Today’s Drifting Thoughts: Two Years of Experience and…?

These few days I have pretty much tapped my mental financial calculators with great intensity, attempting to formulate a fail-safe plan (the holy grail?) which might be bring myself to “financial freedom”.

Thinking about it, I’m not even sure whether is it actually something extremely realistic (ala risk management) or is it just one form of escape to subdue my own insecurities. ^-^|| Let’s go into the topic of “financial freedom”, what does it mean by this “hip” terminology? At the moment, I interpret it as being able to sustain my own living plus some small luxuries (to fancy my whims?) for a predetermined amount of years even without a constant of inflow of active income (i.e. work).

Now, putting that definition in mind, now the fun starts: How many years of expenses do I need to have ultimately? Sort of hitting through the calculator, assuming my expenses are fixed at my current expenditure and expecting that I need a fund that lasts for 30 years, I have to accumulate more than RM700K in our present value. That’s not even considering whether I will be buying any big tickets items throughout the years and putting loan installments into the picture.

Thinking about it, it was sort of an extreme thought and to some, it seem that I’m worrying too much. Well, it is indeed true in the way that I can probably need less than that and that my parents are able to help me in my financial endeavours in many ways. But at the moment, or rather all the while, I purposely kept my family out of the picture as to see whether I can pull it off myself (which pretty much acts as my own worst case scenario, in many ways). But at the same time, that over-insistence of “keeping them out of the picture” probably does cause some emotional effects sometimes, mostly helplessness as I can only do that much as an individual. That sort of gave light to the importance of good partnerships and synergies in the theoretical sense, but that’s for another discussion.

At the moment I was working on my portfolio value and income forecasts. And can be sort of discouraging when everything was in front of me in black and white (well… more like numbers on a spreadsheet). Well… as much the old adage goes that “Rome wasn’t built within a day”, it’s all about handling and balancing my own life, isn’t it? Understanding my own impatience shows quite a lot about myself actually, that really that there’s a lot of room for me to improve actually.

Anyway, that’s all to it at the moment. Probably will write more about it next time.