Ep.62- If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Bus Will Take You There.

Read Time: 3 Minutes.

I recently learned this quote "If you don' know where you are going, any bus will take you there" from a colleague of mine at work. I thought it was very well put, as it pretty much summarized my life in 2017, where I spent a whole year asking myself where I was going. 

Here I want to share my thoughts stemmed from this quote in the context of personal finance and savings.

WHAT ARE YOU SAVING FOR? 

The #1 question I have been asked, since starting the blog, is "how can I save more?"   I used to selflessly share everything I knew with everyone in terms of tactically achieving more savings.  Soon I realized very few people actually followed my advice. With a bit self-reflection and a bit probing, I realized the missing piece is entirely because people did not know "where they were going", even if they had more money. In other words, they wanted to save more, because they thought it was the right thing to do, according to the society, not their own hearts. 

Why is important to know what you are saving towards? My personal belief is that, if you don't have a savings goal, FOMO will destroy you. Yes!!! FOMO, fear of missing out. 

WATCH OUT FOR "FOMO" 

I am not joking. When one does not have a clear mission, life is too tempting for anyone to stay focused. For example, everyday we are bombarded with all the awesome things other people do through personal interactions, or Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. It makes us want it too, regardless if we can afford to or not. 

FOMO is not only a negative force on personal finance, but also on our society. In my view, FOMO essentially caused the bank run in the 1930s, because everyone was fearful of being the last one to take his/her money out. Again, FOMO caused the financial crisis in 2008, where FOMO drove everyone to buy a house.  Late 2017, FOMO again drove the price of Bitcoin up, because no one wanted to be the fool that's left out of easy money.

A CLEAR SAVINGS GOAL HELPS KEEP FOMO AWAY

If anyone asks me "how to save more money" again, I would ask if he/she knows what he/she wants to do with the savings. It does not matter to me, whether one wants save in order to move out of parents' house, or for a electric scooter, or a dream house. As long as one has a clear answer to the question, I am more than willing to share everything I know to help him/her get there. If not, all the advice in the world won't help one save. It's just too hard.

I publish a new story every Friday, subscribe on Medium.