(Written by Demos Kyprianou, posted by Sebastien Aguilar)
It's been another great turnout! In this presentation, Demos spoke about how money is a means to an end and provided a framework to help people decide on how to use it to achieve life goals. Demos encouraged the audience to think about what they wanted from life, what money symbolized for them, and what made people happy.
He also shared the latest research around happiness, showing the limits of how much happiness money can buy. After covering one’s basic needs and buying a few luxuries, the effect of money on happiness plateaus and other things like spending time with family/ friends, seeking a purpose etc begin to take over.
He also delved into the issue of insurance as expats and which types could be considered. He highlighted how insuring yourself is perhaps the most important step to clipping one’s downside. After that, he spoke about investing and how following the Bogleheads® approach could yield sizeable returns with minimal effort. He gave examples of how a simple excel sheet could be set up to monitor one’s returns. Additional details also included what banking jurisdictions one could consider and a checklist that could be used to select ETFs to match one’s investment objective.
Overall, it was a very interactive presentation with lots of questions and self-reflection to help align one’s happiness, security and financials for a better quality of life.