I blog for my kids.

Blogging and writing is very hard for me. I don't enjoy the process of writing and editing. It's hard work to think of topics. Mostly of all, I don't have any confidence in my writing. It always feels awkward. So why did I start a blog? Like everything truly meaningful and persistent in life. It's intended as a gift and it's out of love that I started this blog.

I remember very clear why I wanted to start a blog. I started blogging back in 12/27/2007. My wife and I were talking about how to teach our son, who was just a toddler, about money and responsibility (never too early too start.). Especially after the mega rush of all the presents he received, we felt this is a very important topic and one of our core family values is to be responsible about finances. I felt a rush of excitement and energy. I had so many ideas that I wanted to share, so many decisions that I have made over the years, some I liked, some I regretted, but all I learned from. Obviously, it was impossible for a toddler could fully understand all the idea and decision process that I hoped to teach. My wife suggested that I start a blog, and I felt that eureka moment when the light bulb just turned on in my head. I even had the vision of the perfect title. 

Over the years, whenever there was a learning moment with my kids, but I was unable to provide a well thought answer on the spot or the answer deserved greater depth of discussion beyond the understanding by young children, I used this blog as a mean to better organize and articulate my thoughts. I remember one of the most important whiteboard conversation of my life. I received my job offer from Microsoft, and I couldn't believe how much I would be making in one year. If you know Microsoft back in the day, their salary for new college grads were bad. It just goes to show how naive I was. It was my friend that set me straight about cost of living, retirement planning, savings rate, etc. It was a quick 15 minutes conversation, but it set the ground rules for my personal financial  planning. My main regret was the talk came from my friend instead of my father. Now, I want to a different kind of father to my kids. 

While working on our family will, I very consciously realized that I wouldn't be around forever, and certainly not with the same mental acuity as I do now. It would be best if I continue to wrote blog entries so my kids can understand the context and the rational of our decisions and the results we hoped to achieve. It's my hope that when they grow up and have kids of their own, they would read these entries and realize that we were human. We made decisions with much thought and love, but plenty of mistakes were made too. And, just in case, if 18 years of asian tiger parenting drove them crazy and they stop talking to me, at least, they would still read the blog and read about the values that shaped me and I tried to pass to them.

Looking back at my very first blog entry about the meaning of the title. This blog is a dialog of my decisions between my present self to future self AND TO MY KIDS.