Essential habits to financial freedom

   Unless one have firm foundation and attitude towards wealth management, one is unlikely to achieve financial freedom and sustain it for long. Key word here is long-term, sustainable wealth building and preservation. After all, we've so often seen people achieving meteoric rise in wealth only to lose them all in no time. Think of Mike Tyson & Michael Jackson. Both were multi millionaires but blew their wealth away. I'm sure you can give a few real life example of people you personally know in the same situation. I call them the "easy come, easy go" people.

Many self-help book will only concentrate on trying to psycho your mind to think big and bold. While it's not wrong, they are certainly shallow and lacking a very fundamental ingredient to financial freedom. If you don't cultivate the right mind set, no matter how much you earn, you'll blow them away easily. I'll take a different approach in coaching my students and begin with shaping their attitude towards money. Once they have understood and fully appreciated its importance, they are ready for the next lesson. This will take a longer time than the normal but worth every second spent. Grass grow and wilt in a matter of months. Oak tree spend years as a dormant seed, only to emerge much later to grow into a mighty tree.

Without a strong foundation, financial freedom will come and pass you by easily. But, once you're prepared, you'll preserve it for generations to come. I'll begin my sharing on cultivating the right attitude towards wealth management. Stay tune for the step-by-step guide in the next posting.

Will you still work if your salary is not paid?

Ask yourself the above question and give yourself an honest answer. Chances are, most will say, "NO WAY! I have better things to do in my life". I'm an extremely family-oriented man. Growing up in a close-knit family, I spend lots of time with my love ones and the thought of going to work from 9 to 5 (before considering OT and bringing work home) and leave whatever little remaining time for your love ones don't really appeal to me.

As a fresh 22-year-old graduate looking for my first real job, I told myself the same thing too. Because of this clear answer I have in my mind, I set out a clear goal from the very beginning that I want to find a job that I would enjoy doing of which would also enable me to achieve financial freedom at a fairly young age. I've considered following my parents' footstep and set up my own business. However, I would like to experience the culture and absorb the best business practices of global MNCs like J&J, Google, GE etc. Hence, I gave myself 5 years to work for other people, learn as much as I can before starting up my own business.

I'm now 30 years old and I'm still a salaryman. What happened, you may ask, to my plan to set up my own business? Answer is, I love my job too much to resign! What then about my plan to retire early? Would that mean I'm doomed to be a salaryman for the rest of my life? While not filthy rich by any means, I can choose to retire if I want to. Contrary to popular believe, a salaryman earning an average salary can indeed retire early if he/she knows how to spend and invest wisely.

I saw too many hard-working young adult spending their hard-earned savings setting up his/her own business and lose them all. Afterall, 90% of businesses will fail within the first 5 years. Then there are some who joined pyramid schemes trying to make quick profit. Many ended wasting their time, energy and most importantly, the trust of their family and friends when the whole thing came crumbling down. I won't mention names but you can see how this once very hot pyramid scheme selling over-priced common aromatherapy sets left their members cheated and broke. This is not the first and will not be the last. I wish you the wisdom to avoid these costly mistakes.

In this blog, I will capture my experiences and share them with readers. Hopefully, you can achieve financial freedom at an even younger age than me. If that happens, I would consider I've met my objective of setting up this blog. Stay tune for my next blog.