The current financial crisis has jolted many people including myself out of our comfort zone and into the realm of reality on how volatile the environment that we are in is, how at one stage everything is status quo and without warning everything went topsy turvy. After some serious discussion with friends who work in the financial sector, and thinking about the best strategies to survive what the industry is calling “the perfect storm”, I am left with many question on what I need to do and what more could be done.
I have never been one who looks closely at all my investment or even tracked the health of my various stocks and investment purchases. the monthly receipts advice that I receive from my bank or trading house will either meet its way into one of the drawers in my study room waiting for it to be shredded or will meet an early demise of meeting the shredder machine without having to wait any longer. However the recent upheavel in the financial market has made me to be more interested in the report. The first time that I actually opened the letter on purpose, I could not make sense of what is being written in it. It all became clear when I called a friend who explained to me in great detail and patience of what I am seeing. However after the whole conversation that I had with him it made me to realise a few things.
First, I discovered I would need a lot of money ride out this storm – and therefore, I might be in the wrong industry. As much as I love to be in the law industry doing what I am doing, this is certainly not a sector where most of us would define belt-tightening measures as having to sell the Ferrari for an Audi or purchase one Bottega bag a year instead of five. Then again, I possess neither the eloquence nor the hardened conscience to even “mis-sell” White Rabbit sweets to a kid, let alone financial products to clueless retirees. So, I’ll just have to trust my passion for my profession to get me through bad times. And lets face it, I will never be making my first million in my current lifetime doing what I am doing.
Secondly, since I had ascertained I would probably never amass an obscene amount of money which I can swim in – the next best thing to do was to accumulate a wealth of financial knowledge. I devoured whatever information I could get my hands on and also got my financial adviser to explain the finer details to me however that has never augment well with me. I am never one that has the patience of seating through hours of briefing and listening to anything beyond 20 minutes without getting bored easily, but I tried nevertheless. From the several moments of consciousness that I had I realised that judging from the Republican US presidential campaign, I was convinced I did the right thing of getting a friend to explain to me all the details. Because should the economic crisis deepen due to (a) the next US president thinking “the issue of the economy is something that [he] never understood as well as [he] should have” and (b) the next US vice-president thinking she’s able to look out of her window in Alaska and see The Kremlin in Russia, I’ll know how to handle my finances better.
Third, other than enhancing my financial know-how, I realised one would need guts of steel and a cool head to pull through this crisis. But it’s evidently getting tougher, judging by the newspaper reports about people who have lost their minds: the robbers in Malaysia who tried to loot an ATM by setting it alight with a spectacular display of fireworks; the thieves in Jamaica who mysteriously stole 500 truck-loads of sand from a beach resort without anyone noticing; and the US Senator who had his lawsuit against God for causing “widespread death, destruction and terrorisation” thrown out of court. This crunch has clearly taken its toll, and I am determined to not end up as a statistic of those people who sought medical attention at the Institute of Mental Health.
Lastly, other than investing in precious metals (which I clearly cannot afford with a bank balance of less than $10), I figured that buying biscuits – those that come in a tin – seemed the next most logical thing to do. Because unlike the bankers, I think that substituting my daily meals with biscuits sounds like a more realistic belt-tightening measure. Moreover, after I’m done with the biscuits, I’d still be able to recession-proof my money in the tins.
And should my plan work and I survive this economic crisis, all I would have to do to guarantee my continued existence is to make sure I don’t get poisoned by the melamine in those biscuits which contain milk produced in China.
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