Money No Enough

Today I came across an article Not Perfect, But It's Home on Weekend TODAY, which has been delivered to my house FOC for many years. An interesting read as the author tries to compare the lifestyles between Singapore and Australia, in particular the perceptions of money and how different the Aussies deal with money matters compared to our countrymen.

I agree with the author that we Asians are more obsessed with money than the Aussies. It is little wonder that "Money No Enough 2" by Jack Neo won the top box office (among all Asian films) in Singapore last year. Our parents all expect us to study hard so that we can become doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants etc and make more money when we grow up. Having more money naturally lead to more comfortable and happier lives, as we were told. More often than not we tend to judge the social status of a person by his wealth rather than his heart. Even the government indirectly promotes the importance of money by benchmarking our top civil servants' pay to a basket of top earners in the six professionals in the private sector. We hear them saying things like "You need top money to draw top talent and curb corruption." and "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys", etc etc.

However, as the recent Global Financial Crisis shows, money is never enough, for those top-salary drawing bankers, more money paid to them may work in the opposite direction and blind them into making wrong decisions (i.e. creation of toxic assets). They are still human beings afterall and they still succumb to the power of greed. Human greed inevitably creates a bubble and then a crisis ensues.

In the distant future, will money ever become history? As we know, many wealthy people are actually not happy. They have no purpose in life and all they have left in this world is their money. A happy life does not have to be materialistic. In our usual pursuit of wealth, we must not forget that many simple things in life actually cost nothing. I hope to lead a simple life that is free from money woes, i.e. to achieve financial freedom as early as possible.