after my sunday duty...

Today (or rather yesterday) was quite a crazy day sia, firstly it was a long time since i had to take down minutes for a conference, let alone a conference with a Lieutenant Colonel chairing it. Good thing is he's my commander and he's a nice and religious man whom many respect.Anyway, taking minutes in the end was chicken feet, and i'm doing on behalf of a friend who was on birthday off on monday (yea happy birthday man josh...) plus the officer in charge of this project is okay...so there i went, typing the minutes until almost 8 pm. Then on my way home, I decided to go Tampines to get a CD. Well, i am not sure whether what this is indicative of, but i ended up buying 2 CDs, 4 books, and one shirt...I kinda stunned myself during the entire process. It was something only slightly short of frightening. As I mustered what's left of my sanity and stopped myself from buying a $40 shirt when i had 40 dollars left in my wallet, but insofar only to end up buying a $20 shirt, I realised on hindsight what it really felt like being what the financially savvy would call the "rat race". You work hard, you earn some extra cash due to your super long hours of work and you feel wierd. Result: You spend all that you have worked so hard to earn, all in today's credit abundant financial landscape, you do even more: you owe more debt than you earn income. Why? You feel that you owe yourself something, what it is you do not know. So in the end, through my personal experience I found out that this "self-pitying" and "hardworking" combination will result in compensative consumerism, which is essentially a breakdown of self-discipline and a succumbance to the short term benefits of credit/earned income expenditure, which is what makes buying consumer goods, especially expensive luxuries so dangerous. This is not to degrade consumer and luxury goods (everyone wants a luxury of some sort, don't we? and consumer goods are definitely useful and nice to have around too) However, the problem with this haphazard, almost frenatic, way of consumerism is it not only consumes you, the individual from within, it also leaves you more and more vulnerable, financially at least, to satisfy your ever-lasting wants and desire. The correct way of buying luxuries should be to plan and "work out" (not work per se) how to finance it, To do this, it essentially means in the accountant's lingo, that your assets should generate income to pay for not only your expenses but also to pay for more assets so as to be able to truly afford more expensive luxuries. Then only will you find yourself free from working for money by spending what you earn or even more.

Anyway, that's just some of the hard parts of life invariably, okay, now must relax. Come to think of it, on the other hand I enjoy the stuff that I so "fiercely" bought, like the album "Beautiful Moments 2" with 13 relaxing tracks. I would also like my shirt as well as my books thouroughly. So in then end, you get some, you lose some, it's up to your own strength whether you want to get first before you want, or you want before you can get. The choice is ours, and ours alone.