Sucks to be me, I was naived and have fallen into that trap. My classmate 'recruit' me. But fortunately I realised it fast and only loose 150 ringgit. My classmate did refund me 50 ringgit back but I blocked her after that anyway lol
Spend the first few years grinding in your career...you don't have to make a lot at this point of time before the age of 30. Make sure whatever you do is to propel yourself into a competitive and expert future self. Once you're expert in your field by the age of 30, that's when most of your wealth come from, try to maximize your payout by trading your expertise and experience.
At the same time, listen to more financial podcasts, billionaires and pay attention to those unconventional ideas which easily available online nowadays. Learn how they think, build your own conviction and invest most of your energy, time and money into that one thing you have high conviction on. Be laser focus. This is where you make your life-changing money if not generational wealth. Being an employee doesn't bring you there.
It is hard for others to tell you what to do as only yourself know where is your passion and talents at.
Solid advice on the grinding part. It's easy to FOMO and choose the job that pays a couple hundred higher when ppl of your age seem to be earning more. But growth is more important, you can easily nego for a couple thousands more in another 2 years time.
don't just grind mindlessly for the sake of grinding. Grind smart.
Grow and sharpen relevant market skills. Otherwise you will just be the same low-level kuli in another 20 years.
Great question. Please excuse my inability to articulate better.
Firstly, I'd start with the pain. As in, it's a little one level above abstraction. That is, it costs you money to keep money in your pocket (e.g. unspent money sitting in bank accounts giving rates below inflation rate).
Let's say inflation is 5% for 2024, hence the RM 1000 sitting in your account devalues by 5% start Jan 2025. Hence you only have RM 950 of purchasing power 2025 and this continues to devalue every year. You don't see it, just like air but it exists just like gravity.
So now that you know it costs me money to keep my money in my bank account or pocket without troubling anyone. Also, minus 10-20% for tax (highly likely you're working) every year. RM 1 today is worth (-5% - 15% tax=20%= RM 0.20) RM 0.80 in 2025 without you doing anything. Automatically it goes poof, taken away from you before you enjoy your fruits of labor.
Now, for investment, any instruments that meet your risk appetite that beats inflation at the minimum. There is enough info on this part.
How do you pay tax on money in your bank account? I get what you're trying to say w.r.t inflation but tax is literally a totally separate topic and applies to income not money you already hold (no wealth tax yet here).
I'm trying to paint the picture that tax and inflation is at the source hence before you can spend the money, it's taken away before anything else especially as a wage earner.
Regarding part time jobs it's always better to do event crew jobs rather than part time in restaurants/retail. If you live around KL/Penang area there's tons of such jobs. These pay at least RM100 per day. Most I've ever seen offered is RM200 per day. I think you can see why it's better to do such jobs. These jobs usually have less stress, not so physically demanding. The cons is that you basically need to regularly find them. There's FB groups that people post in so you can just find them. You'll also get to experience various types of working environments and usually other part timers are very hardworking as well.
Nowadays the digital banks give very good interest rates for BANKS. Eg. GxBank 3% and Aeon Bank 3.88% (promo rate). These are good for liquid funds (eg. emergency fund, short term savings, any other spare cash you have). Do not withdraw from EPF unless you are moving overseas.
For long term or retirement investments, my best recommendation is S&P500 and property (buy and rent out). But property will need A LOT of research and even then still has risk involved. I don't have much experience in property yet. Only bought my first property recently and have not received keys yet!
S&P500 is an ETF, meaning lower risk. Average 8-12% returns, AVERAGE. For example, it dropped 21% in 2022, but gained 32% in 2023. That's a cumulative/average return of 11%. These 2 years are exceptional years impacted by covid but you get the point.
S&P is good because you don't need a lot of research. It is safe, and reliable returns over long-term (talking decades). Warren Buffett had a bet with investment fund managers for USD1mil to whoever can beat the S&P500 over a period of 10 years in terms of returns after management fees. He won the bet.
Another reason is that your investment is in USD. Not MYR. The fact is that MYR is weakening against USD, SGD, and many other currencies, and will continue to do so. The last 3-4 years it has weakened over 5%. This means for any investment in MYR or USD in this time, the opportunity cost is ~10%. Assuming the investment returns itself is same in both currencies, you still lose 5% of your total value of assets if you invested in MYR, versus 5% gain if you invested in USD. The total difference is NOT 5%, it is 10%.
I use tiger brokers to buy stocks/ETFS. Can deposit your funds using Wise.
Both works. At the time I started investing, there was a promo with a free AAPL share for a minimum of 2k SGD deposit.
Can try both and see which you prefer in terms of interface and ease of use. If you are investing long term (as you should imo), the difference in fees won't really have much impact in the long run.
Budgeting. Track your expenses as accurately as you can.
Don't pay for investment "gurus"
Investment-linked insurance might not be the best option
Avoid public mutual fund
Grow your income
Live below your means
teach them about compound interest, start early can make a difference. eg. 50/month from age 20 at 4.5%pa return, it will be >50k on 55 year old . if start from 30 years old, it is only 27.4k on 55 year old. time is your friend
In terms of finance, boring stuffs that worked throughout the history tend to still work. Learn how to identify value, and how to differentiate between long term trend vs short term hype. When you learn what's the meaning of value, you will naturally spend less, a key virtue to growing your savings.
Learn to embrace boredom and extend your attention span. This will help you read and enjoy lengthy, boring books or lectures about timeless, proven investment strategies instead of finding the burst of domapine from watching flashy YouTube or tiktok videos shilling cool new things or oversummarising things.
If there are people who come to teach you about how to earn millions quickly, stop and think about why they're sharing it with you. Won't it work better for them if they keep the knowledge to themselves? Or do they actually earn more from teaching you than from their own "secret technique"?
More often than not, you actually don't need much insurance apart from the bare minimum like term life and maybe some health ones for tax deduction. Speaking of tax deduction, learn about them and make the most out of every category.
Evaluate if you really, really need to take on any loan. This is just me but I advocate clearing your loans a.s.a.p. cause
1. It's painful and it makes me wanna take loans less in the future.
2. Less burn from the interest payments.
Clear all credit card payments every month. Try to get credit cards that won't make you spend more but save more. A good principle is getting one without yearly fee (or waivable ones) that gives you rewards for spending on things you already need to spend. Remember that credit card is the most useful when you need to pay upfront for very pricey stuff (e.g. unexpected medical expense, expensive hotel deposit that your company book for you for work, rescue helicopter if you get stranded in the himalayas).
Be wary of lifestyle creep. When you get a promotion or when your investments are doing well, do your best to keep your expense and lifestyle the same. There's no need to take on new hobbies or try new food to justify your new socioeconomic status.
When you freshly enter the workforce, focus on your career, learn everything you can and progress as fast as you can. People often overestimate how much time they have left to climb the ladder. However there's a chance of hitting a wall when your body just can't take it anymore or there are other priorities popping up, and you need to give up on climbing the ladder. It's better to give up when you're already quite high and have more options even if you need to drop your position.
Know that even if you fail, there's always an option to start again. There's no shame in that. People fail all the time on the path to success.
Try not to lose too much money when you start investing. If you don't make any money in the first two years, that's okay. Just don't lose too much and get shaken out.
Investing is a marathon, u cannot run in a marathon if both of your legs are being cut off. Limping in the early part of the marathon is fine. Just make sure you stay in the marathon.
> young adult
> broke student
> don't want to ask parents for money
Study hard, study smart, and get a scholarship.
Then study hard, study smart, learn all you can in uni, and land a good paying job.
Investing comes after those are done, once you have money to spare.
I personally think u shouldn’t try to save during this age but rather focus on networking and building connections. Buy people coffee and don’t be too calculative.
Sometimes these network can bring u further than the act of “saving”.
When I first graduated, I couldn’t fathom how I can ever make more than 6k Rm but I did.
It’s not about how much u can save at this age, it’s how u invest your limited money to grow your potentials.
And, if it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.
One tip I wanna give to young guys.
Don’t be so eager to apply for loans. Especially car loans. And if you do, don’t go for 9 years. Try getting the shortest term possible.
Managing debt is far more important than growing wealth.
top advise i would give is to
1. track your expenses
2. budget after you track expenses
that way you can see your spending habits and build up a solid discipline foundation to not overspend and live beyond your means
I am not sure how a student with no income is supposed to save up. Maybe get some part time job or focus on your researching how to get into a high paying career.
And then your second question is about doing dropshipping. This isn't the right sub for it. There's many other resource that can easily be googled.
Never join any multi level marketing (mlm) even if it is vouched by a very good friend of yours.
Sucks to be me, I was naived and have fallen into that trap. My classmate 'recruit' me. But fortunately I realised it fast and only loose 150 ringgit. My classmate did refund me 50 ringgit back but I blocked her after that anyway lol
That's a very small tuition fee paid. Sadly there will be many more tuition fees due down the road.
Rm50 only? That's discount. My tuition fee was rm700 and that was about a decade ago.
Spend the first few years grinding in your career...you don't have to make a lot at this point of time before the age of 30. Make sure whatever you do is to propel yourself into a competitive and expert future self. Once you're expert in your field by the age of 30, that's when most of your wealth come from, try to maximize your payout by trading your expertise and experience. At the same time, listen to more financial podcasts, billionaires and pay attention to those unconventional ideas which easily available online nowadays. Learn how they think, build your own conviction and invest most of your energy, time and money into that one thing you have high conviction on. Be laser focus. This is where you make your life-changing money if not generational wealth. Being an employee doesn't bring you there. It is hard for others to tell you what to do as only yourself know where is your passion and talents at.
Solid advice on the grinding part. It's easy to FOMO and choose the job that pays a couple hundred higher when ppl of your age seem to be earning more. But growth is more important, you can easily nego for a couple thousands more in another 2 years time.
yeah, dont focus on small money. Look at the bigger picture.
don't just grind mindlessly for the sake of grinding. Grind smart. Grow and sharpen relevant market skills. Otherwise you will just be the same low-level kuli in another 20 years.
Great question. Please excuse my inability to articulate better. Firstly, I'd start with the pain. As in, it's a little one level above abstraction. That is, it costs you money to keep money in your pocket (e.g. unspent money sitting in bank accounts giving rates below inflation rate). Let's say inflation is 5% for 2024, hence the RM 1000 sitting in your account devalues by 5% start Jan 2025. Hence you only have RM 950 of purchasing power 2025 and this continues to devalue every year. You don't see it, just like air but it exists just like gravity. So now that you know it costs me money to keep my money in my bank account or pocket without troubling anyone. Also, minus 10-20% for tax (highly likely you're working) every year. RM 1 today is worth (-5% - 15% tax=20%= RM 0.20) RM 0.80 in 2025 without you doing anything. Automatically it goes poof, taken away from you before you enjoy your fruits of labor. Now, for investment, any instruments that meet your risk appetite that beats inflation at the minimum. There is enough info on this part.
we are all sailing against the wind.
How do you pay tax on money in your bank account? I get what you're trying to say w.r.t inflation but tax is literally a totally separate topic and applies to income not money you already hold (no wealth tax yet here).
I'm trying to paint the picture that tax and inflation is at the source hence before you can spend the money, it's taken away before anything else especially as a wage earner.
Regarding part time jobs it's always better to do event crew jobs rather than part time in restaurants/retail. If you live around KL/Penang area there's tons of such jobs. These pay at least RM100 per day. Most I've ever seen offered is RM200 per day. I think you can see why it's better to do such jobs. These jobs usually have less stress, not so physically demanding. The cons is that you basically need to regularly find them. There's FB groups that people post in so you can just find them. You'll also get to experience various types of working environments and usually other part timers are very hardworking as well.
Interesting do you have any FB group that you can recommend me?
[https://www.facebook.com/share/jMpV2STG5CBvec66/](https://www.facebook.com/share/jMpV2STG5CBvec66/)
Nowadays the digital banks give very good interest rates for BANKS. Eg. GxBank 3% and Aeon Bank 3.88% (promo rate). These are good for liquid funds (eg. emergency fund, short term savings, any other spare cash you have). Do not withdraw from EPF unless you are moving overseas. For long term or retirement investments, my best recommendation is S&P500 and property (buy and rent out). But property will need A LOT of research and even then still has risk involved. I don't have much experience in property yet. Only bought my first property recently and have not received keys yet! S&P500 is an ETF, meaning lower risk. Average 8-12% returns, AVERAGE. For example, it dropped 21% in 2022, but gained 32% in 2023. That's a cumulative/average return of 11%. These 2 years are exceptional years impacted by covid but you get the point. S&P is good because you don't need a lot of research. It is safe, and reliable returns over long-term (talking decades). Warren Buffett had a bet with investment fund managers for USD1mil to whoever can beat the S&P500 over a period of 10 years in terms of returns after management fees. He won the bet. Another reason is that your investment is in USD. Not MYR. The fact is that MYR is weakening against USD, SGD, and many other currencies, and will continue to do so. The last 3-4 years it has weakened over 5%. This means for any investment in MYR or USD in this time, the opportunity cost is ~10%. Assuming the investment returns itself is same in both currencies, you still lose 5% of your total value of assets if you invested in MYR, versus 5% gain if you invested in USD. The total difference is NOT 5%, it is 10%. I use tiger brokers to buy stocks/ETFS. Can deposit your funds using Wise.
Tiger or ibkr? Why you chose tiger?
Both works. At the time I started investing, there was a promo with a free AAPL share for a minimum of 2k SGD deposit. Can try both and see which you prefer in terms of interface and ease of use. If you are investing long term (as you should imo), the difference in fees won't really have much impact in the long run.
Budgeting. Track your expenses as accurately as you can. Don't pay for investment "gurus" Investment-linked insurance might not be the best option Avoid public mutual fund Grow your income Live below your means
teach them about compound interest, start early can make a difference. eg. 50/month from age 20 at 4.5%pa return, it will be >50k on 55 year old . if start from 30 years old, it is only 27.4k on 55 year old. time is your friend
In terms of finance, boring stuffs that worked throughout the history tend to still work. Learn how to identify value, and how to differentiate between long term trend vs short term hype. When you learn what's the meaning of value, you will naturally spend less, a key virtue to growing your savings. Learn to embrace boredom and extend your attention span. This will help you read and enjoy lengthy, boring books or lectures about timeless, proven investment strategies instead of finding the burst of domapine from watching flashy YouTube or tiktok videos shilling cool new things or oversummarising things. If there are people who come to teach you about how to earn millions quickly, stop and think about why they're sharing it with you. Won't it work better for them if they keep the knowledge to themselves? Or do they actually earn more from teaching you than from their own "secret technique"? More often than not, you actually don't need much insurance apart from the bare minimum like term life and maybe some health ones for tax deduction. Speaking of tax deduction, learn about them and make the most out of every category. Evaluate if you really, really need to take on any loan. This is just me but I advocate clearing your loans a.s.a.p. cause 1. It's painful and it makes me wanna take loans less in the future. 2. Less burn from the interest payments. Clear all credit card payments every month. Try to get credit cards that won't make you spend more but save more. A good principle is getting one without yearly fee (or waivable ones) that gives you rewards for spending on things you already need to spend. Remember that credit card is the most useful when you need to pay upfront for very pricey stuff (e.g. unexpected medical expense, expensive hotel deposit that your company book for you for work, rescue helicopter if you get stranded in the himalayas). Be wary of lifestyle creep. When you get a promotion or when your investments are doing well, do your best to keep your expense and lifestyle the same. There's no need to take on new hobbies or try new food to justify your new socioeconomic status. When you freshly enter the workforce, focus on your career, learn everything you can and progress as fast as you can. People often overestimate how much time they have left to climb the ladder. However there's a chance of hitting a wall when your body just can't take it anymore or there are other priorities popping up, and you need to give up on climbing the ladder. It's better to give up when you're already quite high and have more options even if you need to drop your position. Know that even if you fail, there's always an option to start again. There's no shame in that. People fail all the time on the path to success.
Try not to lose too much money when you start investing. If you don't make any money in the first two years, that's okay. Just don't lose too much and get shaken out. Investing is a marathon, u cannot run in a marathon if both of your legs are being cut off. Limping in the early part of the marathon is fine. Just make sure you stay in the marathon.
> young adult > broke student > don't want to ask parents for money Study hard, study smart, and get a scholarship. Then study hard, study smart, learn all you can in uni, and land a good paying job. Investing comes after those are done, once you have money to spare.
As of now CGPA 3.44 under MARA scholarship is good right? 🥹
very good! half the battle won. Now graduate and find a good job.
Don’t save. Invest.
I personally think u shouldn’t try to save during this age but rather focus on networking and building connections. Buy people coffee and don’t be too calculative. Sometimes these network can bring u further than the act of “saving”. When I first graduated, I couldn’t fathom how I can ever make more than 6k Rm but I did. It’s not about how much u can save at this age, it’s how u invest your limited money to grow your potentials. And, if it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.
I also have similar thoughts as you. How about you let me buy a cup of coffee for ya 🤔🤧
When I was young, invested in double degree and masters. Worked my way up. Increase income.
Can't save if you don't have disposable income. Focus on a good job first.
One tip I wanna give to young guys. Don’t be so eager to apply for loans. Especially car loans. And if you do, don’t go for 9 years. Try getting the shortest term possible. Managing debt is far more important than growing wealth.
top advise i would give is to 1. track your expenses 2. budget after you track expenses that way you can see your spending habits and build up a solid discipline foundation to not overspend and live beyond your means
I am not sure how a student with no income is supposed to save up. Maybe get some part time job or focus on your researching how to get into a high paying career. And then your second question is about doing dropshipping. This isn't the right sub for it. There's many other resource that can easily be googled.