Living a Restful, Blessful and Meaningful Life!

In the beginning of 2021, I was invited by mothership.sg to participate in a video interview on the topic of “Discussion among 3 generations: What do Singaporeans think about work and retirement?“. Obviously I was the senior generation among the 3 participants, LOL.

The second topic in the interview was “Retirement should be _______”. My response was just 3 words: Restful, Blessful, Meaningful. We were given some time to ponder and prepare for the topics of discussion before filming the interview. Boy, I was surprised with the speed I came out with these 3 words when I was preparing for this particular topic.

All the 3 words are adjectives I chose to describe my ideal retirement lifestyle, and the words can simply mean full of resting, blessing and meaning respectively. Perhaps it was due to the obvious meanings of the words, that the video edit team chose to just display the words without any further description or explanation.

I wasn’t quite satisfied with just the 3 words. It felt somewhat hollow and I decided to put in more thoughts in search of deeper meaning. Soon I realized that while the words was meant to describe retirement lifestyle, they are equally applicable to life in general. Eventually, I expanded those words into a motto: “Living a Restful, Blessful and Meaningful Life!”

Let me describe the thought process with the 3 words and the motto.

Restful: According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word Restful is an adjective used to describe something that produces a feeling of being calm and relaxed. One thing to take note though, don’t mistaken restful as just laze around doing very little, or even doing nothing. It is about doing things at rest, meaning without stress.

Blessful: I didn’t realize until I searched the word in many conventional dictionaries (e.g. Cambridge, Collins, Longman, Merriam-Webster, Oxford, etc.) that there is no such word. The only entry I found was on definitions.net, where Blessful is defined as a life full of blessing. I could have used “Blessed”, but it would be at odds with the other 2 adjectives in form (i.e. not ending with -ful). I decided to stick to “Blessful” (pardon my wilfulness and stubbornness).

Meaningful: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word Meaningful as an adjective for having a meaning or purpose. This definition might suggest that the synonym for Meaningful is Purposeful, but there is a difference if we delve deeper into the meanings. Meaningful is based on value system (value-driven), and purposeful is based on intention (goal-directed). I chose the former because I deem our value system can last a long while once established, but goal can change over times.

Life: The above 3 words are adjectives meant to describe a noun, which originally would be “Retirement”. Since I realized that the adjectives can equally apply to life in general, it became obvious to pick the noun “Life”.

Living: My wish for the described lifestyle is that it would last continuously for a life time. Hence, I have chosen a present participle form of the verb “Living” to begin the motto.

Adding the article (“a”), the coordinating conjunction (“and”) and the punctuation marks (“,” & “!”) to the above 5 words, the motto “Living a Restful, Blessful and Meaningful Life!” was born.

The life motto can actually apply to the spirit, soul and body in our life, but I would only focus on its application to the personal wealth management aspect of my life in this post.

Restful: As far as my investment is concerned, I’m moving towards a restful approach by leveraging on others to manage my portfolio. Over the years, I have reduced my individual stock holdings and adopted a Core Satellite Portfolio Investing (CSPI) strategy. I constructed portfolios with core holdings in global equity funds and several satellite funds in selected asset classes, themes, regions and sectors. I spent time keeping abreast with trends, performing regular portfolio reviews, adjusting portfolio composition triggered by trend changes, and rebalancing portfolio allocation to the target levels. I leveraged on fund managers and robo-advisors to manage the nitty gritty details in my investment portfolio.

Blessful: I really feel blessful with the current investment environment. There are so many instruments available for investment and trading, such as stock, bond, commodity, CFD (Contract for Difference), ETF (Exchange Traded Fund), unit trust, forex, futures, options, crypto, etc. The cost of investment and trading has gone down tremendously to reasonable levels, e.g. zero cost unit trust platforms, low cost brokerages, low expense ratio funds, etc. The proliferation of financial bloggers, YouTubers and educators has raised the general financial literacy level, and I for one surely benefited from their sharings. I’m blessed to have friends in my circles whom I can tap on their strong knowledge in diverse areas of expertise.

Meaningful: I find it meaningful to get involve with the personal finance communities. I learnt from others who share their views and experiences in response to people seeking advice to their financial situation. Some questions and sharings opened my eyes into areas I had never thought of. I also shared my own views and experiences, and many a time I learnt in the process from others’ responses, comments, feedback, clarification, and further questions. I felt that my effort was worth it when people thanked me for my sharings had helped them. Such appreciation and recognition are precious! Best of all, I grew in my very own financial literacy through it all.

Coincidentally, I just found out that Ohio University had an article on Seven Word Life Motto. It describes a process to develop your life motto in seven words. It is interesting that my ad hoc process just happened to come out with an exactly seven word life motto! Seven is a number of perfection to Christian, and this life motto surely felt like a Godsend to me.