Personal Finance and Investment Thoughts. All posts are personal opinions and thoughts.
The Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) of Malaysia has long been criticised for offering a one sized fits all retirement savings solution for all Malaysians. It has only one fund for all its contributors aged from the 20s to 50s. Everyone gets the same return every year. Ideally, younger contributors should be able to put their… Continue reading Avoid the Private Retirement Schemes (PRS) Funds
Aiya! Easier said than done you might say. But, you have to start somewhere right? Having a positive mindset is a good place to start. Then the trick is to keep going until saving becomes a habit. Push your savings to work for you by investing it. Better still, find a way to automate everything,… Continue reading It Is Always Possible To Save
The next two layers of the 'asset allocation model' concerns buying and holding individual stocks as part of your strategy to growth your wealth. The risks involved are much higher and concentrated at these levels, so it would be best to only start allocating money to this level, once you have appropriately mastered and allocated… Continue reading Should You Pick Stocks?
Stocks investment strikes fear in many people because there are so many news of people getting burnt. These are people who have invested their life savings into 'sure wins' only to watch in panic when stock prices suddenly tank due to a variety of reasons. Some of them then vowed, 'once bitten, twice shy', and… Continue reading Getting Into Stocks Investing
This is the fifth post in a series of posts that talk about building up your personal finances. If you have followed the series you would learn how much to keep in your day to day savings account, why you need an emergency fund, why you should seriously consider buying a house as a home… Continue reading Expanding Your Nett Worth
This is going to be a simple post because the idea is pretty straight forward. We may all retire some day. Some aspire to do it as soon as possible (such as those in the the FIRE movement), while others choose to delay it as long as possible since there's pretty much nothing else productive… Continue reading Building The Foundation Of Your Retirement Savings
From the perspective of investments, properties have plenty of undesirable traits. It's expensive and typically you will be unable to buy it outright - you pay part of it as downpayment and then borrow the remainder from a bank. When Buying, Set Aside More Than The Downpayment The downpayment can be quite substantial - usually 20% of the purchase price… Continue reading Why You Should Consider Buying A House
On Christmas eve, the S&P 500 lost 2%. By itself it would have been an uncommon event, if weren't for the fact that year-to-date, it would be down by over 12%. It is also almost 20% down from its peak in September. Everyone was wondering if Santa has neglected the stock market investors this year.… Continue reading Long Term Trend of the S&P 500
Assuming that my 23 year old self had followed a disciplined approach to balance my income and expenses, at 25 years old I should be well into building my emergency savings. Once I have accumulated an emergency savings worth 6 months of expenses, my savings should now go into riskier investments. There will be things… Continue reading Financial Advice For My 25 Year Old Self
My first job as a telecommunications engineer paid about MYR2,300 (~USD600) a month. That's pretty reasonable for an entry level job in Malaysia but boy sometimes it seemed that I could never make any headway with my savings. If only I knew then what I know now about managing personal finances. I didn't really keep… Continue reading Financial Advice For My 23 Year Old Self
The Finance Durian 