1 Oct 2024
SOURCE: CPF Board
What kind of goals are you working towards now? It can be anything, from buying a house to upgrading your smartphone - Goals can serve as checkpoints, offer clear direction, and provide a sense of accomplishment when they have been attained. Amidst life’s uncertainties, it can offer a sense of control.
This is especially true when it comes to financial goals, for the short term or the future, such as your retirement. Retirement planning works best with a head start, after all! By planning early, you can give yourself a sense of stability, confidence, and motivation to chase those well-defined goals, achieving financial calm.
What is financial calm?
Simply put, being in a state of financial calm means you have two things:
- Strong understanding of your financial situation
- Clearly set goals and a plan to reach them
The plan is your blueprint, a financial roadmap of sorts. It also strengthens your motivation to take action when the next step or checkpoint is clearly mapped out. Here are two travellers who are also on their way to achieving their desired retirement lifestyles and their financial calm!
Achieving balance in all things
For Nishanth, life is about commitment. A doctor by profession, he also finds time for family and his personal interest: music. For him, maintaining this delicate balance among all the things that are important to him starts with deep personal commitment.
This is why planning ahead is a way of life for Nishanth. This is an understanding he shares with his wife, allowing them to support each other in pursuing their goals. For Nishanth, this includes taking music lessons once his three-year doctoral training period ends.
Paving a clear path ahead as a couple
When it comes to finances, Nishanth and his wife believe in full transparency. Since they both value financial security, they approach their spendings and savings with openness, and have regular discussions to align their expectations on finances.
In Nishanth’s opinion, there is a tendency to focus on the more immediate needs, at the risk of being unprepared when the unexpected happens. One step he has taken is to set aside emergency funds for his family, as well as setting aside a dedicated amount of funds to help care for their parents.
Nishanth also puts effort into understanding the household’s monthly spending and saving patterns, which helps him identify areas that can be improved. He has also worked out a monthly investment plan to grow his family income, which allows them the luxury of going on holidays when they want to.
The winning formula for him lies in planning ahead, and being mindful and intentional about his financial plans. This has allowed him to pursue his hobbies and spend time with loved ones with peace of mind.
Staying calm and moving forward
For War War, life is about staying calm. As a yoga instructor who helps others manage not only their physical pains, but mental wellness, War War believes achieving wellness both physically and mentally is the first step to a healthy, fulfilled life.
As a business owner, drawing up plans and anticipating possible scenarios is an important aspect for War War. Knowing very well that starting a new business comes with many risks, she and her husband set themselves a timeframe for establishing their company. By giving themselves a deadline, they were able to better gauge the feasibility of their decisions and what kind of risks they were willing to take on. They were also cognisant that the business was not likely to make much profits in the early days, which taught them to be patient and stay calm in the face of setbacks.
Planning for family, with family
With three kids, the key to managing her family and business is teamwork with her husband, where they help each other out whenever the other has their hands full. With three children to care for, financial planning is a critical aspect for their family’s future. When War War was expecting her first child, she naturally started to think about her child’s future, including what this meant in terms of additional household expenses.
Routine creates a sense of certainty and stability for War War and her husband, when it comes to their finances. They have weekly business meetings to assess their current financial situation and discuss how to address problems. This could mean having to make tradeoffs between family expenditure and expanding parts of their business.
Because of her experience, she knows the importance of building good money management habits as a life skill, and has started to teach her children about financial concepts from a young age. For example, she gives them weekly allowances to learn how to manage their own spending. She also encourages her children to plan ahead and helps them to understand the consequences of their decisions, rather than telling them what to do.
For War War, having a greater degree of freedom in her finances and not having to worry about each and every cent is a long-term goal she’s been working towards. Achieving financial calm to her means being assured that she and her family will be able to handle any challenges ahead.
For both Nishanth and War War, financial calm is a state of understanding and stability, but achieving it requires consistent and purposeful effort. It may not always be straightforward and may involve difficult conversations, but having clarity of your own financial situation and goals is the first step towards achieving your financial calm.
By making every day matter, each step you take can become a big stride towards your desired retirement lifestyle. And there’s no better time to start than the present!
The information provided in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
