Musings, Serendipity & Randomness

Why financial independence or retire early at all?

Someone asked in a group chat just the other day when I was sharing about passive income, retiring early and financial independence, and my immediate response in my head was: why not?

Why not have passive income? Why not be able to retire early?

I dont get tired of speaking about this at all, and I’ve been sharing and saying this for years now, since 2009. Passive income is still relevant today, perhaps even moreso than ever before.

Especially

  • during 2020 – 2022 during the COVID lockdowns and fears and lots of job losses and changes
  • 2022’s Russian’s parasitic, invasive war of Ukraine
  • ?future

Passive income isn’t complex. It’s a necessity of life.

With so many different case uses and benefits, because everyone’s preferences and needs are different right? Me, I will work less and spend more time with family and pursuing / doing projects that matter to me including more time in nigelchua.com and video making. Maybe hire personal trainers and nutritionists to improve my and family health.

For others it may be

  • retiring their partners or parents
  • spending time with sick or elderly parents
  • having (more) kids
  • being able to NOT put down their sick pets
  • travel the world
  • maybe move to another part of the world (vanlife, anyone?)
  • volunteer
  • finally have the mental bandwidth to meet people, date and maybe even marry
  • focus on your first love, be it acting, drawing, writing, baking – whatever

There’s so many more examples of what one can do with passive income and retiring earlier.

Surely there’s downsides to passive income?

Of course there’s some downsides, such as

  • maybe you’d start to have people sticking to you cos you have money (and they want money from you)
  • maybe you’d get bored
  • maybe…traveling and the beach was boring after all

Who knows? You then have the luxury of time to explore and find out what you dislike, what you like and want more of, which is still a net positive in my books.

And that what keeps me going and sharing this message again and again to those who will hear.

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How to deal with haters, critics and liars (these trolls are everywhere!)

Haters. Some people call them trolls, but these haters…they’re everywhere.

  • many hide anonymously behind their keyboards, and shoot lines after lines of poisonous text on social media and websites
  • others speak anonymously and venomously behind closed doors and other people’s backs, talking bad, shit and lies about other people

Overall, these people slander others in private spaces, because they dont have the ability to share it publicly with the world, where the truth can come to light.

I take them like vermin or roaches – which can be found everywhere.

Do not engage haters

Ramit Sethi loves to engage the trolls (maybe cos he has fun doing so), but mostly I go by ignoring the trolls because of one thing: I dont like to waste time.

For whatever reasons, these people’s character seems to enjoy to hide in shadows as they tell lies and scandalize others, and I do not foresee engaging with them will be productive at all.

Check if their points have any substance

Of course, before I ignore and write off these scums, I will take some time to pay attention to what they say. What I’m looking out for is constructive feedback where there is utility, where I can improve or fix something on.

Examples:

  • if we take too long to reply clients, say we average 2 hours before we reply, sure, we can shorten the wait time to less than an hour
  • if the business waiting area or lobby is too dusty, and the cleaner only comes in once a week, sure, we can get the cleaner to come in at least twice a week
  • if we made a mistake and delivered the wrong product, we can fix it by sending the right one and letting them keep the other wrongly sent one for free

These are clear lines where we can improve.

However, knowing trolls, they will come up with all kind of cock-and-bull stories, with lots of added seasoning of their own crack mind. You may have experienced how trolls:

  • attack your personal character eg “I wonder why her husband loves her, she’s no good at all”
  • bring in social/family members (example above)
  • find examples to cause you personal hurt, grief and anguish

These kinds, I immediately fire if they’re clients or employees – toxic behaviours are not permitted

Trolls enjoy hurting others and causing grief

Often these trolls troll because they’re sadists, and when I deem they’re just out to cause mischief and grief, I disengage so as to

  • not waste time
  • not feed trolls the dopamine they get when they see their victims in hurt or pain

That’s how I deal with hating haters, lying asses and detractors.

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The man who called my preferred wine apple juice

Brown Brothers White Wine - Moscato | NTUC FairPrice

I’m kinda bad at alcohol, so I cant really drink.

One day, during a church gathering-celebration, I brought my favorite bottle of wine to share. When Eddie tasted it, he laughed and called it Ribena and apple juice. It both embarrassed and tickled me so, so, so much.

In a good way.

When we were closer, back in the early 2010s, he shared stories about how he grew up so poor, he had to start working from a young age to support himself and the family. It was hard and hard, but it was what it was. Until he met his wife, they got married and kids, and he continued working.

Later, he started his own company in his 50s which I think is called ET (Eddie Tan) Marine Engineering. And it was fairly successful from the getgo from his previous networks.

He’s  who I will call the cool uncle – often cool, steady, and ever ready to help and chat.

Unfortunately, from the busyness of life, we all had our own things going on, own struggles and wins, we drifted apart. I reached out a couple of times, but it seems like it was hard to breakthrough. Maybe it’s guilt, pride, busyness or just general awkwardness to broach and reconnect.

A shame, really.

Eddie passed away in 2021 amidst the pandemic. He fought a good fight against an aggressive cancer, and the Eddie I know, is a fighter. He doesn’t go down without a fight at all.

A reminder that one of the key benefits of the passive income lifestyle is to be less bogged down with busyness of life and work; freeing up time to spend time with projects, causes and people you care about. Or at least, have space for randomness and serendipity, which matters to me. I find that if I’m too busy chasing, I miss the random variance that brings spice and colors to my life.

Eddie, I miss you. Your laughters were one of the most disarmingly good. See you in heaven later.

PS: will be buying a bottle of Moscato later to sip on.

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