9/20/2012
Living for the moment or living for the future?
The Americans are best in living for the moment, spend now, with future earnings and be happy. Sinkies are told to save and save and save for the future. Have a lot of money in the savings and never mind if today got no food to eat, or no money to pay the medical bills. Tomorrow, the future, is more important than now, the moment.
And the govt is more or less guaranteeing that the futures of our children will be a pot of gold. Their savings will definitely be enough for retirement. I am not so confident about that even if I set aside 50% of my income, to think that the real value of money will still be there in the future and the money would not be worthless. I am no God.
But it is good advice, prudent, to keep saving for the bright future. But I rather be one that is collecting millions today and spending like a dude now and living life like in paradise. Who cares about the future when tomorrow is also not guaranteed? Who is sure that he will wake up tomorrow morning? But one thing I think I can guarantee, the price of HDB flats will continue to up and up till the lease expires.
I thought saving for the future is with spare cash available and not by forgoing one meal and to go hungry now so as to have some to live on in the future.
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6 comments:
Being prudent in Singapore is stupid. Those who have kept the bulk of their savings in the banks are being killed by the pathetic interest rate and the high inflation.
If you were saving to take a smaller loan to purchase your home, you would have been devastated. It would have been better to be reckless and purchase a property beyong your means. This is the value our meritocratic society teaches us. Pity the future generation here!
It has got nothing to do with here or there. Everywhere is the same. If you need to blame someone, then blame the USA for keeping interest rates so low.
I had always this belief that saving for the future was prudent, but has since ceased to believe in this argument and found it ironically stupid, indeed.
When money saved becomes smaller by the day, it is painful for those earning little who tried to save and later found their savings whittled away by the big banks paying pathetic interest. I now believe it is better to spend and die a pauper rather than trying to save and end up still being made a pauper.
For once, I think the Americans are smart, not stupid as what some people seem to think, by spending other people's money and probably not having to pay them back, or paying them back in banana notes in time to come.
I agree. Then why is our govt asking the poor and average Sinkies to save and save? Is it wisdom or stupidity or something else?
No one can predict the future except that it will arrive sooner than later, and it will bring surprises with it.
The American way (so-called) is (supposedly) seeped in individualism -- individuals decide how they should pursue their happiness, and that is expressed collectively. What is needed for the future is actually made today by collective decision made by individual thoughts, ideas and discussion/arguments.
Singapore is different: it is CENTRALLY PLANNED - i.e. "government knows best", and individuals (aka "lesser mortals who don't know any better") have to yield to the central planners.
So far it has seemed to work. However in this system you won't find a "critical mass" of risk takers, wildly creative minds, iconoclastic rule-breakers. Instead what you get is passive arseholes who think they know but are totally ignorant, and require the government to wipe their backsides from cradle to grave -- and have to PAY DEARLY for this "government HELP".
Got freedom?
If the people do not save, how is the government going to get paid for all the services and goods they sell to the people?
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