Found this on my blog. I wrote it when my son was less than a year old. I should resume these letters this year.
Dear Son,
For the longest time, I wasn’t all that interested in money. I considered myself a natural saver and prioritised experiences over material things, so I always figured I would emerge from life’s trials relatively unscathed. Add to this the fact that I was eager to live and travel on a shoestring. For instance, I was an active user of couchsurfing because I loved the idea of staying at a local’s house for free while travelling (and making a new friend in the process).
But then you came along. So I realised, not without a jolt, that my money would have to stretch further. You are my WHY.
Even though I had a WHY, I still wasn’t all that interested in investing. Working life was exhausting and I didn’t fancy using my spare time learning about the technicalities of making money grow.
An avid fan of writing, I would rather write to fill my soul. I still remember going to some investment seminar with a friend and declaring at the end, “Yup, I am really not that interested”.
Until Seedly, a financial wellness website for millennials (recommended to me by the same friend who dragged me to attend the above-mentioned investing seminar) organised a bubble tea giveaway contest for the top 10 posters who participated actively for one month in its forum.
Boy, was my fire ignited! This was the circuit breaker period, where bubble tea shops were closed, thus making this drink a rare commodity. Coupled with the fact that this involved flexing my writing muscles, the contest captured my imagination.
I used to think that I didn’t know a lot about money, but as I wrote, I realised that I did have things to say. So it’s a classic case of the more I wrote, the more interested in investing I became. Writing was a gateway to unlock my inertia towards finance and inspire me to take baby steps.
Yup, I was one of the TOP ten posters in the end. And yup, you can say 2 cups of bubble tea changed my life.
This brings me to my lifelong lesson for today: If you are not interested in something, you may cultivate a liking for it if you approach it from an angle that appeals to you.
Hope this helps you to win at life!
Till the next letter,
Daddy