How To Give
Photo by Martin Kingsley
Something happened in Singapore a couple of weeks back and it affected me greatly.
What I knew I read vaguely almost a week later from the evening papers and a discussion on a local forum:
A 15 year old boy was begging in a neighbourhood food centre when a patron called the police on him. Allegedly, he was asking for $2 to buy lunch for his ill mother. The police came and probably took him back to the police post and filed the incident. After that, they escorted him back to the void deck of his HDB (public housing in Singapore). From there, he went up another building and jumped. The boy died.
The story stuck with me for days, and nights. It wasn’t publicized much in the local papers and most of my friends hadn’t even heard about it.
I had been wondering why the story of the ‘begger boy’ (coined by the local paper) had affected me so much.
I came up with many responses to it: I talked to my friends about it, complained about the state of charity organizations in Singapore, and even thought about a startup for it.
In final analysis, I believe the story of the ‘boy’ is really trying to teach me something, something personal, something about how to give.
Read MoreWhy Is Abundance Attracted to Me?
I’ve got a colleague who asked me how to be rich and contented. I told him it’s all in his relationship with money and how much attention he affords it. I don’t have a ‘technique’ now, but found something which might be helpful.
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Go on a Vibrational Spending Spree
Photo by dslrninja
There’s an old Chinese saying, “how much you eat and how much you clothe is fixed in this lifetime.” Older chinese folks believe that everyone of us can only ‘hold’ so much wealth in our lives. For example, if you can hold $100,000 and then win a million bucks in a lottery, chances are, you’d lose 90% of it in good time.
The older I get, the more evidence I see, in myself and people around me, that this is the way things work.
So, should we just give up and accept what is?
Hell no!
Like any computer programming bug, there’s a couple of ways that you can ‘beat the system’ and get more from life. This post talks about one of them – going on a vibrational spending spree.
Read MorePlan Your Own Retirement
Photo by dlkinney
About a decade ago, I put together a retirement plan that will yield a monthly income of about $2,500 when I turn 65 in about 25 years.
The recent chain of events in the financial sector and global economies have set me to re-think that plan again.
This post outlines what these economic trends are and they will impact any retirement plan.
Read More10 Steps to Saving More Money
Photo by Refracted Moments™
In today’s age of easy credit, real luxury lies in being debt-free. I can still vividly recall a couple of weeks back when a younger friend, W, walked into my office and proclaimed how relieved he felt. W had trimmed his debt down 80% and was only a couple of months from clearing them totally.
Being Asian and a Chinese Hakka (a dialect tribe famous for thriftiness), I can easily switch to a ‘saving’ mode whenever the need arises. In fact, the mode will kick in automatically and dependably after a short spending spree.
This post delves into this Hakka man’s bag of tricks and summarizes them into 10 easy steps for you to start saving more money.
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