Thursday 16 October 2014

Reflections after one year of marriage

We celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary.

Every time I think about our wedding day, and now, our anniversary, I always tell myself that this time, it’s going to be different; different in the sense that I am actually going to remember this day in the years to come. I am even going to go to lengths to celebrate it. Damn, if there is one thing that I can be good at in this life, then this would be it: remembering our wedding anniversary. So far, my success rate is 100%. Ask me again next year to see if the number stays the same.

Throughout our dating life, I have a terrible history of remembering our dating anniversary. This would make for a funny story if not for the fact that the said date is actually in my diary and every single year, without fail, I make a promise to myself to remember it. So far, the success rate is big fat zero. The only consolation I take is that my other half forgets it too, so every year, it’s like this is why we are still together (and this is also one of the very many reasons why we are still married).

That was until I discover that apparently remembering anniversaries is a task for the females of the relationship. So, if the male forgets, it’s okay, because, you know, male. But females, well. I swear sometimes I am not a female. That came out wrong. Gah.

What's more relevant (and perhaps, also important) is that there is always room for improvement. While this is perhaps a little too early for me to say, the secret to remembering anniversaries – easy: pick an easy date to remember. This is why our wedding anniversary is infinitely easier to remember as supposed to our dating anniversary. As I have always said, when you have the option to set up something for yourself, design it well. Choose a good date for your wedding. It will save you a lifetime of headache and guilt. (The irony of this whole situation is that we didn’t exactly choose our wedding date – it was chosen for us in accordance with the alignment of the moon and the stars, and in the process we got lucky that it happened to be an easy date to remember. This is a sign that some things in life are just a meant-to-be.)

I started writing this post wanting to write about love, because well, that’s what weddings are all about, if you strip off the flowers, the cake and everything else. It is a celebration of love. I also discovered that it is difficult to write about love – it is simple yet complex at the same time, it is liberating and constricting all at once. The intensity of this emotion is very difficult to distill into words. Or maybe, I just don’t know enough words or how to string them together.

Sometime during the course of our first year of marriage, I managed to convince my other half that it was worthwhile doing the language of love test, if only as a confirmation of what I thought his language of love was. And being newlyweds, of course it was easy to convince him that this was something that would make me happy (ha!).  Not that I didn’t get any resistance, mind you, because that test was (and maybe still is) somewhat rather repetitive and whilst he was doing it, I got a few threats of quitting. The validation I got was not limited to the confirmation of what his language of love was, it was, more importantly, his gesture of doing things that I asked, that I deemed important, even when he hardly saw any value in doing so. Oh, and of course, never quit, guys, even when the task at hand is seemingly so pointless to you. It may mean the world to someone else. What’s a few minutes of your time in exchange for a lifetime of happiness? Do I hear fantastic investment? Amen. (We love cheese.)

When we got married, we made a promise to each other that we would love each other forever. There were other words that were spoken, but essentially, that’s what it is. The key word is forever. To promise to love someone forever is a really big deal, at least in my life. I have never even promised my parents that I would love them forever (sorry Dad, Mom).  And besides, in all honesty, these days, I don’t promise anyone anything anymore, and I never asked for their promises in return. I think promises, just like honesty, are expensive; I am not sure I can afford them.

Because as I got older, the more I realise that keeping a promise is never easy. Even with the best of intentions, shit happens and when you fail to keep your promise, the trust withdrawal can be oh so crippling. I should know because, well, you know, life. So I make a rule for myself that I would only make promises I know I can keep primarily to keep myself happy. Girl has priorities, okay.

A promise to love someone sounds very arbitrary at best. Sometimes, you think you are loving this person so much until it hurts your bones, but that person do not feel the same way, and then, you’re pretty much fucked. Sometimes, you think you are doing so much in an effort to love this person, and instead of making this person feel special and loved, you end up pushing him/her away. Unintentionally, of course, but it happens.

Perhaps, the promise should read: I promise to love you the way you want to be loved.  But this is assuming that that person knows what sort of love he/she wants. That’s the easy bit What if this changes overtime? What are you going to do about your promise to love them forever?

Truth is that, it is rare for anyone to be able to work out what anyone else wants in the long-term sense, because, obviously, people change. Everything (and everyone) is constantly temporary. I want you to love me this way today: by eating fried chicken with me. Tomorrow, I want you to love me this way: by eating anything other than fried chicken with me so that my arteries are not clogged before I turn 34.

Just because you are married does not mean you’ve got this whole love thing all worked out. In fact, quite the opposite – you discover that this is so big and so deep it is actually beyond your comprehension (if you’re willing to admit it). How the fuck do you get a grasp on something that is so infinitely incomprehensible? Where the fuck do you start?

This whole love thing is overwhelmingly … overwhelming.

At its most basic level, I am thankful that despite all the privileges of our lives, we take pleasure in the small and simple pleasures. We don’t strive to be happy all the time, but we strive to be happy about the lives that we live.  We take time to appreciate each other, even when we constantly forget anniversaries. We don’t wait for big moments. We don’t strive to create big moments. Our small moments become one big moment. The things that we do for each other every single day are the ones that bring color into the big picture.  

I obviously don’t have this whole love thing figured out, but it doesn’t stop me from loving you.
Happy anniversary, le husb. I love you way more than fried chicken. And pork belly.

Sunday 5 October 2014

On home ownership

One of the things that have been discussed ad nauseam lately is the renting versus buying your home. You all know the drill: option one is to save for that downpayment of your home and then spend the next twenty or thirty years paying the mortgage, while enjoying this thing called home ownership. Option two is to rent your home and invest your excess cash into some form of investment (most likely tied to the stock market) and then hope that by the end of the thirty years, you would have benefitted from the arrangement one way or the other.

No, I am not going to do the numbers, or present them here for you. This is because these sort of comparative analyses often depend on the assumptions behind the model and if you are really clever, you can spin it whichever way you want to. This is not to say that these models are useless; rather, we must be critical of the information that's presented to us. Do not blindly believe everything you see. Question those assumptions, change them, see if the analysis still makes sense. You can forecast into the future however you want to, with varying degrees of conservativeness, and guess what - you can never will them to reality. Or maybe you can, when you get lucky.

And from time to time, we do get lucky, and yet when this happens, we think we were so smart to have foreseen this seemingly inevitable reality happening. Actually, no. There are so many things that are beyond our control that just happen to work for us. Of course it helps that we are prepared to seize the opportunity when it first appears. We even strategise on what we would do if and when those opportunities happen.

Getting back to the numbers, I think at the end of the day, they would be pretty much the same, i.e. neither is better than the other, especially when you take into account risks profiles, time horizons, tax concessions, liquidity, time value of money... your NPV in both scenarios are likely to be close together. So really, in my opinion, this is not a decision that one should make based on numbers alone. There a lot of things in life that we do not assess by numbers, so why is it the case that our living arrangement is a decision that we make based on numbers alone? Or at least, a decision that heavily skews towards what the numbers say.

I am going to say this: cash flow wise, depending on where you live, renting is almost always more forgiving towards your bank account than buying. More often than not, you will have less cash outflow as a renter than as a buyer. So if your decision is purely based on cash flow, then this is where you stop considering all the other factors that could be relevant on this issue. And it's ok to make this decision purely based on cash flow alone. I work with money on a daily basis, so I understand where you are coming from.

However, just because you are part of the number-focused party does not mean that everyone else should subscribe to the same school of thought. Because to those who can afford it, the intangible benefits of owning your own home is something that money can't buy - the fact that they can buy it with money is part of the intangible benefits so to speak.

From this perspective, it is somewhat irrational, particularly if you think that having numbers to back you up rationalise your perspective. However, just because they are seemingly irrational does not mean they are useless. I am talking about things like the trade off between stability v flexibility, high maintenance (and its associated freedom to do whatever you fucking want) vs low maintenance (and the hassle of obtaining permission to do the smallest things), and things of similar vein. And guess what - a lot of us are actually irrational people who like to rationalise our options and decisions - and using numbers to do this can be very very dangerous.

I belong to the buy-your-home camp. I am currently paying down the mortgage to my apartment. This decision costs me at least $10k more than renting (approximately $1k per month). And no, I don't think about this as an investment; I regard it as simply buying comfort. Yes, I get that you can buy comfort some other way, this is just how I buy my comfort.

That brings me to my next point: make this decision based on the lifestyle that you deem suitable for you, not for someone else. This is perhaps the hardest thing to figure out because while most of us probably know what we want, it takes quite a lot of guts to (1) admit it and (2) make sure that your actions actually align with it. Plus there is the fear factor - the fear of making the wrong decision, especially on something so... big.

Look, if it works for you, it works for you. If it doesn't, then you need to change it. Of course it always helps to have a buffer. As I have always said, one of the ways you can prepare for life is with a strong budget. The interest rate can raise two times its current rate, and you can ride it through with your budget. Seriously, it's not that hard. It just requires you to live within your means.