Dear readers, if you have been keenly following SG Stocks Investing, you would have read that amidst the festive season, I have been musing, reviewing about Year 2024 that is about to close. I have also started to prepare for a brand-new Year 2025 ahead.
One of the most important things in recent days that I have done to prepare for a new year ahead is to housekeep and spring clean my house. While spring cleaning earlier is only good for Chinese New Year, I believe doing so now is only useful and important. This is due to the fact that we must let go of what is not required in our lives before we can welcome the new and better things in life in 2025,
Hence, as I pored through my items dug up during the housekeeping and spring cleaning, I have no hesitation to tear up documents like my original 1st employment letter and just let go. Other documents which I let go were corporate letters that indicated I was member of the company’s this committee and that committee. While these documents are definitely of nostalgic value being around 20 years of documentary age, they no longer serve me and it is time to let go. I also think forward and do not want to trouble my children to sieve through the things I leave behind to suss out what is important or not when it is time for me to leave the world.
Of course, I do practise discretion as not all old documents and items were destined for the refuse bin. I still kept my academic record books and school year books from my Primary School, Secondary School, Junior College and University days. I am proud of my academic records having scored mostly As throughout my schooling days without tuition. But even for this (good academic records), I have since let go long time ago as I entered into the corporate rat race where Success is not just about how well one did in school decades ago but also due to a combination of other factors.
I earlier mentioned briefly about not wanting to trouble my kids with the things I leave behind when I leave the world. And one of the things I did too during housekeeping was to review and document details of my insurances and other financial stuff and to tell my family of this document (before it is too late). This is only forward looking. In the event something untoward happen to me, I will want my family to know just exactly of what the insurance and finance-related arrangements are.
It has also been an opportunity and joy to share my thinking with readers on SG Stocks Investing, but when I pass on, I have also requested that this website be similarly ceased. And I just hope that the things you may find useful from my sharing continue to live a legacy in you.
As I continued with my housekeeping, spring cleaning and longer-term planning, I have also commenced on setting goals for next year. With Health as a top priority, I will focus on medical health check up which I have not been attending in decades, so as to detect anomalies while they are still in the stage of possible intervention. I experience, see and hear more and more people falling victim to various forms of cancer and understand the need to get health screening before it is too late. I have a colleague who detected he had early nose cancer during a health screening. He was on few months leave to fight the cancer and today he is healthy and normal as before.
To summarise, if you are like me doing some housekeeping during this festive season, three things to consider are:
Dispose of items that no longer serve you
Plan for the longer-term not just for next year and be prepared for any eventualities
Start planning goals for the coming year 2025, though it may seem cliche but a few goals are better than zero goals.
While I understand many in our community focusing very much on earning a living, the high cost of living, and attempting to strive out a healthy work life balance, it is always good to think about many other aspects of life and living.