17 posts found under,

Mindset

Earlier this year, my dad had a routine operation to remove a hernia. We all knew he would be fine, but he was convinced the worst would happen. I’m glad he wasn’t right, but one good thing about his pessimism is that it got him to write his will and have the ‘talk’ with his family. In the past, I’ve spoken to colleagues and friends who have faced legal complications in their families after the death of a relative. One of their sibilings contest [...]

This is an excerpt from Your Money, Your 20s, a concise ebook on building wealth. Read the full book here. “I’m just bad with money,” a friend said to me in 2007. At the time, I sat quietly and smiled to show my empathy. I didn’t agree but I also didn’t know how to respond. I knew she wasn’t bad with money. I just knew that she didn’t always act in ways that kept her bank balance healthy. Nearly 10 years later, I know that it’s not about being g [...]

In December 2015, I had been unemployed for two months. After five years of working in two corporations, I decided not to look for new employment when my fixed-term contract ended. I did what most people do when they ‘escape’ the corporate world, I went travelling. I had one month and one country, Japan. In a way, going to Japan was my way of going full circle. I was born in Japan but moved to England as a baby and grew up in the UK. I’ve spent m [...]

Why do we sometimes feel bad when our friends do well? Natural selection. Evolution. Feeling inadequate when one of our friends upgrades to a bigger house is just the start of our envy. In doing so, we’re participating in ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Keeping up with the Joneses was first referred to in a comic in 1913 which depicts the social climbing McGinis family, who struggle to ‘keep up’ with their neighbours, the Joneses. Competition can [...]

As a child, I noticed that my parents dreaded bills. As a student, I noticed that my flatmates dreaded bills. As an adult, I still notice that people, whether rich or poor, dread bills. Like many of us, when we’re surrounded with a certain mindset, it becomes automatic to adopt it. It’s part of our natural desire to fit in. When I left home, I knew exactly how to respond to bills: I dreaded them. Why do we hate bills? Bills hurt for a number of r [...]

Meditation was first documented around 1500 years ago in ancient India. In 1958, Jack Kerouac published The Dharma Burns, which explored his early experience with Buddhism and increased interest and curiosity in meditation. Up until the early 2010s, meditation was still considered too "new age" for the everyday person. In 2016, everybody seems to be talking about meditation - more specifically mindfulness meditation. Even in the daily craziness [...]

As 2015 draws to a close and the hangover from Christmas Day subsides, you may already have a list of resolutions ready for January 1. But since 1 in 3 of us will ditch our resolutions by the end of January because we’re ‘too busy’ we’ve put together a list of tips to help you succeed in 2016. Make just one New Year’s resolution. It’d be great to lose 5 pounds, drink less alcohol, eat more vegetables and save more money but anyone who tries to ta [...]

We all remember that feeling we got when we received pocket money as children. The anticipation of getting something for nothing, followed by the excitement thinking up ways to spend the money and a sense of achievement when we bought that special something that we could show off to our friends. Perhaps you didn't always spend it immediately and instead saved it up for something expensive that you wanted more than the immediate gratification of b [...]

If you Google “best personal finance books” or something similar, you will not find an authoritative answer. Sure, plenty of publications and blogs have their lists, but these are highly subjective. So how did we go about choosing the 10 “most popular” books we have summarized? There are roughly 50 books that are regularly reviewed or referred to in the personal finance blogging world. Each of these books attempts to provide the fundamentals of s [...]

In the summer of 2014, I decided that I needed to become more physically flexible. After many years of exercise (I used to play tennis competitively) and also creating a good habit in my early 20s to combine a balanced diet with regular strength and cardio, I was still regularly getting injured or sick. My research taught me that without regular stretching workouts like yoga and pilates, I stood little chance of being able to up the intensity of [...]