how to distinguish between three wallets.

Each of us has three wallets, a consumption wallet, a speculative wallet and an investment wallet.

Consumption wallet: To satisfy own needs such as clothes, daily necessities, etc

Speculative wallet: To speculate and spend on items that involves some luck, such as lottery tickets art pieces, thinking that they may go up in value in the future

Investment wallet: To spend money on items that will go up in value in the future such as investment products, entrepreneurship, etc.

In general, spend more investment wallets, moderate consumption wallets, and avoiding speculative wallets are the first important things to remember about spending money.

02 Only buy things that will be worth more later

Since you want to spend more money in your investment wallet, how do you use it in real life? That's what we're going to talk about next: the principle of making more money.

This principle is: only buy things that will be more valuable later.

The question is: how can I know how much the things I buy will be worth in the future?

Probably the hardest part is estimating the values and discounting them. In the eyes of economists, almost all items can be converted into money for comparison.

For example, your job requires you to be fluent in Chinese, and once your Chinese proficiency improves, your monthly salary may increase.

Under such circumstances, it costs a few hundreds to sign up for a one-year training course, which seems to be a very cost-effective investment, because it can bring you more monetary returns in the future.

This is an estimate of what the purchase will be worth in the future and can help you decide whether to spend the money.

However, with regards to this estimate, there is a loophole. Because you ignore an important factor, and that is time. In other words, future money is not as valuable as present money.

Therefore, when you spend money and invest to calculate future income, you cannot directly compare the amount of money you may earn in the future with the amount you will spend now, but you have to give a discount to the future money. This discount is called in economics. Discount Rate.

This principle sounds simple, but most people are often disregard this problem.

If you understand the concept of discount rate, you will know that the sooner you get more money, the less discount you will lose. Not to mention that if you get the money in advance, you can make other investments and bring additional income.

In addition to considering the discount rate, another factor you need to consider is how long it will take to get the return, and at that point, whether the return you want will still mean as much to you.

If you tell a 20-year-old young man, "You give me 2 million now, and I will give you 10 million in 30 years", many young people will be willing, because for them, they will be 50 years old in 30 years, and still Lots of time to enjoy this money.

But if you say the same thing to an 80-year-old, he probably won't say yes, he thinks he may be running out of time and doesn't want to take the risk.

When people are young, they can appropriately allocate more stock assets, and their ability to withstand risk fluctuations will be relatively strong. Once there is a loss, they can also have the opportunity to use time and accumulated experience to "wait" the gains back.

02 Two strategies to reduce investment losses

When we invest, it is very likely that due to habit of judgment, the investment will fail. Is there any way to reduce the loss of investment?

In order to ensure stable investment and avoid risks, there are two strategies: one is a portfolio investment strategy and the other is an option strategy.

Portfolio investment strategy, to put it bluntly, is not to put all your eggs in one basket to avoid bankruptcy due to your misjudgment. You may already be familiar with this concept.

The second strategy is to use options. The essence of options is to pre-determine the right to spend a certain amount of money to buy a certain transaction within an agreed time.

For example, if you go to rent a house, you have to pay a deposit when you sign the contract. You may have to pay 10% of the rent. This deposit is actually an option.

If in the next month, you find a house with a cheaper rent, then you have the right to choose to abandon the transaction.

This is a right to backtrack that you buy yourself in the future when your investment may fail.

This idea can give us a good direction, that is, when you are not sure about the investment results, you can spend a little money first to buy the right to this investment opportunity.

After a period of time, if you feel that the investment opportunity is not good or there is a better opportunity, you can do not need this part of the deposit and pursue a better choice, then the risk of this investment in life will be greatly reduced.