Suraya of Ringgit Oh Ringgit recently asked, “Why should I save when the future is so uncertain?”

If there’s anything I learned from the last two years, our futures are up to the mysterious Man in the sky.

We may plan to our hearts’ content, but a doctor’s diagnosis or an autocrat’s ambition can scuttle our plans.

Ukrainians certainly learned that bitter lesson when Russian bombs started raining down on them in February 2022.

Life can turn on you quickly.

And you have no control over it.

So knowing all this, saving and investing during uncertain times is like walking down a dark corridor, your life’s possessions in your hands, and you warily watching for invisible hands that are waiting to grab it from you.

There’s a part of me that wants to say, “F*** it,” quit my job and just spend my days watching Netflix, reading trashy romance novels and drinking artisan coffee.

But there’s another part of me that is telling me: “Hold on. The life you’re building is worth fighting for.”

Money is a poor buffer against fate

“We plan, God laughs.” — Yiddish proverb

For the longest time, I had no confidence in my ability to handle catastrophes. Financial ruin scared me the most. I was quite certain that I’d be a paralysed wreck if I ran out of money*, so I poured my energy into evading any kind of disaster that could threaten my financial security. This mindset also led me to cling too tightly to things that seemingly gave me security, even if it would damage me mentally and physically. (*I grew up absorbing my parents’ anxiety over money, and perhaps this is an echo of their fear. But that’s a story for another day.)

I thought that if I behaved right, planned well enough, I could fortify myself against every disaster coming my way to secure a safe future for myself.

You don’t need to be a genius to realise that this strategy was futile:

1) My attempt to evade future anxiety only caused present anxiety as I tried to swat every problem that came my way.

2) I’m terrible at predicting the future. Despite my great imagination, I could not predict every disaster barrelling towards me.

3) I catastrophise. Events that I thought would end up being apocalyptic turned out to be not so bad or not the end of the world like I thought.

But you are stronger than you think

Speaking of “absolute worst”, in 2020 – 2022 I, along with most of humanity, I lived through disaster after disaster. On a personal level, I faced one of my greatest fears: Little to no income during terrible economic times.

What surprised me was how I reacted to it all.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, I remember being mildly curious and excited that I was going to live through an actual pandemic. As I jostled for food and necessities at a supermarket filled with panicking shoppers, I even thought the whole situation was hilarious. As we had to rush for vaccines, social distance and endured waves of new COVID-19 variants, I took it in stride, mostly annoyed by how inefficiently things were done.

I joined the Great Resignation — just when lockdowns slammed shut the gates of commerce and job prospects. No sane person would say that this was a wise move, yet March to May 2020 was one of the happiest times in my life. I had no steady income or career to speak of, but I felt like the world had infinite possibilities. And the freedom!

All my life I worked so hard to avoid being jobless with no income, and there I was having the time of my life!

The scary fears I held weren’t as scary as I thought. I discovered that I weathered crises with an almost nonchalant, “what to do?”. That surprised the heck out of me. I honestly thought I’d be a blubbering, incoherent mess. (Okay, I was, sometimes, but most of the time I was a-okay.)

But I still have limits.

February 2022. Russia invaded Ukraine, and suddenly the world was talking about global nuclear war.

“For f*** sakes, couldn’t he wait until after the pandemic?” I grumbled as I scrolled Twitter compulsively, worried for the people of Ukraine, and definitely anxious about the prospect of weathering a nuclear winter — on top of major climate change — in my future.

March 2022, and I’m resigned to the fact that humanity is led by greedy asshats and there’s nothing I can do about it.

But I am stronger than I realised. Whatever troubles that come my way, I now know I’ll handle them somehow. I won’t love it, but I’ll handle it. Discovering that I had this core of inner strength was really empowering.

Live the life you don’t want to escape from

I don’t regret the financial sacrifices I made. Being debt-free is amazing. Living frugally gives me joy. Having investments and savings was a big reason why I could weather the economic turbulence of 2020 and 2021 relatively unscathed.

I regret, however, believing that by living poorly today, I can live better tomorrow:

• Living in a noisy, roach-infested apartment because it was cheap.
• Staying in toxic jobs for far too long, only leaving when the mental and physical impacts became too much.
• Not investing because I was afraid of “losing it all”
• Staying silent when disrespected or treated poorly because I was afraid of losing income
• Taking on opportunities that are not right for me, or taking on far too many, because of a scarcity mindset — “I don’t think I’ll get anything better than this”.
• Afraid of taking new career directions for fear of “harming my rice bowl”.

Live your best life today. Live a life you don’t want to escape from. We shouldn’t wait until retirement to do this because there’s just zero guarantees that we’ll even reach retirement age.

I’ve since moved to a reasonably-priced but quieter, roach-free apartment. I’ve learned to value myself as a professional, demanding the salary and treatment that I know I deserve.

Now I judge my life not on the value of my balance sheet, but by reflecting on this: If the world ends tomorrow, would I be happy with the life I’ve built?

If the answer is no, we’ve got some work to do.

Continue to work on achieving financial independence — within reason

That’s what I’m doing now. Saving, investing. Living frugally. No lie, part of the reason why I continue doing this is because I actually enjoy it.

I live frugally to save money, yes, but also to save the planet. I’m super conscious of my impact on the planet, so being a minimalist and not spending more money on stuff that could end up in the landfill brings me joy.

What’s a little thorny right now is investing. With most markets around the globe in turmoil right now, I’m at a loss trying to figure if I should continue pumping money into my always-in-the-red Wahed and Stashaway accounts or look for investments in expensive unit trusts. I’m just robotically automating my investments right now, hoping that it’s going to recover, someday.

I’ll figure it out somehow.