This is my typical humble Teo Chew porridge style with 3 dishes of 1 meat, 2 veggie - cabbage, fried chicken and bittergourd egg. How much do you think it costs?
It is from a popular mixed vegetable rice stall at Kim Keat hawker in Toa Payoh Lor 7.
This meal only costs $2.20! Less than a cup of Koi bubble milk tea. A fraction of Starbucks coffee.
When I ordered the same dishes at Ban Heng Teo Chew Porridge outlet, the same meal costs $8! More than 3x in cost but does not generate more than 3x of satisfaction for me.
It feels great to beat inflation. A simple meal for cheapo like me striving to achieve financial freedom.
I am usually happy with just a cheap simple meal like porridge, rice with a slice of fruit. It costs less than $3 in this hawker. When I dine in coffeeshops, I do not order the overpriced drinks. When I am busy to go out for lunch, I would pack $3 veggie rice from food court or fast food from Mcd using great deals from the Mcd app.
Similarly to the idea of value investing, I like to look out for undervalued meals in sg. Though I am happy to see many people queuing for overvalued bubble teas and restaurants in malls owned by Mapletree Commercial Trust and Capmall because they contribute to the rental that these Reits collect and ultimately my dividends collected.
I believe it is not difficult to save money from reducing expenses on basic needs like food, shelter and essentials. Saving up money to build up war chest for investments is not difficult at all. Occasionally we should still splurge a bit to enjoy better food and living experiences during the journey to financial Freedom. However with the worsening coronavirus pandemic, uncertain times and high possibility of an economic recession looming, it is time to tighten our budgets, boost our war chests for more ammunition to scoop up valuable assets on the cheap.
With Love and Peace,
Qiongster
3 comments:
Being frugal is a good habit to build up and once entrenched, it is hard to break. There will come a time where you see you have built up substantial savings and significant passive income, yet, you will not have the tendency to splurge. Thriftiness becomes second nature.
This is what is happening to us now. After working, saving hard and investing well over 30 years, we have a comfortable nest egg and a passive income of close to $200,000 a year. Yet, our lifestyle today is no different from when we were starting out. Traveling on business class for vacation? No thanks! Driving a continental car? No thanks, a Camry or a Harrier SUV will do nicely. Wearing that collector watch? No thanks, a simple fit-bit or Samsung Gear Fit pro watch would do. And so on and so forth.
However, I have to point out that saving alone is not enough. You need to earn more! Imagine saving 100% of a $3,000 monthly salary is still only $3,000 saved. On the other hand, saving 50% of a $10,000 monthly salary, is $5,000 saved. It is obvious who will be having a better lifestyle and savings.
Then the next step after saving up is to make the savings work for you. As individuals, we all have 24 hours a day. There is only so much time we can spend on work to earn money. We thus need to think of ways to generate income passive, ie earning money without our active involvement. Suffice to say for now that our passive income came from three sources:-
1. Dividend from equities & bonds
2. Rental
3. Interests from CPF
These things take time to build and establish. Discipline, good habits (eg. thriftiness), perseverance and care (not to fall for get-rich-quick scams and dont be greedy).
So good luck on your FI journey.
Thanks for reading and comments!
Interesting read. How nice if I have this information when I was young. Then it was trial and error. Frugal living was then for low income earners, and one was expected to live up to your station in life. It was only much later in life that I found out it wasn’t true.
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