“Don’t you think this year passes very quickly?”

Every year, Peter started out full of fire. Peter want to achieve new goals. He set a goal of wanting to learn how to invest so that he can stop worrying about money. He also says improve his public speaking skills so that he want present better and hopefully he can get a promotion. This year round, he also want to be fitter and achieve gold in his IPPT.

In January, he started to read from Seedly, plan his monthly budgeting and also emailed a few banks to ask the procedures to open up a brokerage account. He also visited a few toastmasters club to see whether he can be a good fit in there. He also signed on a gym package from Fitness First and plan to exercise at least 3 times a week.

6 months later. Peter just completed his work at 9pm. He is tired. He looked at his mobile phone to book a grab so that he can go home. He looked at his calendar and realised he have a presentation deck that he need to create for his boss by tomorrow. He ordered Macdonalds and thought what time he can sleep tonight.

In December, Peter met some friends whom he hasn’t met in a long time. Everyone was excited as it is the Christmas season. They were talking about their upcoming travel plans. In almost a complete agreement, everyone seemed to agree that this year seemed to pass very quickly.

In the next year, Peter remembered his goals again and decided that this year it will be different.

This is probably not new. For most people, this repeats every year. I know that it is hard when we are in the daily grind. Our companies have expectations for us. Our family have expectations for us. Even our friends have expectations for us. It is easy to be lost in the daily grind. Just ask Peter, Peter (Alias name of course) is a friend who graduated for 7 years from a local university. He is employed and works hard in his job. He is working beyond his stated hours and job scope to get more experience as his manager feels that it will help in his appraisal. After 5 years, his manager told him that he is a good worker but they will not be able to promote him as the economy is not doing well. He is now 30, carries a eye bags, tired and has high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Years seems to pass in a blink of an eye.

Can you remember what happened at the beginning of the year?

I strongly believe that to move forward (properly), you have to reflect on what happened in the year before. It could hold valuable lessons from mistakes we made. It could hold achievements that you are proud of. It could also hold things that we could learn from. This year, I decided to write this post to share with everyone the lessons I learn from creating Wealthdojo in 2019. I hope that some might resonate with you, maybe some might take inspiration from it and maybe it could be a good read for the end of 2019.

1) Authenticity

This is a huge one for me in 2019. 2019 is the year I started Wealthdojo. It started of as a simple blog to talk about finances in Singapore. In the span of the year, many people came to me with “tips” to increase the traffic into the blog. As a result, I was writing articles that were Search Engine Friendly but not Human Friendly. I thought that by increasing traffic into the blog, I could get more readers. Boy, was I so wrong.

I began to realised that by doing so, I was losing connection with my audience. I started to receive feedback that my blog was like many others and was not adding value to my readings. (I sincerely apologised if you have been following this blog and have read those articles).  In future, I will continue to share more about my financial journey and input my thoughts and opinions for this blog.

Thank you again for those that have been reading my articles.

2) Your Money Capacity

“I have $20 million dollars. What can I do with it?”

I was asked this question a while back. I went back to think for a while and gave my suggestion to the individual that asked me about it. In a nutshell, I was only able to use $2 million dollars of it. I was explaining how I was able to use just $2 million to help him achieve what he needs.

“You only have a money capacity of $2 million.” said that individual.

“Because you only have a $2 million mindset, you can only address a $2 million problem. What will you do if you have the other $18 million?”. He continued.

In my heart, I agreed with him. I have no idea how to use the other $18 million.

I have already experienced this twice in my life. That was when my investment portfolio went from a 4 digits to 5 digits portfolio and when it went from a 5 digits to a 6 digits portfolio. You might think it is just a change in number. However, many of us are unable to handle this change emotionally.

Looking back, when my portfolio increase to 5 or 6 digits, I realised my emotions changed from cautious to adventurous in a span of a few days. As I was investing in the stock market, there are variation in share price everyday which cause my portfolio to increase to decrease a lot. Think about a 2% variation every day when you have a 5 digit portfolio VS a 6 digit portfolio

Situation A:

Investment Portfolio: $10,000. 2% is $200 potential change every day.
(In our mind, we think that we have earn/lost $200. For most people, $200 is a acceptable number to earn/lost because we link it to perhaps a meal at Hai Di Lao. We are able to stomach this variation)

Situation B:

Investment Portfolio: $100,000. 2% is $2000 potential change every day.
(In our mind, we think that we have earn/lost $2000. For most people, that might be half of their income a month. Some would not be able to stomach this variation emotionally which lead them to self sabotage themselves by making irrational decision in the stock market)

Look no further, I experienced this not once, but twice. It was only after taking time to process the emotions and better understand myself that can manage this portfolio effectively. My money capacity is now been widen to a 6 digit portfolio size and potentially a $2 million capacity. Eventually, the time will come when I manage a 7 or 8 digits portfolio.

Situation C:

Investment Portfolio: $10,000,000. 2% is $200,000 potential change every day.

I’m still in the journey of learning how to manage this in my mind. How big is your money capacity?

PS: This isn’t the same as mind face.

3) Partnership

Throughout the year, I have been asked to see if I can work together with another company or an individual. They came to me to seek for a win-win-win situation and to value add each other’s community so that everyone can grow together. This is usually how the conversation grows.

Potential Partner X: “I noticed that you have this Wealthdojo. Could you help me set out some time for me so that I can speak about xxx to your participants so that I can value add them in xxx”

Me: “That sounds good. I would love to allow you to value add my community. I also noticed that you have your community. Is it okay if you also help me do the same and I would love to value add them by sharing with them my knowledge about personal finance”

Potential Partner X: “Oh. But there might be conflict of interest… Talking about personal finance is very sensitive… People might not like it… etc”

Me: “If you think there is a conflict of interest, why do you want to come to my seminar to speak about your xxx? Is there a conflict of interest?”

Potential Partner X: “…”

I’m always curious why there is a conflict of interest to share at their community but no conflict of interest to share at mine.

After talking to a few business owners, I realised it is very common in the business world. In the past, I tried to forge partnerships because I believe it was easier to do things in a team. I thought that having a team means that everyone could tap on each other’s expertise and we could do more. That naive thinking cause me several failed partnerships. A unsuitable partner actually destroyed the very culture that I was trying to create.

Over the years, I’ve learn to discern potential partners from opportunist. I’ve learn to select only those people who are genuine to have a win-win-win situation so that everyone can win together. If you are interested to work with me, kindly contact me and let’s see if we can have a win-win-win situation.

How about you? Who are you working with in your life?

Bonus: Be Mentally Free

*Ding dong*: You have a new notification.

We talked plenty about being Financial Free and the benefits of being Financially Free in Wealthdojo (Duh). However, I feel that there is a part of life not commonly addressed and that is being mentally free.

*Ringgggggg*: Your alarm clock rings. You wake up to snooze the alarm before going back to sleep again. After the 3rd or 4th ring, you finally get up to wash up. While preparing your cup of coffee, you look at you surf Facebook and noticed that Jane is being proposed in Paris. You then receive a notification from Lazada about the latest gadgets having offers (while stock last!). You also receive a whatsapp reminder from your colleague to prepare for the presentation later.

On the way to work, you began to clear emails that you get from shoppe, starbucks and scoot.

You finally arrived in office and sat down to prepare for the day. You noticed 10 emails in your inbox marked as URGENT , giving a soft sigh you worked on those emails and you noticed that your candy crush notification reminds you to log in for the day. You struggle through your meeting while looking at your friends in group chats chat about the latest McBurger offer.

By the time, you finished work. You take the train home only to see that you have several email from jetstar and ezbuy telling you what great deals they is today.

You wonder why you are tired.

I call this the mental drain. In develop countries, we are exposed constantly to new stimulants such as incoming messages or email. Every notification that you received takes up a certain bandwidth in our mind. Like money, we only have a finite amount of mental bandwidth. Once we finish it, we will feel tired.

Take an example of an email from a newsletter you subscribed years ago. Your phone lit up showing the notification from xxx. You look at it. Press into the app. Ponder for a while and press delete. That may take 5 seconds. By making the decision to delete or not, you have started to accumulate mental fatigue. It is no wonder why we feel tired all the time.

This was my personal experience. It was only much later that I realised I was spending so much time on my phone that I decided to do a mental detox. I wrote down everything that was taking my time away and was not productive. As a result, I unsubscribed to not important email newsletters, off my sound and vibration notification for messages and delete the games in my phone.

At first, it felt weird as there was nothing. Nothing for me to do at any one point. I soon realised that was the freedom that I have sought. I was then able to complete more task (in a shorter time), focus more and still remain mentally free.

How about you? Are you mentally free too?

Conclusion

To conclude, it has been a year full of mistakes, lessons and not forgetting fun. I hope you learnt something from my mistakes, lessons and also fun. Hope you have the same too!

If you read until here, thank you again for your patience and your support over in 2019. I hope that in 2020, Wealthdojo can continue to value add you. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

I hope to nurture genuine relationships with all of my readers. Please feel free to contact me on my Instagram (@chengkokoh) or Facebook Page!