So many advise which is constructive.

At the end of the day, due to limited saving, TS will need to learn to compromise.

If you do fancy stuff and taking personal loan for it, the loan interest at 8% per annual will be a extra burden for you for years to come.

My advise is to ask your gf opinion and come clean with your situation to her. If she understand and still want to get marry, then lucky you. if she look down on your because of this and leave you, also lucky you.

In the end, you win.

If you can buy a house, you're not considered poor.

Worse come to worse, sell off the house and stay with parents.

I think TS expects a rich man life, just like that Singaporean movie 'money not enough'

Agree, as they said "ukur baju badan sendiri"...

Sign it and consider married...
Remember, do not take loan for married.
Married, you will have heavy burden already, do not add more burden to your self.

i also just sign the paper and go honeymoon+photo taking only.

Few thing that can reduce the cost of wedding,
1. Buy the wedding gown at China, just cost around USD120 to 150 including fedex shipment. The gown is custom made to the body size.

2. For prewedding photo, find those friend who like to take photographer. Do the job.

firstly, cut your bad spending habits! if you continue, you will get into more trouble in future with or without a wife

then only get married when you are both really ready. not just because your dd dont like to wear the rubber or because you have been together for xx years. fyi, i dated my wife for 9 yrs.

as for the house, I've sell it off and rent a cheaper place instead for a start. if you cant effort the installment dont hang on to it and get yourself in trouble.

and lastly, marriage is between you 2. you care how long your friends have married or how many kids they have, this is not a competition and there is no prize for the winner.

is you decided to proceed on getting wed, then both sit down together and plan what is affordable.

TS, u can register 1st, photograph and dinner can come later. But u need to compromise with your gf and her family 1st. I knew a girl who register 1st and host her 2-3 years later. IMO, dont go for loan. Else more burden will come after u get marry. 4k is decent earning, but u have installment for car and house, after epf deduction, roughly 1.7k left. Try your best to save at-least 700 - 1k a month. If u plan well, u can cover back your dinner in KL with angpao money. And your gf is from Sabah, so hosting a wedding dinner there would be much more cheaper. Register 1st, dinner after 1.5-2years later. With RM700 -1k per month shud have no problem. Another tips, don't SPEND ALL your bonus. I understand people like to reward their self after working hard for a year, but please do save half of your bonus up, it help a lot. Compromise with your gf, tell her what's in your mind, at-least let her know that why you are cutting down activity budget for.

This post has been edited by ragk: Oct 31 2014, 05:08 PM

Dear friends,

After reading all of your advise, I think I should talk to my GF and my mom about signing the paper first. And I think it also more wiser not to take loan at this moment. Maybe when ready, will do the ceremony. Yes, I agree marriage is between me and my GF and not the other people. But I guess I am gonna start a BIG argument with my mom..

Regarding the house, both of us are thinking to live there after married. Other than new, the location is also excellent and near to my work place. Perhaps after we can own a landed house, that condo will be up for rent/sale. I know it will be hard for me to live soon. Not to mention if we are having kids. But we also feel really want to "smell" a new house for once. So it would be really hard for us to let go and rent cheaper house elsewhere.

Actually after thinking a lot, before this, my life is "live easy life first, let the difficulties come later". So I am going to change that now reversely, to live hard first and happy comes later. Yes I regret my life before. But there is still one small problem.. how to completely change? How to get discipline every day? Do you guys have some specific ways?

p/s: By the way who is TS??


You are really motivating me to marry her now man!


Hmmm.. maybe you forgot to mention the cost of flights to Sabah. Let say from my family (who needed to be there and who also want to be there) that I have to sponsor is 5 pax. Including the accommodation, my GF and I counted, it would be almost RM4k already. And my GF told me that to host the dinner, it should take RM6k++. So total up everything, wedding dinner in Sabah could be more than RM10k... But it is ok, I take your advise about the salary bonus. In my head right now is I want to save, save and save.

why not try to get a few empty jars and start putting money into them. let say u start with 3 jars. label first jar as credit card, second as marriage savings and third as study loan. everyday put some money say RM2 in them and let it grow. this method will provide u a start somewhere.

discipline is hard. i don't know what temptation of activities u r into but u can try to do this way. every time u wanna indulge in ur WANTED activity, say, hang out in a cafe n buy a cake n coffee that cost u rm 20, take that amount of money and put it into ur jar or an account. at the end of the month, see how much u spend unnecessarily. distract urself from spending.

investing in unit trust is also a good method to maximise ur savings but if u wanna marry... it's too late to invest for such purpose... for now, try to invest for ur retirement la n ur wife la. make sure that u have personal health insurance.

can u also ask ur gf to help pay for the wedding bill? split into half? or she pay the least stuff?

u can try working part time or freelance too. just don't enter those skim cepat kaya...

all the best.

Maybe you need to split the wedding expenses into half or some portion, which is paid by your gf.
For example, hair styling for herself & her mom/sis, bride maids ang pau .... etc.....
Or she help to pay your housing loan so that you can save more for the wedding(but make sure you will marry her, if not , it doesn't make sense if she pay the housing loan without her name in SPA or "touch wood" break up b4 ROM)

wow! what job u have do bro??hahahaha

Be frugal and you might be able to save rm5k per year rather than just a bit over 1k.

I seldom heard of people seriously plan to marry but ignorant on the saving part.

We're much older than you so we've lots of experience and mistakes.

A lot of my friends regret delaying marriage, now they are more than 50 years old and still single.


Marry her !

Marry can be cheap just depend on how you wanted to have your wedding. I have friend that dare not say out to girl they like then now they still single even they already 30plus ald...

1) buy a cincin and propose first.
2) shoot wedding photos.
2) next register marriage.
4) last only wedding dinner (can delay to next year).


just my 2 cents.

This post has been edited by ronron: Nov 4 2014, 11:55 AM

Well, marriage can be expensive or inexpensive. What you really need to do is some planning and a bride that is willing to accept your financial situation.

What you actually need is just a room for you two, with new furnitures. Money for photoshot and simple wedding ring. Also need to set some aside for dowry. If you can do it the simplest way, then its not going to be expensive at all.

As for dinner, you can actually find a reasonably priced restaurant, instead of spending lavishly. Most of the time, if you keep it within affordable range, the angpao will mostly cover it without much problem.

Personally I spent around 20K for all these, and as for dinner, its all on my dad as he's the one who wanna invite his huge friends' list and also clients. As for me, I only invite 10 of my very best friends and make a table.

I knew some people who can spent 3K per table for dinner. Personally I dont really know why people nowadays wanna invite everyone they knew. I think you need to take into account how much angpao you can get for each table to ensure that you dont overspent.

Seriously, why would you do that?

Work out that marriage agreement first before signing the paper. Get everyone to agree on the terms, or otherwise if anything goes wrong, you will be in a big trouble. Dont rush into rash decisions.

1) every month put 50% of your salary for fixed deposit, then spend the remaining salary like usual.

2) buy a property that you can afford, say rm1000 installment. it's like a forced saving. you can sell off the property when you need money. usually a good property somehow will earn a bit.

Communication is key to any marriage; you have to start early with it.

Talk and plan with your gf. And all these conceptions about "time"/"age"/"length of relationship" is just in your head/peer pressure. At the end of the day; only you guys will live your lives, not anyone else.

I only married my gf after being together for 8 years; but we agreed with our timelines due to our differing circumstances. When we started planning for the wedding; I decided that based on our plans, we would need at least RM30k for the wedding's cost. However, as I had about 2 years to budget, it was easier for me to save for it. So every month I saved a reasonable amount (sometimes more, sometimes less) and put it into a FD account that could not be touched (this was under her name and care as proof of my commitment).

Along the way, we looked into alternatives for all the items we would need for the wedding. We got a great deal for my wife's wedding gown (RM1k for a quality gown); decided the themes of the wedding early so we could buy all the props early (spent about 3-4k on this). The benefit of doing all this early - as I had gotten used to saving for that 30k budget, I bought these items WITHOUT touching the 30k wedding budget. The same repeated itself when the dates got nearer; I somehow managed to buy the rings (about 3k++ for all 3 rings, was lucky - the diamond stones were a family gift), photographer (3k++), angpows (can't remember), and etc. costs WITHOUT again touching the 30k wedding budget.

Also because we planned carefully; we chose a wedding dinner that was (at my calculation) very affordable (about RM700 per table) but at the same time; not appearing to be "cheap". We were lucky that the angpow collection from the wedding dinner covered the entire cost of the dinner; plus minus abit here and there.

So; now we were left with a 30k surplus that became our honeymoon budget instead (we had no plans for honeymoon as we were relocating and $$$ was very tight still). Also; our $$$ gifts from our families were put into some investment funds as well (to be used as the kids' future study funds). As I had been used to saving $$$ by now; I just allocated $$$ from each month (that was to go to the previously-wedding budget) into a new fund for the honeymoon. In the end, we went for the honeymoon trip (that was more like a backpacking trip) without touching the honeymoon budget. So; the 30k now ended up as our 2nd honeymoon budget/kids budget.

Sorry for the long-winded post. My point is this; start early and with a focused goal and a clear target. Then devote yourself to it with the right mindset and discipline. Make the hard decisions/costs EARLY and do not POSTPONE your $$$-decisions (especially by taking loans). It'll be scary and daunting (all change is at the beginning); but if you're FOCUSED, you'll get used to it.

Good luck.

This post has been edited by glozz: Nov 4 2014, 04:59 PM

It's important that you get a stable income flow first before you decide to take up a bigger responsibility which is after marriage.

Based on your story, I would recommend to stay off the plan to get married first as I foresee financial burden ahead. Don't just because of face value that you get urself into more trouble. Do what you have within your means at the moment.

5k mau kahwin...
sudah lah.