Last week on Saturday, I presented a topic on accumulating wealth for your future to a small group of people at an event organised by a group of young working adults who have the heart to reach out to young people to increase financial literacy. There were 3 speakers and each of us presented for 30 minutes followed by a forum where the audience could ask us questions.
This picture was taken just before I went up to the hot seat:
Even though I've been writing on financial stuff for the past 2 years, giving a talk on finance is still my first time experience. I would never have thought that one day I would stand up on stage to inspire people on the importance of financial planning.
The main gist of my speech is to change our mindset towards money. I said that if we can get money out of our lives, we would be able to pursue the more important things in life. Many people are just too burdened by money problems where they cannot pursue their real life purpose.
I shared a video which showed that kids will always smile when asked what they want to do for their future while adults feel stress when they think about their future. Kids would say their dream is to help others while adults will aim for money, status and material possessions.
Have money also must have time, have money also must have health, have money also must be happy. These were the thoughts I implanted to the audience last week. If we pursue money and end up sacrificing too much of our time, our health and our happiness for it, then it doesn't make sense at all.
So what's the strategy to have both money and time? The answer: "financial independence or freedom". The way to gain financial independence or freedom is through creating passive income. When we can live on our passive income, we are said to have achieved financial independence. Even when we are not at the financial independence stage yet, having passive income still allows us to have a little more freedom in life. It helps to lessen our burden in life. I shared on my journey in creating passive income and how it is possible to do it.
Lastly, I shared on 3 simple ways to create passive income. I've actually wrote quite a few articles on passive income on my blog before so its really nothing new for readers who've been following my blog.
What are the 3 simple steps?
1. Start saving up to buy assetsWe always need to start with saving money. I spoke about auto transferring your money to another bank account. I've listed down the steps to set up an auto fund transfer. You can read it in this post: Readers' Challenge - Cutting Down Your Expenses in 2015 To Save 50% of Your Money
2. Learn how to create passive income
Passive income can come from different sources. I shared 5 of the more common sources where passive income can come from. They are: "properties, stocks, bonds, intellectual property and business".
3. Start as early as possibleCompound interest is powerful. Albert Einstein describes compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world. Learn more about compound interest in this post: The benefits of investing when you're young
Overall, it was a good experience speaking for the first time on finance. Thanks for those who came up to me after my talk and gave me encouraging words. Securities Investment Association of Singapore (SIAS) was there too and they kindly invited me to speak for a youth event which they would be having later part of this year. I guess this won't be the end of my speaking engagement now...
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