There is a sense of wealth in the air of late. Property prices are skyrocketing. En bloc sales are making millionnaires out of ordinary folks in double quick time. The stock market is shooting for the stars. People are receving fatter bonuses and pay rises this year. It is the golden age, after all. The streets of Singapore are paved with gold, it seems. Just one precious square foot of land costs thousands of dollars.
My friend just received a windfall of $2mil for her HUDC flat. She, quite wisely, has stopped working. Yet another colleague sold his apartment last year via an en bloc sale only to find the prices appreciating this year. Needless to say, they are now taking the sales committee to task for not doing their job well and causing them to 'lose' money, money which was not theirs yet.
The stock market is another place where money is to be made. Records are being broken with each passing week as the STI breaches new peaks. Any fool can lay claim to being an investor par excellence. Just throw your money on any counter and it is bound to go up. Throw caution to the wind. Even as I spoke to some of my clients in the office, their hanphones would ring. Equation, Rowsley- buy! Never heard of this companies before. What on earth do they deal with- I ask my clients and they're just as clueless.
Greed, fear, anxiety- these are some of the emotions that drive the stock market. It's all about herd psychology and herd emotions. Materialism, consumerism, self-centredness, hedonisitc pursuits are the spin-offs.
Sometimes one asks what is the meaning of accumulating riches when we all know that these are only temporary and do not last- transient. I work in an area where life and death are in a precarious balance. When the scales are tipped and one's time is up, we can bring nothing along with us. We lose everything.
Wealth is not an end in itself but a means towards an end. It should be used to do good. With our wealth we can show generosity, kindness, humility and love. We use wealth to bring comfort, hope and happiness to those we love and those we may not be acquainted with. We must use wealth and money for the betterment of mankind. As the great John Powell once said, 'Don't love money and use people but love people, use money (things)'.
