This week was a bit slow. I spend more time thinking about a work project that I am working on. Sometimes, people would think that switching from working in an IT company to finance company would allow ideas to flow better and write more but that is not always the case.
I can’t really write about what I am working on always and thinking so much about stuff leaves little room to think about other stuff.
We organize the Providend annual client event this Thursday and the organizers setup a special Tang Yuan booth since we are one day past the last day of the Lunar Chinese New Year:
It took a while before the guests started to eat the Tang Yuan and before you know it more and more guest recognize that they got to try it.
I could have just spend the whole night finishing all the left over Tang Yuan instead of the food.
The theme of this year’s presentation to client is on the Philosophy of Sufficiency and how we arrive at our Planning Returns, changes to the portfolio, and how our portfolio returns measured up since 7-8 years ago.
I would talk about my perspective of sufficiency in the past so I don’t wish to discuss it in this blog post. But if there are some readers who are interested and felt that they cannot find my perspective on it… maybe you can let me know and I will see if I can share some views on it.
I don’t want to talk about the planning returns and the portfolio returns much because that will open a can of don’t know what, which I am too lazy to deal with in the public.
Events like this do trigger some random thoughts and a thought from this event is about giving a peace of mind. Most of us want a peace of mind regarding many things we deal with. Knowing that the work we do is gong smoothly and there is no delay.
And the value of finding an adviser is to give you a peace of mind that you have a pathway to get to a desired lifestyle in the future. But like the projects that we handle at work, we know that there are many attributes or factors at play which may derail our plan.
I wonder if you are working on a tough project, who would be a better sounding board, or whose opinion would you value more?
Would it be the person who tells you everything is okay, just follow the plan and you will confirm get to your goal.
Or would you value the opinion of the person who seem slightly stressed, consistently thinking & concern about certain things?
I always think there is a symmetry between what you do at work and managing your wealth. This link might not come across clearly to everyone. If we operate in a world which is a more complex system, we kind of know that most things are not a given. You feel a closer affinity towards the colleague that does the same work, have the same work ethic, because he/she understands what you are going through and what worked for him/her was battle-tested with results.
It doesn’t mean that the calm person is shit.
The person that is calmer may be that guru that may have “figured it out”, battle-tested his or her stuff out so that he or she knows it works.
But there are also calmer folks who just haven’t been fxxked enough by life. If you listen to these people, you may be put in a position where you are going to be fxxked royally one of these days. While you may lose your job, the worse thing might be it affects your confidence so much that it will take a long while for you to build up confidence to trust people again.
One of the reasons many people still listen to gurus like Robert Kiyosaki and the perma-bears is because they recognize the things that you also see. I think not acknowledging the potential problems brought up and addressing may make a person appear dismissive. The challenge is in this world of wealth there can be too much noises that we add value by explaining these are less consequential and not that important in the grand scheme of things. But the reality is that some issues can potentially be consequential to whether you can hit your financial goal or not.
Dismissing them outright, giving a poor reasoning would make us look less competent potentially. I think the most corrosive part is it makes us look like we are not tethered to reality at all.
Yet, we trust someone less who exhibit more weaknesses than confidence in the money managing world.
The uncomfortable but the right thing might be to find that trusted person, who you know discuss and considered enough about the worries, because firstly the person understands why you are worried about it and the solution or remedy he or she have come up with might be more well-formed. But this is not fool-proof because there are enough worriers out there with solutions that have major flaws that they didn’t realize (or they realize but choose not to say). It is a challenge finding trusted, sophisticated, good active listener that understands your problem, explains well, and has a sound solution. It is a challenge because you may get someone with one or two, but doesn’t have all.
I think that is our challenge because that is the kind of people we want you to talk to .
The brutal facts is its not easy but I think we got to accept that and still do it.
For now, I am still thinking I did not ate enough Tang Yuan.
Hope you enjoyed the Tang Yuan as well.
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Kyith is the Owner and Sole Writer behind Investment Moats. Readers tune in to Investment Moats to learn and build stronger, firmer wealth foundations, how to have a Passive investment strategy, know more about investing in REITs and the nuts and bolts of Active Investing.
Readers also follow Kyith to learn how to plan well for Financial Security and Financial Independence.
Kyith worked as an IT operations engineer from 2004 to 2019. Currently, he works as a Senior Solutions Specialist in Insurance Start-up Havend. All opinions on Investment Moats are his own and does not represent the views of Providend.
You can view Kyith’s current portfolio here, which uses his Free Google Stock Portfolio Tracker.
His investment broker of choice is Interactive Brokers, which allows him to invest in securities from different exchanges all over the world, at very low commission rates, without custodian fees, near spot currency rates.
You can read more about Kyith here.
