Hi all, has been working for 5 years and need some advise and I am Chinese

Has been checking some topics in this section for few weeks and saw there is many people giving advise to people who like me not sure
about investment & saving.

Every months I will hav roughly 1.2K for Saving after deduction on my (Insurance/Car loan/Bill/Monthly spending) and having 25K saving now in Bank.
I do not have any FD or Investment in property, stock etc. But i really want to start now and seek for some advise.

So would like to check with Sifus here, understand that the money in normal Saving account % interested is low so is it better to keep it in FD?

As for investment, what is your advise for the newbie like me?

PS : can't afford high risk investment at the moment.

Thanks in advance

This post has been edited by bebe2525: Jan 15 2015, 10:54 AM

unit trust

Some option of investment
-Share Market
-Unit Trust
-REIT
-Forex
-Property


Current share market are in unstable condition and unit trust mostly are also invest on share market. Not really advisable for newbie.

Since 25k is not a significant amount, it will be good to put it in FD first until you see any good investment opportunity.

You may start learning and put little cash to share, and to be experience in share market, many had paid a lot of tuition fees.

For me it would be highly dependant upon how you would like to invest. Since you said you can`t afford high risk investment, forex and penny stocks are out of the picture.

If you want to start easy investing without spending too much time on learning about the market, hassle in investing process, etc, unit trust is a good place to start. If you are worried about the current local market, go for unit trust that focus on global or foreign markets instead. If you are too busy/lazy to study and pick funds for yourself, you can try a WRAP account where your funds are managed by portfolio managers. This would have lower sales charge than agents/FSM but attracts annual fee of usually 1% per year.

If you do have time and patience to learn on investing, go for stocks but start on blue chip stocks first(high market capital companies). They are less volatile but would only give you decent returns on the long term. But as they are stocks, they still carry quite a bit of risk.

Although market in Malaysia has been bad for the past month, the flipside of it is most stocks are becoming undervalued so it has high potential to give you good returns for the long term.

If you really can't afford to lose out your money or have short investing horizon, your best bet would be fixed deposit. You still can choose unit trust that focus on less risky investment such as bonds or money market funds though the sales charge(if any) might make the return less attractive to FD. If you can take moderate risk go for balanced fund or dividend funds and of course if you want good returns (with slightly higher risk) go for aggressive equity funds. Do bear in mind most unit trust(equities usually) are only good for long term investments (5 year++).

Just move your 25k to FD first, then take your time to learn about investment before deciding the next step.

you just have to take your time before engaging in Investment

1st set aside an emergency fund...the monies in this fund should be liquid and can be reached fast.
the amount in this fund should partly be dependent on your age, skills and qualifications that you have.
(In short, think and analyse, how long will it takes for you to get back this same monthly income if you happens to get fired today)
most people recommend 3~6 months of gross income amount in emergency fund, but I would suggest MORE if one is currently being overpaid and underqualified.
can consider some insurance for your self and families.....insurance is just an insurance, don't over buy it, don't try to use it as a form of saving for the future and talk to "good" agents.....there are SOME in this lyn forums...reads their posts...none biased and logical.

then try to read up the links in the article here and there are many such info in the web search them out before thinking about investing your monies.....many people lose monies and SLEEP after investing into "lower risk" investment, when they realized that the lower risk is JUST not low enough, or need the invested monies sooner than "planned" or TOO concentrated into 1 area or type.

Getting Started : Knowing Yourself
We will attempt to read your mind.

Hmmm, OK, yes, yes.. The picture is becoming clearer.

OK, this is what you are thinking.

"I need more money in my life".

Good, aren't we?

Well, the trick is simple. We all need more money in our life. Money to pay our housing loans, car loans, income taxes, and bills, bills, bills. We need money to buy the things we want and pamper ourselves once in while. We need money to start a family, and provide for our children. At the end of the day, when we retire and we stop drawing an income, we still need to have enough money to live day to day.

Yes, it's tough.

But the good news is that we can retire comfortably. By investing wisely now, all of us can generate enough cash to deal with all of the above, and more.

However, before you jump in and start investing your hard-earned money, there are several important things that you would need to know about yourself first.
•How much do you really need? (Future Planning)
•How much risk can you take? (Risk Level)
•How long are you willing to wait before you see profits? (Time Horizon)

http://www.fundsupermart.com.my/main/schoo...d.svdo?PageID=1

This post has been edited by yklooi: Jan 15 2015, 07:51 AM

Split your fund into 3 portion

1) Emergency Fund [6 month income (meaning if you not working for 6 month, everything is still cover)] - bank has these FD tied account where if you do not withdraw, they give you same rate as FD.
2) Risk investment fund (money to invest in higher risk investment) - i call this tuition fees.
3) Property fund - to buy property and pay for property loan (12 month loan payment at least)

keep your saving in this 3 fund in the right portion split.

you can stop 1) once you hit the 6 month and only increase when your income increase.
2) will be your main used fund ... no pain even if it break ... not that i am suggesting you should break it.
3) need some time, primary get the down payment + fees save up first, else you cannot buy shit ...

i do suggest you go learn FoReX or CFD trading ... its quite cheap USD1K to start ... if you are doing it right, its very low risk ... unless you can make 50 stright wrong decision, your 1K will NEVER finish

Really appreciate all the suggestion above

will now start to look into all those link & learn about investment & also might read some book regarding investment

If there is any question, i will post and asked again

Are you a muslim? If yes, consider putting your savings of 25k in Tabung Haji instead of FD. Easy to liquid (Liquid it online, transfer from TH to Maybank etc) and have higher return than FD.

If you are not, then FD would be the best choice while you learn more about investing.

This post has been edited by Cubed1437: Jan 15 2015, 10:01 AM

Thanks !

i am Chinese btw, will look into FD now while i learn about investment

look into FD asap. should have done this long ago. if you don't want to lock in too long, can go for shorter tenure.

i normally put 1 month mature FD, like lower rate but flexible.

Immediate action is move the money to FD.
At 3.x~4% FD currently, your 25K will generate you at least RM800 pa.

Other investment can wait until familiar and understand about them.

you can pm me if you interested in investing in shares

What would be the purpose of your investment? Short term or long term?
Also, Would you like flexibility in your investment? Meaning to be able to withdraw at any time?

Actually i am looking for long term and would like to have flexibility in my investment.
You have any good suggestion?

Hmm I see, how long term are you looking at? like 5 - 10 yrs? or just 1 - 3 yrs?
How flexible would you like your investment to be? Immediate withdrawal with full amount of ok if it takes 2 weeks or so?
Have you invested in anything so far?

This post has been edited by jac1792: Jan 21 2015, 04:15 PM