What is more important than Personal Finance?

Although this website is about personal finance, and that I pedal that understanding personal finance is one of the most important things in life – it is not everything.

Mastering personal finance can be a key component to less stress, happier outcomes and ticking off future aspirations (see section on  Foundation and Mindset) – however it is my personal opinion that fulfilment of one’s life needs to have balance with other core pillars.

#1: Health

Both your physical and mental health are paramount – without them, you could have saved all the money in the world, picked all the right investments, won the lottery – but with diminished health you will shoot down your ability to keep earning, keep spending and keep enjoying this money.
I keep things simple when it comes to my health – have a mix of cardio and weight lifting routinely, eat healthily – loosely follow the mediterranean diet and get consistent great sleep.

#2: Time and Freedom

I preach so much about earning, saving and investing. The average life expectancy nowadays hovers at 80 years of age, and if I take my earning, saving and investing mindset too seriously, I could work till the day I drop and have achieved all the financial goals I wanted. I could work 6 days a week instead of 5, or pick up another job on weekends and work 7 days a week – this will fulfil my earning and saving to the maximum – but will this make me happy?

For some it might, we might be born with a working mindset and have to constantly be at work to find happiness but for the majority of us, we value our own time and earn, save and invest to achieve some level of freedom in the future.
Understanding our personal finances means we can have the autonomy to choose the things we want to do, and say no to the things we don’t have to do anymore.

#3: Relationships and Love

Deep meaningful connections in life are super important. Our brain development and longevity relies on communication and connections with others – with research showing now that social isolation increase risk of dementia by 27% and low social network was associated with about 59% higher risk of dementia. Although these statistics are correlations and don’t show that social isolation causes dementia – it’s a significant risk factor that overlaps with others like physical inactivity, depression and cardiovascular health. `
Although I am very passionate about personal finance, I have found as I’ve aged – finding happiness in other aspects of life through relationship, love and planning for a family future. At some point in my life I was transfixed on saving and working that I was happy to forgo the above. On reflection, this did not feel healthy.