My wife and I, together with some friends, just came back from a two-week vacation in Hokkaido and had the opportunity to stay at the Higashiyama Niseko Village, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve. The Ritz-Carlton Reserve is an exclusive tier of luxury boutique resorts by The Ritz-Carlton, offering a more intimate and personalised experience that blends local culture with high-end service. They are usually smaller and more private than typical Ritz-Carlton hotels and are located in rare, secluded destinations.
From the moment we arrived, we were wowed by everything: the attention to detail, the quality of the rooms, the breakfast spread, the care of the staff, and so on. My friends and I kept talking about how excellent the experience had been during the first three days of our five-day stay there.
On the evening of the third day, when the men were having some drinks at the bar, we met a lone gentleman who was also a guest. We started chatting and found out that he had an interesting passion. He loves to travel around the world not to visit the sights, eat the food, or immerse himself in the culture, but simply to stay in different hotels. He spends about 300 nights a year living in hotels (he works remotely) to enjoy the service and amenities.
When we raved about how good the service at The Ritz was, his response shocked us. He said he found the service standards and quality to be lacking. He explained why and started sharing his experiences with what he thought were far superior hotels. His level of knowledge about different hotels and the things he looked for was impressive. After hearing him for what must have been an hour, we bade each other farewell and retired for the night.
The next day, the men’s perspective of the hotel changed. We started finding faults with many things. Finally, my wife could not take it anymore. She told us gently that we should stop griping and that she had been very satisfied with our stay. It was then that we realised how our perception had been coloured by the conversation the night before.
Knowledge Can Rob Us of Joy and Gratitude
We often say that knowledge is power. But if we are not careful, knowledge can also rob us of joy and gratitude because it can make us proud and critical. I remember a time when I attended a concert by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. I was enjoying the performance thoroughly until the intermission, when my friend, who was trained in music, started pointing out the mistakes the musicians had made, which the rest of us did not even notice.
Knowledge can cause us to focus on what’s lacking instead of what’s good. The more we know, the more faults we see, and the less joy we feel. What we once appreciated becomes “not good enough”. We become ungrateful. That was what happened to us that day at The Ritz.
We Often Have Incomplete Knowledge
While we spoke with that gentleman for an hour, what we really understood was only how he assessed the quality of hotels. We knew nothing else about him. Perhaps if we had known more about his background and what he valued, we would have realised that his yardstick of judgement was very different from ours and therefore his opinions might have had no relevance to us at all. Yet that day, we allowed ourselves to be influenced by criteria that did not even apply to our own context.
We Forgot What Mattered Most to Us
For that gentleman, the hotel was the trip. He doesn’t even leave the property to see the sights. He stays in the hotel all the time, so the standards of service and quality are naturally the most important things for him. But for us, the most important things were different: the company of friends, the beauty of Hokkaido, the warmth of the Japanese people, and the delicious food. We had different priorities, and because of that, our standards for what makes a trip meaningful should never have been compared with his.
How This Applies to Money Management
The same thing happens when it comes to money. We read books, attend investment talks, join communities, and the more knowledge we gain, the more confident (or overconfident) and sometimes more critical we become. In my work, I find that the people who are hardest to advise are often those with some financial or investment knowledge. Because they know just enough to be confident, they sometimes become blind to what they don’t know. They dismiss other perspectives, not realising that their knowledge is partial and situational.
Some time back in this same column, I shared about an investor who had gotten decent and sufficient returns from her portfolio to fund her lifestyle. She was happy until she started hearing about how the S&P 500 had given good returns in recent periods and felt frustrated that her portfolio did not mirror the same returns. But what she failed to understand was that her goals, risk tolerance, and life stage were completely different. For her, a globally diversified portfolio gave her a higher probability of achieving her ikigai goals with less stress, even if it didn’t always produce the highest return.
The lesson is simple: we must know what matters most to us. Do we want to maximise returns at all costs, or do we want the highest probability of having enough to live the life that truly matters? When we understand our purpose, we stop comparing and start appreciating.
I am not saying that knowledge is not important. It is. But knowledge by itself is not power. The application of knowledge is. Knowledge gives us information; wisdom tells us how to use it.
So, the next time you learn something new or hear an opinion that sounds more sophisticated, pause and ask:
- Does this apply to my context?
- Am I letting this knowledge build me up or puff me up?
- Is this helping me appreciate life more or enjoy it less?
The gentleman at the bar had great knowledge about hotels, but he could no longer enjoy them. We had far less knowledge, but once we knew why we went to Hokkaido and were grateful for what we have gotten so far, joy returned.
And perhaps this is the deeper money lesson: that it is not about knowing more or having more, but about seeing rightly. When the wealth we have accumulated is enough to enable us to do what truly matters, we don’t have to compare. We can be content and grateful. That, to me, is true money wisdom.
The writer, Christopher Tan, is Chief Executive Officer of Providend Ltd, Southeast Asia’s first fee-only comprehensive wealth advisory firm and author of the book “Money Wisdom: Simple Truths for Financial Wellness“. He is also a Certified Ikigai Tribe Coach.
The edited version of this article was published in The Business Times on 20 October 2025.
For more related resources, check out:
1. How to Make Life Decisions
2. What You Possess Does Not Define You
3. RetireWell™ Epilogue 2: Retirement – It’s About the Kind of Life You Want to Lead
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