Manage your money NOW!

This i have to write about, as i feel that it is very relevant and applicable to all those who have just started work recently, or even for those who have a fixed amount of income every month(scholarships, PTPTN loans, parents allowance, etc.), or even those who have been having troubles saving money living in a country where pay is low and expenses are high compared to developed countries like the US, according to Soo Hooi, where pay is 3.5 times more but expenses are the same as us here.


Well as an introduction, Soo Hooi's mom came over for the weekend and made dinner for us on Monday night, followed by a brief yet educational sharing on financial planning. For those who think they seem to be only barely surviving to make ends meet, with rent and transportation and food expenses taking up most of your salary, and entertainment expenses are difficult to compromise to maintain a healthy social life. its very interesting to identify what is necessary and unnecessary, and how to make your money last for you and prepare for emergencies. Here's the guideline on how to breakdown your finances. see if you are adhering to it. its a sample of my current budget against the guidelines, which is flexible, depending on how much you value certain things in life. below is the actual amount i spend, and the percentage is based on my current Net salary.


Rent 145 6.53%
Utilities 30 1.35%
Transportation 120 5.41%
Prepaid 100 4.51%
Tithes 251 11.31%
Food 345 15.55%
Parents 500 22.53%
Total Expenditures 1491 67.19%
Savings 500 22.53%
Total liquid balance 228 10.27%


The guidelines are as follows:

1. 60% expenses (rent, food, transport, entertainment, income tax, travelling, shopping, etc)
2. 15% children education(without children then can split between expenses and investment)
3. 15% investment/retirement fund(unit trusts, stock market, ASB, must be 8% return on investment to be worthwhile, usually short term return on investment at 5 years)
4. 10% insurance (36 illnesses, savings)

Before you embark on any investment, you start saving on FD first. you should accumulate 3-6 months expenditure, like me, RM1491*3, to put in FD, just in case i lose my job or unpaid leave then can cover my expenses for 3 months, or more depending on how much you want to put in FD. FD rates are low, and if you withdraw earlier that the stipulated date then you lost the gain from interest. so best if you open a few FD accounts with different maturity deadlines so can minimise the loss since you'll never know when you will need the money.

then insurance is separate from the coverage you have with any company, one example is the plan that covers 36 critical illnesses where if anything happens to you then you get the cash lump sum amount unreceipted, meaning if anything happens to you, once doctor certifies as such, then you get the cash without any questions asked.

insurance can also be used for savings, but not for investment purposes because elsewhere, the ROI is higher.for those who dont know what ROI is, its Return on Investment, simple explanation is for an amount you choose to invest, the amount you will gain from it. as a guideline, any investment is considered profitable and worth pursuing if it gives a return of 8%. meaning for every RM1 you invest, you gain 8% on top of your initial investment. In the insurance case, the guideline is that you opt for the longer duration and larger amount, since the earlier you start on insurance, the more you gain in a sense you pay less in a long time, which is OK because youre paying off the money at a fixed inflation rate. hope it makes sense, that was what i understood and digested throughout the whole session, more information ahead.

Then comes investment, where there are such "instruments" as unit trusts, ASB, Stock market. whatever the investment, depends on how long youre willing to wait. ASB actually doesnt really offer that good rates, because its called Simple interest calculation, since you will need to withdraw all your money and buy again the next time it opens, if im not mistaken, so technically youre only earning between 4-5% keuntungan as opposed to the current inflation rate of 3.5% (if youre getting 9% interest from putting into ASB), when you can gain about 8% on unit trusts or other investments, which is actually not as risky as you think, just that might take longer than usual to get your returns.

So that's about all the information i have for now, which i am compelled to share about as i understand how difficult it is to make ends meet when you're just starting out and we're all officially not supposed to be financially dependent towards our parents already. the goal of financial planning is to be financially independent, which has different meanings as listed below:

1. being able to support yourself without anyone's help
2. being able to manage your expenditures with your earnings regardless of the size of your paycheck.
3. being able to sustain yourself in emergency
4. being able to gain from your investments without putting much effort - goyang kaki dapat duit!
5. being able to live comfortably way past retirement, while providing a comfortable life for your family and dependents.

so yeah i hope that everyone should get started on planning your finances, as it would be easier to manage small amounts( also for those who were lucky to start off with a significantly large paychecks), while taking advantage of our current situation where majority of us are without commitments and we can leverage on the time for our money to grow since we're still so young(my juniors beg to differ on this statement:S) and it also applies for those who are still studying. the earlier you get a headstart and make a habit out of it, the better off you are in being good stewards of God's blessings, which are what we are called to do when we're here. here's all i have to say for now. all the best in planning for your future!

p.s. i just realised that this blog ignores whitespaces no matter how much you tab. i it is because (prepared for some IT indulgence) that HTML ignores whitespaces so even if you put a single word by pressing the "enter" key many times it doesnt come out as you want it to be, you need to include "<""p"">"<""/"p">" to form a paragraph and insert your text into the "p tags" to make it like this:

these are lines of nonsense where i am trying to use to make a point
There's another tag you can use to get the text aligned exactly as how you want it to be but i forgot its name so you need to google and find out yourself.

i had to insert double quotes in the p tags to make it visible else it would not appear on the page. when using them, disregard the quotes.so much for being of help. haha, enjoy!

4,10,20,40

I spent the whole of last week at the Renaissance Kuala Lumpur accompanying Tomi as it was his first week at Schlumberger and they had an orientation course there. It was nice having to walk 10minutes to reach my office. sheer bliss i tell you. and there was an olympic sized pool that i managed to explore, and the title of this blog signifies the number of laps that i managed to swim each time i was at the pool. with the last day i was there, having an actual holiday on my own. it was Saturday when i replaced Tomi to go for breakfast at the restaurant. And he had his international driving test to attend.

Then i rushed to Taman Bahagia via LRT from Dang Wangi, which was a 5 minutes walk from the hotel, to meet Grace and show her the new house that we moved in on Oct 1st with Soo Hooi, Ling, Thana and a boy named Ralph who's studying in KDU who's sister was the former tenant of the house. more about the house later, this article is dedicated to my own holiday in Kuala Lumpur.

I just showed Grace around the house, then moved my things that were lying in the hall into the room, which Ralph used to occupy but i couldn't put my things in the last time i was there because he was still moving his things from his old room(our new room, Our meaning Thana, Grace and I) to his new room downstairs, which is as small as the store room in my Klang house, because of its huge built in wardrobe. nice boy, being able to keep the house clean, so we're not complaining. he even allows me to call Tomi using the landline he paid for when using Streamyx, which is best for me using iTalk after much dissapointing survey on IDD rates to Qatar. back to my holiday in KL, which i havent had time to elaborate.

after putting things away to welcome the others who were about to move in, we left the house after 1/2 hour and i went back to the hotel, still thinking of how good breakfast tasted, which leaves me time to elaborate further, for the benefit of those surveying and sourcing out places to eat or to spend a night in Kuala Lumpur if you happen to have the means to indulge in more luxurious accomodations, or it could be as simple as one person surveying the next place to stay when visiting KL on business trips;p hope this would be beneficial to my older circle of readers who are now still excited over the business travelling activities that may come rarely for some people and very frequent for others, leaving some sense of envy but i like the term "dengki" which means the exact same in Malay. back to my story

Breakfast was, in the order of arrangement, an array of dimsum, miso soup, hongkong porridge, bacon, pancakes, waffles, sausages(like those we ate at Chennai, for those who went with me), bacon, leftover Sahur food like fried noodles, vegetables, nasi lemak, baked beans, omelette station, muesli and cereal bar, fruits, cheeses, juices, milk, an array of yoghurt and assortment of bread and pastry which i dont really fancy, rather be stuffing myself with Nasi Lemak, which i seem to always have a craving for, especially early in the morning, accompanied by a cup of steaming coffee, 1 teaspoon nescafe, 2 tablespoon creamer, and half a teaspoon of sugar. blissful i tell you! would have loved to stay longer, but i had to fulfill my obligation of meeting Grace, where it was 45 minutes later than i promised in the first place.

i reached the hotel, did my devotion and went down to the pool to prevent myself from being depressed alone in the room, thinking of Tomi's departure the next day. it wasn't that sunny to begin with, and i didnt bring my sunblock to slather myself with, so i settled for my daily faceblock only. then i dipped into the cold water and chilled there munching on apples along the way when i took rests from each 10 laps. there were all sorts of tourists there, enjoying the sunny malaysian weather, where Malaysians try their best to avoid, unlike certain people like me, who think getting a tan is more beautiful than spending tons of cash on bleaching your skin in one way or another. think its just to accept the way you are and eventually there's the inner beauty that makes every girl unique. that's what Dove is trying to buy is with. haha.

all in all i spent 2 hours by the pool getting a nice tan and body aches from swimming too much but it was fun and therapeutic and better than being couped up in the room in tears.Tomi came back 1 hour later and we went about doing last minute errands before making our way back to Klang via KTM komuter, bags and all, part of the experiences that we cherish dearly, as i seem to take the mundane and unconventional events in life like taking public transportation and roughing it out in the jungle or backpacking to be one of the most romantic things that you get to do with the person you love, or even friends, but that would not be rendered as romantic but mere fun. haha. I still owe a blog on farewells. See if i have the inspiration the next time. enjoy!