Its been awhile since I last did my year end reflections and the last two I did were in 2017 (birth of my second child) and 2021 (pandemic period). While I was reading my past reflections, I realized that my family had came a long way though the years with the various challenges and breakthroughs we had as a family on our Financial Independence and Minimalism journey. Our thinking, goals and priorities changed quite a bit along the way. So going forward, this reflection post will be a yearly affair so that we could review, appreciate and be grateful about our progress over the years.
As 2023 draws to an end and as we welcome the New Year, I thought it would be good to consolidate some of my thoughts for the year, and some of the key takeaways that we could bring with us to 2024.
Health
In terms of my health, I was really in desperation mode to get back to running or fitness since Covid-19 started. Just a bit of background, it all started when I first tore my ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament) on my right knee during a soccer game in Dec 2018 which led to two more subsequent surgeries. Its a roller coaster ride filled with emotions, desperation, hope and challenges along the way, it pretty much looks like the stock market from the onset of Covid-19 til now and hopefully things will start to look up from now onwards.
Below is the timeline of my surgeries, recoveries and setbacks:
Having had three knee surgeries in five years is no joke and I realized that I had gained quite a bit of weight (from 78kg to 85kg) which might had hindered my recovery each time.
My Garmin records below shows that I was still able to run about 278km in 2019 which is almost 3 times of what I did in total for 3 years (2021 – 2023) at less than 100km. For someone who loves running, this is I think the biggest setback of my life probably even worst than I was in debt during my entrepreneur days (you can watch my life story on a Youtube video here).
Even my physiotherapist did not know what to do until I started to take things into my own hands to go back to the drawing board to come out with a new strategy towards my recovery.
Just when I was about to give up, I was inspired by my younger brother who had minimally five knee surgeries in the last decade and was seriously struggling trying to get back to fitness. What he did during Covid-19 was he start to walk a lot (like more than 10,000 steps a day), do intermittent fasting (like 14 – 16 hours) plus prepare most of his meals at home. His discipline approach and watching his diet was paramount in his recovery. He was able to lose at least 15 kg in the space of two years and now what I could see is the fittest version I had ever seen of him (being able to climb a 15 – 20m wall effortlessly and run 10km comfortably nowadays). I guess most people would had gave up but not him and I was also not prepared to give up at all without giving it a fight.
So since the start of July this year, I started to replicate what he was doing and managed to lose 10 kg in 4 to 5 months just by doing intermittent fasting, controlling my diet, cycling and walking a lot. I also did a lot of knee strengthening exercises, yoga and gym just to focus on functional training for my whole body (arms, legs, chest, core and back). Then after 5 months, I started running on the treadmill which has lesser impacts on my knees before I started running on hard ground. The weight that I lost was crucial towards my recovery and I’m now focusing more on strengthening, building up my muscles percentage and reducing my fat percentage. The idea is not to run more or faster but be able to run short distances with more sustainable pace while I workout everyday alternating between walking, running, cycling and gym works. Through dieting like eating home cooked food, less processed food and developing a healthy food routine, I was also able to bring down my fat level from 25% to 18% according to my Xiaomi weighing scale.
Hopefully by next year, I will be able to regained my former fitness I lost since 2019 and bring down my weight to about 72kg with fat level ranging between 14-16%. The focus this time round will be to execute all my exercises in a slow and steady manner, build up a strong core and increase injury-preventive exercises to reduce future injuries. Hopefully, my patient and discipline approach will finally pay off and I will update more on the progress next year! Fingers crossed!
Family
This was a year of revenge travelling where we took two long trips to Australia and Japan plus more than twenty weekend and road trips to Malaysia since the border re-opened in 2022. You can check out our new travelogue segment here but I’m still trying to catch up on blogging about our travels!
The WFH regime and the start of my new career as a financial coach brought more balance to my life in terms of family time and work. I spent so much time with my kids during their formative years that I feel that I have regained back so much in my life that I will have lesser regrets going forward. Both of them will finally be in Primary school next year with my younger son entering Primary 1 and my girl advancing to Primary 4.
My boy started his preschool since the onset of Covid-19 and he had problems getting accustomed to school. Main reason is due to the wearing of masks in school, sometimes he is unable to read the friends or teachers facial expressions which causes some confusion / frustration in his communication skills. He is talking a lot nowadays even though he started to talk quite late in his developing years. Now he finally grew up to be slightly mischievous, positive, understanding, responsible and caring boy who looks out for people around him. He just had his preschool graduation last week and he mentioned that he loves to do puzzles and travelling with us as a family.
As for my girl, she is also starting to be growing to be quite knowledgeable as she is fond of reading which helps her overall desire to learn. She enjoys her volleyball CCA in school and is quite a confident swimmer nowadays. She is also progressing well in her ballet and piano classes and is starting to appreciate them better as she spend more time in them. She could express her feelings better nowadays as she gets emotional, less feisty and shows her jovial side where she often laugh out loud when she is reading funny comics / shows.
I had known Kate for more than 15 years, married for 11 years and the best thing about our relationship is that we always have open communications and we do not really bear grudges. We do have our moments but it was mostly short lived. Our love language is quality time and acts of service, and I really wish that we could continue to keep this up!
Work
Work has been quite meaningful for us nowadays as we are working on jobs that has a direct social impact on personal lives around us.
Kate is currently in the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) space and is currently looking at policies to make the workplace more inclusive and embrace diversity. Recently, she is looking at hiring young people who are autistic or have some form of disability to give them an opportunity to join the workforce in a more accommodating and progressive work environment. It might be challenging for employers but its a good start towards creating an inclusive environment where everyone has an equal chance to succeed.
In my line of work as a financial coach, my main job is to educate people to enhance their financial literacy with the eventual dream of attaining certain level of financial independence (FI) after I achieved mine two years back. I’m not just in this space to merely sell products as I’m a fee-based financial coach who uses a more holistic approach towards achieving FI. My job is to be the guiding beacon for those who would want to achieve financial independence and regain back their lives. I also found and getting use to a new routine where I could better manage my work, family, health and household in a sustainable manner.
Financial
Our family expenses were at the highest this year mainly due to revenge travelling and the bump up on our mortgage. But it also coincided with our record increase in our networth which is rather surprising when the stock markets is not doing well, but our cash / bond / CPF still continue to slowly grow excluding the rise of the market value of our property. That explains the importance of diversification and not have an over-concentration of our wealth in any one asset class.
On the stock front, we added quite a bit into the US market and global technology using broad-based index funds during the current high interest rate environment. We were slowly buying the dips in tranches using the dividends we received and our warchest when the price to book ratio of REITs get really attractive at the 0.7 – 0.8 range. We re-allocated our emergency and warchest into Singapore Saving Account ( > 3% long term) and UOB account (~5%) to take advantage of the high interest rate environment which should be trending downwards going forward.
Our spending habits might define us as bargain hunters and we will only decide to spend when the economic conditions allow us to do so. We were geo-arbitraging in Malaysia by buying our groceries there to stretch our Sing dollars while exploring the country. We realized that when we spend SGD70 to watch a movie for the 4 of us in Singapore, that same amount of money could afford us a brunch, a movie and do rock climbing at the same cost in Malaysia. That is a lot of difference!
Final thoughts
Overall, I am really grateful that 2023 has been a pretty good year to us. Our financial front is doing very well and is poised to do even better next year with the improving market conditions. But the biggest win for me is still health as without health, no matter how much our wealth grows, the numbers serves no purpose. I realized without my ability to indulge and enjoy sports, it affects my self-esteem, motivation and confidence towards the future. So going forward, health will always take precedence and I will try to regain back my former fitness next year.
As minimalism becomes part of our lives, we felt really light nowadays to pursue our passions without the need to seek validation from anyone’s expectations. Basically living life on our own terms is a blessing and we would like to live that way for the rest of our lives.
Minimalism is not a perfect life! Is not an easy one too! But a simple one that embraces imperfections!
As for the family, we are looking forward to our next travel adventure which will be a multi-day road trip to Malaysia (Malacca / KL / Cameron Highlands / Ipoh / Kluang) in June and another year end trip which we had yet to decide on. Might have some spontaneous trips along the way, lets see how it goes and stay tune!
From my health episode, I would like to leave the below words as a reminder for myself and my readers so that we could build up our resilience when we face the next challenge:
Change might not happen overnight and you might feel dejected for a long time. But it will always start from a small change and it might takes a lot of discipline, hope and determination to get out of it if your desire is strong enough. Once you get out of it, learn to appreciate life more and not take things for granted.
Wish all our readers a Happy New Year and have a great year ahead!
Sharing some of our past reflections in 2017 and 2021.
Happy New Year!
I must say, not an easy post to read and I got caught up in the ACL but and in currebtly at month 3 post my ACL / meniscus tear surgery.
I hope both you and I are done with surgeries!!!! It’s strange how life changes with injuries!
As you said, health is the most important!
Lovely reading about the good year otherwise!!!!
Happy New Year to you too! And thanks for dropping by and its has been awhile!
Just want to document down my reflections especially my knee surgeries so that I could remind myself how I overcome it and hopefully when people read it, they will feel hopeful or inspired. Take it easy and follow up with your physiotherapy sessions. Focus on your core muscles (maybe do less impactful exercise like yoga or swim) before starting to get back to your former activities.
Hope you have a smooth recovery and a great year ahead!