It’s been a busy week at work and outside of work. Trying to finish up tasks before my colleagues head off for their block leave. And going for various celebratory events due to the festive season. We will probably be staying in at home tomorrow to rest and recover for the new work week ahead. It is likely to only start winding down as we get closer to the Christmas and New Year’s Eve holidays. Can’t wait!

There’s another thing to look forward to in the new few weeks. The payout of our salaries and my wife’s year-end bonus. I know the former happens every month but it’s always something to get excited about. While the latter happens once every year if we are lucky. This upcoming higher than average cash injection comes at a good time.

We may have overspent recently from all the gifts purchased, meetups and gatherings that we attended. Our cash holdings need topping up! Plus I am currently in the process of opening a Smartly robo-advisor account. They just started their referral program and I used my wife’s referral account to initiate the process. Like I said, I believe in both Smartly and StashAway as robo-advisors in Singapore. And I will continue to support them as long as they act in the interests of the retail investor i.e. offering platform/account fee waiver as part of the referral program in this case.

Something else has caught my eye. Actually, it’s all over the news and has caught everybody’s attention. The rocketing prices of cryptocurrencies. I remember writing a post a few months back about possibly purchasing a bit of cryptocurrencies to have a position in the market. Well, I didn’t do it in the end. Which leaves me with mixed feelings as I can only observe the meteoric rise of cryptocurrencies prices as a spectator and not benefit from it.

I would be lying if I don’t admit a small part of me regretted not buying just that 1 unit of Bitcoin or Ethereum that I was prepared to do by opening all the relevant accounts then. But I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it. No point asking me what I would have done in hindsight. I’m not one to dwell on such past events because I much prefer looking forward to improve the future version of me.

As for the reason why I didn’t do it. It’s because I realised there was no need for me to take that risk. I know the cryptocurrencies prices have tripled in value during the period of time. Which means a S$10,000 investment would have become S$30,000 in the short span of a few months i.e. gain of S$20,000 or 200%. It would have been an amazing result on an amount I might have been willing to risk on cryptocurrencies.

However, the cryptocurrencies prices could just have easily halved in value during the period of time if you were to consider historical prices. Which means a S$10,000 investment might have become S$5,000 instead i.e. loss of S$5,000 or 50%.

One of the most important rules of investing is that you should only invest what you can afford to lose. People keep saying this when you ask them how much did they invest in a particular risky financial asset. The majority always thinks they only invested what they could afford to lose. Until you actually lose the money. This is the part that gets me. Because I reckon my tolerance level for losses is a lot lower than I think.

Plus I don’t actually have cash I can afford to lose. It’s my hard-earned salary income and bonus. Why would I ever think I can afford to lose it? Making losses is a terrible position to be in and I don’t like being in that situation. Which is reflective in the way I invest in ETFs now, a more risk diversified financial asset. And I ensure my cash injections into savings and investments every month would more often than not be greater than any potential losses. This means my total assets usually increases from month to month. It keeps me in a positive head space and mood.

I like where we are now with our rate of progress on savings and investments. It’s steady, stable and still allows us to have a life that we enjoy. I won’t jeopardise that by taking a risk that could potentially blow up everything we have. You could say I’m risk-averse and would probably never make it in higher risk ventures such as entrepreneurship, self-employment and full-time investor.

But understanding and accepting this has provided me with an important perspective on life. Patience. Time builds character, relationships and so many other attributes I will need later on in my life. I’m not looking to shorten the journey but just want to enjoy this process as much as I can with all the ups and downs. I refuse to risk a high probability of 50% loss for a low probability of 200% gain with any money that I have. It’s unnecessary and bad odds no matter how I look at it. This is not how I invest. If anything, I will work harder to earn back the potential gain that I lost out on using my salary income and bonus. Keeps me motivated!

I’m sure everyone has heard of the famous saying – slow and steady wins the race. This is the morale of the story about the quick hare losing the race against the slow-moving tortoise. Essentially, it means that even an average person can achieve success through persistent and consistent efforts. I still remind myself about this story when I get impatient and start wishing for faster results with my efforts to do better at work, savings, investments and relationships i.e. prioritising instant gratification over delayed gratification.

I also understand how a combination of bad decisions, unfortunate circumstances and bad luck can cause a person with a normal life to spiral down into anxiety and depression i.e. spin out of control. I have seen this happen once to my dad after he got retrenched in China and had to return to Singapore. And I have experienced this once when I was jobless for a few months after graduation in a foreign country. Both were mild cases as we were able to recover within one year. Serious cases can stretch for years and they can have disastrous consequences for yourself and the people around you.

Even in mild cases like ours, the impact of this downward spiral is terrible enough. You can ask my mum and wife about it and they still remember what it was like. There’s something else that successful people keep going on about – failure makes a person stronger, which suggests overcoming it should result in success. I have to admit that I don’t buy into this as much as I probably should. I keep thinking it depends on so many factors that odds are failures will more likely end up crippling a person than the other way around.

The number of failures, personality and tenacity of the person, influence of the family and external environment, etc. Any one of them can cause a person to be knocked down and never get back. So I do find it annoying when people talk about how overcoming their past failures made them such a success. That’s because you survived them. Doesn’t mean others can do the same just by believing in you.

I’m not saying failures are not important, just that you will learn something painful enough to remember for the rest of your life. Whether you can take that learning experience forward is entirely up to you and it’s okay if you don’t manage to do it. I want to say I persevered, kept believing in myself, and that’s how I broke that wall down. But I would be lying. I had almost given up and just about ready to throw in the towel. Even my wife (then girlfriend) who was supporting me the entire way was getting increasingly frustrated as she struggled with her own work issues. It came down to dumb luck that saved us from the deep hole we were in, which was about to get a whole lot deeper if it didn’t happen.

So yes. I believe in luck just as much as I believe in our efforts that got us to where we are today. That one bad life experience 8 years ago just after we graduated shaped much of our core beliefs, values and attitudes. How essential it is just to keep taking one step forward at a time even when you have no idea where you are heading or you end up moving backwards. That it is not about the pace of progress but how steady and stable the progress you have made is. Spend most of your time building the foundation and you will be surprised how quickly you can level up after. We may behave differently from the past because our personal and financial circumstances have changed. But some things stick to you for a lifetime and hopefully for the better.

I made a change to our Net Worth Google Sheet by removing the tab on graphical illustration of the changes in our Cash, Investments, Retirement & Medical funds, Total Assets and Net Worth. It wasn’t useful for me because I was referring more to the actual figures for tracking purposes. The graphs gave me a big picture of where we were heading but when you are still in the detailed work phase of building your wealth, it really doesn’t offer much.

Instead, I added in columns on $ and % changes to the tab on our actual numbers for Cash, Investments, Retirement & Medical funds, Total Assets and Net Worth. I didn’t see this before but the monthly rate of change results are illuminating when you line them up next to each other. The figures used to be bigger and fluctuated a lot more when I first started tracking a few years ago. Now, they are more range bound and patterns are starting to emerge.

The percentage increases in Cash, Investments, Retirement & Medical funds, Total Assets and Net Worth are starting to drop. Which makes sense mathematically when you think about how the same $ change divided by a bigger denominator base results in a smaller number. On one hand, it’s a good thing because it means our asset portfolio is growing i.e. this is not a bad problem to have.

But when I look at it from another perspective, it’s suggesting doing the same thing will lose its effectiveness over time. How am I supposed to accelerate my rate of wealth build-up if I don’t attempt to do anything new? If anything, it feels like I will be slowing down with time at the rate this is going when I should be more aggressive instead.

Anyway, it’s a Sunday and I was out the whole day yesterday. Just sitting down now and musing about stuff while resting. Recovery takes longer as you get older and I still have to head to the gym later for my weekly exercise appointment with my wife. Feeling lazy and unmotivated but I hope this changes in a few hours.