What is the purpose in life?

Do you have a purpose in life? Are there any reasons why you are brought on to this earth? Life without a purpose is without direction nor meaning, and each day without purpose can only bring hopelessness. Conversely, with a well defined purpose, each day becomes focused, meaningful and motivated. A few years earlier, I thought that I had found my purpose in life but recent changes in my life have given me second thoughts. How about you, have you found your own purpose yet?

During my younger school days, my studies were excellent, I seem to be able to get consistently good results without the need for too much effort. Life seem to go along just fine such that I felt overconfident of my own abilities, and that I could achieve anything I wanted if I set my heart out to it.

When I was doing National Service, my interest in entrepreneurship was sparked and I thought of starting my own business. I thought that starting a business was the surest way to succeed, gain fame, fortune and recognition, which seem at that time a good purpose in life to strive towards. Driven by this purpose, I met up and got together with some like-minded secondary school friends during my university days and set off headfirst into planning a restaurant business. In my final year in university, the restaurant became a reality. It was like a dream come true for a 23- year old to become a business owner then!

The new business was difficult to manage, and all the more since all my partners and myself did not have much experience in the restaurant business, where competition and overheads were legendarily cut throat. Whatever little revenue we earned was ploughed back into the business. When I graduated from university a year later, I figured out that the restaurant was not going to be profitable in the near term and hence took on a full time job to bring in income. Thus, I started a vicious work cycle trying to juggle a fulltime job while running a business.

The years thereafter were completely stressful and arduous. After almost five years struggling, I felt completely burned out keeping the restaurant afloat and it didn't help that I was also encountering a plateau on my full time job. It seems that my previous actions were bringing me nowhere nearer my dreams. Was my desire for fame and fortune my correct purpose? Early last year, there finally came an urge for me to relinquish all that I had and to start life anew, which was what I did, quitting both the restaurant and the job without any idea where these decisions will bring me.

Luckily, God is faithful and has provided a way out. I secured another interesting role on my last day of work in the same company, and four months later another opportunity came for a better job in another company despite these times of worldwide economic recession.

Being driven by materialism is clearly not the purpose for me now. What is your purpose in life? Is it giving you the necessary meaning, focus and motivation? Thoughts to ponder for the new year and I hope that the correct purpose does bring you peace!

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My Year 2008 in Review

Happy New Year 2009! I hope that all of you had a wonderful time counting down to the new year and that 2008 had been a good year for you despite the gloomy economic climate!

2008 was a year of major changes for myself, and the changes are hopefully all for the better. Let me try to recall some of my more major milestones for the year 2008:

April - Left my job as operations analyst(after 3.5 years on the job) at a Investment Bank

May - Took a well-deserved month long break(have been juggling between full time job and running a restaurant); went for trading course and started trading

June - Rejoined the Bank at its Wealth Management entity and took on new E-banking service management role

July - Officially resigned as a partner(after 5 long years) of a restaurant/cafe that I've co-founded

October - Resigned from the e-banking role(after 5 months) at the Bank; embraced the Christian faith; signed option to purchase for BTO HDB flat

November - Started a FX trade execution role(night hours) at a private company set-up

From the looks of above, it seems like a rather tumultuous year of changes for me, but many of the decisions were made after much careful thoughts and considerations. Some of these decisions had been quite difficult and painful to make but necessary as I felt that I was not getting any nearer to my dreams by doing the same actions over the last few years.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

- Albert Einstein

It might still be too early to tell if these decisions are correct and what the path that lies ahead will lead me to. However, what I know for sure is that whatever new experience the year 2009 brings is an opportunity to learn and gain new knowledge, and will bring me closer to my dream of financial freedom! My main goal for this year is to brush up my financial knowledge and personal trading skills and make money work harder for me!

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Mistakes from 2008, not to be repeated in the New Year!

What a year 2008 has been, plenty of negative events worldwide to remember it by, quite like a chain of dominoes falling down one after another! Are these events such as the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the collapse of Iceland, the giant ponzi scheme of Madoff, global recession etc just unfortunate anomalies? Or have all of us just been living in blissful unawareness all this while? I think that we've just been very foolish to believe that uncontrolled gambling of the financial markets can ever be sustained indefinately. The current crisis is teaching us two very important lessons, that our greatest enemies are ignorance and greed.

Ignorance is bliss?

Given a choice, people generally prefers to choose the easiest option when making investment decisions. This means relying on dubious advice from so called financial "professionals" instead of doing their own work of proper analysis before putting down any money. Yes, if you are lucky and the timing happen to be good, every one makes money and is happy. However, when the tables start turning against you and you start losing your profits and investments, ignorance is no excuse and there is no one to blame but yourself. I'm very surprised that even the very rich can fall into this laziness trap ie. Madoff ponzi scheme. Ignorance is not bliss when you find your pockets emptied!

Greed makes the world go round

The root of the financial crisis would be the bursting of the housing bubble in the US which caused the value of complex derivatives securities based on subprime mortgages to plunge dramatically. Many major banks and financial institutions, which were heavily invested in these risky products due to its high yields, suddenly found these heavily leveraged "assets" shrinking in value dramatically and became desperately in need of fresh injection of capital to continue their operations. Why were the balance sheet of so many financial institutions loaded with these highly risky products? Greed is the reason. High yields are there to account for the much higher risk of default, but proper due diligence is ignored to chase after greater monetary returns. One should always keep greed in check and never overextend beyond their financial means to chase after unsustainable high returns.

Knowledge is Power

With the current economic circumstances, should we just stay still and hoard cash under our pillows? I think not. I believe that the current crisis is a major wake up call to everyone who has lost money through ignorance or blind greed. For people seeking superior returns than the meagre interest rates that the banks gives, the best investment now would be to read up books or attend courses to build up financial IQ. For 2009, make a resolution to to learn to manage your own finances and make good informed investment decisions instead of solely relying on other people's advise or chasing after the hottest financial product.

"People who look for easy money invariable

pay for the privilege of proving conclusively

that it cannot be found on this earth." - Jesse Livermore

With the proper knowledge skills and psychology, it is definately possible to be earning good returns whatever situation the markets are in: up, down or even sideways. You've got to put in some effort to get better yields on your money!

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