Having the right people around you

I just realised my past few posts have been about our investment transactions, dividend income and interest income for the month of Feb 2017. I decided against writing a net worth post this time round since I just about had enough of reporting on another financial status update for the month of Feb 2017. Might be a good idea to space them out and mix them up with other types of posts so I don’t bore myself.

Anyway, this post was inspired by my experience at two different gatherings over the last few weekends. Let’s give them more content by providing a summary of what happened at these gatherings.

Gathering 1 with Group A friends

• Caught up on details of our personal life
• Updated each other on where we were working at and where our partners were working at as well
• Discussed salary ranges in different industries
• Shared investment progress and utilisation of cash approach
• Talked about the type of cars we were driving if applicable and COE price trends
• Compared where we were staying at and the purchase prices of our properties (including a debate about where the residential property market is headed)
• Whether we are planning to have kids soon

Gathering 2 with Group B friends

• Shared our recent travel experiences and the things we did (including funny anecdotes of stupid things and screw-ups that happened on the trips)
• Discussion on the various types of meats, red and white wines we brought back to Singapore
• Debated the pros and cons of moving to another country or back to Australia (including the impact on kids)
• Talked about casual and fine dining restaurants in Singapore and overseas we can visit and celebrate special occasions in
• Concerns and worries about work, lifestyle, how to and what to invest in Singapore

Group A was made up of SG friends who studied, worked and lived in SG only. Group B was made up of SG and non-SG friends who studied, worked and lived overseas and in SG. This is not going to be one of those posts that slam the SG versus non-SG nationality and experience. We know both groups of friends well but hang out with the second group more often.

As we get older, we notice that our groups of good friends start to shrink. We interact more with friends that we have more shared/common values, beliefs, experiences, interests and directions headed in. Human nature I guess. After all, we are constantly changing and evolving, which means that our circles of friends will also alter over time.

When we hang out with Group A, life in Singapore feels like a competition. Our performance is compared to others and evaluated on a number of perceived benchmarks. It’s easy to feel stressed and behind in our career and life when hanging out with this group. Nobody talks much about the mistakes they make for fear of being judged. If you are asking why we continue to met up with this group, it’s because we have been friends for a long time and enjoy each other’s company despite the negative drawbacks at times. Besides, we can actually discuss and share our personal finance & investment strategies and performances in detail with this group. We probably pick up and learn the most useful & practical tips here. Talk about expanding our knowledge base.

Group B is a lot more fun to hang out with and we laugh & talk about everything non-serious in life. This is where we have barbeques, wine and home-cooked dinner sessions etc. Life in Singapore feels like we are back in Australia again. Whereby our jobs and salaries, investment assets we own, properties we live in and cars we drive are used less as a gauge of who and what we are. But sometimes, we feel like we can never broach serious life topics with this group about financial and non-financial stuff that matter to us. Which can result in certain important issues never being addressed.

I reckon having both groups of friends are essential to leading a more balanced, fulfilled and successful life. After all, you can always come up with a smaller Group C of friends that have attributes of both Group A and B. Actually, we are already starting to form a group like this and we hope to remain lifelong friends wherever we are.