I’m Steve Kim
I am a corporate banker, married to a lovely pianist wife and we have a superhero teenage son.
I grew up in the US, but have been living in Korea for about 10 years. Fully enjoying the food, the culture and all that Korea has to offer.
I Am An Adventurer turned executive
16Personalities.com tells me I am sometimes ISFP (Adventurer) and sometimes ESTJ (Executive). I think maybe it depends on the time of the day.
During the evening, I am an ISFP, enjoying music and spontaneity. During the day, however, I turn into an ESTJ, an executive with a mission and a to-do list.
Now I understand how I was able to stay in my corporate job for all these years.
As A Corporate Banker
I have been helping my corporate clients manage their finances. But ironically, I have not been helping myself manage my own finances.
Like many people, I have been just focusing on my 9-to-5, trying to climb the corporate ladder. I thought that if I just keep working hard, if I just get that next big deal or that next promotion, life will eventually all come together.
I didn’t think too much about what would happen at the end of my career. And I certainly didn’t think about how short life really was. My head was deep in the sand.
Story Of My life…
Below is my life in 6 phases. I like categorizing stuff… should have been a librarian.
Born in Seoul, Korea, into a normal middle class family. Not wealthy but not struggling either. Mother was a religious, warm, loving woman who was like the tree from “The Giving Tree”. Father was a cautious, modest corporate 9-to-5 guy who worked hard for a large corporation all of his life. I guess I don’t have to go far to see where I got my corporate 9-to-5 influence from.
My parents went through a lot of turmoil – For example, they went through the Korean War in 1950, they then lived through decades of political unrest in the 60s and series of violent demonstrations and coups in the 70s, and then there was the Asian Financial Crisis in the 90’s. Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world.
So, against that backdrop, it is easy to see why my parents and most people from that post war generation had the scarcity mindset. Let’s just say, stashing cash under the mattress was not uncommon.
Naturally, this was the teaching I received.
Being a middle child out of 3 boys, I may have suffered a slight case of middle-child-syndrome but otherwise a normal childhood… We moved to the US when I was 10-years old. Experienced a mild culture shock from seeing things like red-haired clowns at McDonalds (glad McDonalds got rid of that creepy clown).
Watching the after-school Looney Toons, constantly interrupted by loonier commercials, I instantly assimilated into the star-spangled American consumerism.
Buying stuff was the cure for everything. Being able to spend big was a sign of success. And I grew up with the American dream of “buy now, buy more”.
Then, puberty came at the tail end of the 80s. Like everyone else back in the day, learned about the birds and the bees through poorly dubbed VHS tapes.
For those not familiar with generation X – you may be wondering what life was like in the 80’s? Well, there was no google, no Youtube, no Facebook. Blogging wasn’t even a word. Apple was a struggling company serving a niche market. No iPhones. People listened to music through this big apparatus called CD players (actually, in the 80’s there was an even older technology called cassette tapes – remember Sony Walkman?).
When the internet first came into the world (in the late 90s), it came through a telephone line. 56Kbps download speed. It was a little better than watching paint dry.
Back then, no one imagined that people would be doing YouTube and Instagram through mobile phones. Anyway, without YouTube and Instagram, we still grew up happy, dumb and fat with MTV, Friends, and Pop-tarts.
Big shout out to Gen X. 🤜
My 20s and 30s were a constant chase. As soon as I graduated, I got a job at a consulting company and traveled non-stop for like 5 years. It was tiring but exciting. We were the foot soldiers changing the business world through technology.
That’s right, I spent hours changing font colors on PowerPoint.
Then, in my late 20s, I dabbled with entrepreneurship. Embarked on a start-up with a couple of colleagues from the consulting company, thinking that we can do better than our employers did. 🙂
Naïveté at its finest.
We were somewhat successful in the beginning but never were able to make the business scale up. Also, there was an unspoken but strong pressure to live a more “presentable” life (you know, like working at a reputable institution instead of doing something that no one heard of). Eventually, we decided to close shop and go back to the corporate world.
Since I had a finance degree and I was always drawn to things involving money, I clawed myself through the doors of JPMorgan in New York.
But, life has a funny way to keep you on your toes. Just when I was ready to comfortably settle down with a house in the suburbs and a job in Wall Street, the entire financial sector collapsed. This was back in 2008. Due to the subprime mortgage debacle, Financial institutions were falling left and right. Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns literally vanished overnight. Citi and many other large Financial Institutions were at the brink of extinction. JPMorgan was one of the stronger financial institutions with their “fortress balance sheet” and somehow managed to come out the other side unscathed. But, still there was a lot of chaos and panic everywhere. And the mood was not good.
So, In the midst of all this, I left New York to go work in Asia (Singapore). By the grace of God, I found an internal opportunity with JPMorgan Singapore. I was glad to go away from NY, the epicenter of disaster, into the warm, inviting bosom of Singapore.
My 20s and 30s have been a constant rat race. I think this is probably the same for most people. As soon as you graduate from college, you gotta get a decent job. Once you get a job, you need to get a promotion. Then, after your promotion, you need to go back to school for a masters degree… while all this is going on, you also need to get married, have a child, get a car with a baby-seat… Forget saving and investing, I was lucky to not be in debt.
One day I woke up – and suddenly I was 40.
I am still going through this middle adulthood phase. A more proper term would be the mid-life crisis phase.
After a few years in Singapore my employer thought I would be useful in Korea because I was, oh wait, oh-my-god, Korean American! So, they moved me to Korea.
Living in Korea after not-having-lived-in-Korea for so many years (almost 30 years) was a… reverse culture shock. The culture of let’s-drink-all-night-long was shocking, but, more shocking was the culture of not-holding-the-door-for-others. I struggled at first and kept holding doors open for people coming behind me. Eventually, I assimilated and I started to let the doors just slam on people’s faces.
Sarcasm aside, coming back to Korea was good because I was now able to see my parents and get closer to my roots. Other than that I was consumed by life. I had a job, was married, had a child, had my parents nearby… and just really busy keeping up with the joneses.
Needless to say, retirement was not really on my mind. I did not think much about investing and building up my net worth. I was too busy working and chasing the next big thing. And since I was constantly moving, I didn’t think to buy a house. Just kept renting, my money fully exposed to inflation. And kept spending without thinking.
Because… why not? I was comfortable. Life was good. And good times was going to continue to roll.
Right?
The rollercoaster came crashing down. Winter of 2018, I had to abruptly say goodbye to my mother who died from an aggressive cancer. I sure wasn’t ready for that… it was way. too. early.
Sudden loss of my mother was a big wake up call for me and brought the phrase “Life is short” to a whole new level.
Then, couple of years after my mother’s passing, another brutal wake up call came when I was on a family vacation.
I was in the pool swimming and playing with my son, then suddenly I started to have difficulty breathing. I noticed my heart started to beat irregularly. It was an extremely uncomfortable feeling. No matter how quickly or how deeply I breathed, I was just not able to get enough air.
I dragged myself out of the pool but my condition kept getting worse. I felt tightness in my chest… Like things were caving in. I laid on the ground, shaking, sweating; panicking. I thought this must be it.
One of the life guards rushed to me and asked if I was ok. His voice sounded far and muffled as the irregular beating from my heart drowned all external sounds. I felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience; I almost saw myself lying on the side of the pool. The fear I felt at that time was real. Very real. And is still vivid. Like, I can still taste it.
In the midst of all this, what passed my mind were just 2 things:
- Whether my family was going to be ok financially and
- Whether I truly lived my life to the fullest.
Thankfully, I didn’t die. But my favorite excuse of “someday” did.
Today
Fast fwd to today. Today is my 50th birthday! 🥳
Literally, I am celebrating my 50th birthday and simultaneously giving birth to a new, digital me in the form of a blog.
Since my last wake up call, I made several changes. One of them was starting this blog.
This blog is about achieving financial independence. But, achieving financial independence is more than just about money. It is about finding the freedom to do what you want to do with life; finding your purpose and having the time to live it on your own terms.
To some, 50 may be too late. But, as George Eliot said:
It’s never too late to be what you might have been.
I hope this blog helps me. I will record my progress (successes and failures) and push myself to keep going. I hope this blog can help others and I hope to meet good friends along the way. And lastly, I hope this blog can help my son someday, when he is ready… hopefully soon.
If any of this resonates with you, I invite you to join me.
Stop waiting for your life to happen. Live your best life now.
Let’s achieve financial independence.
Steve Kim