Humanity, time and money

Macro:

Trade war intensifies as the US added Huawei to a blacklist that restricts its ability to procure components from US companies, as well as its ability to sell to the US and its strategic allies. The tech cold war has begun.

Micro:

What imbues mankind with our humanity is our concept of time.

A past, a present and a future. The English language, the dominant lingua franca, is rooted in the concept of past, present and future. The past occupies our consciousness as our memories, the present is where we live at this very moment, while the future is what we direct our plans towards.

For accountants, our lives revolve around the measurement of numbers over a scope of time.

How do assets depreciate over time? How do cash flows materialise over time? How should certain figures be projected into the future? What is the cut-off point for revenue recognition? Has an entity, based on its past records as accumulated in its retained earnings, evinced an ability to subsist as a going concern?

Mathematics is so cold. Mathematics don't lie. And to borrow the lyrics from Shirley Bassey's famous song, Mathematics won't leave in the night and we've no fear that they might desert us.

The irony is that while our concept of time confirms our humanity, so does our irrationality towards time. Exactly because to err is human.

The mismanagement of personal finance is nothing but an error made when cash flows are matched against time.

We should all approach personal finances with a cold-hearted view, structure it as a business and manage it with a cynical and calculative hand. By doing so, it would unshackle us from the many miserable, petty and ultimately meaningless struggles that we put ourselves through.

Are we not happy at a job or an occupation? Gain perspective that by staying on for X years, we would save $Y from the stint that would buy ourselves our freedom. During that X years, as we mark the days counting down to freedom, the moping and whining naturally subside. When the end is in sight, what happens on the journey can be shaken off instead of being taken personally. We attain true self mastery when we consciously serve Company Personal Finance and refuse to be held emotionally hostage by a work situation that is less than pleasant.

I find that those who are extremely focused on numbers are effective people. What gets measured gets done. Numbers don't lie to us in the way that emotions do. When numbers become an all-consuming focus, extraneous concerns burn away and fall by the wayside.

Yet, extremely calculative people are often not joyful. There is something unattractive about them. They are inward looking, selfish and sometimes even lack optimism and hopefulness. Some of them fear to dream, to think big, to exercise creativity and imagination.

Running Company Personal Finance should be tempered with joyfulness. Joyfulness stems from a worldview of gratefulness, which should always entail giving back to the stakeholders in our lives.

Who are the stakeholders in our lives? Have we defined who they are? Are we ready to pay them the dues of gratitude? How much are we ready to give?

This is a profound question which demands soul searching. It deserves soul-searching.


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