Rarely get govt servants, I thought they all have free housing, no? U41 and above consider professional already lar. Also the people who are likely to trash your property are students, foreign students and foreign workers. Avoid them or charge them high high premium for the future repairs or you will regret.

1. Save 50% of salary - good & keep it up
2. No clubbing, no drink, no smoke - also good & keep it up
3. RM 1,000 a month for basic - ok lar, could trim off some so can invest more
4. Education loan 50k @ 3% - Very low interest rate, advise to pay off slowly, no need to rush. Your investments can more than cover your interest.
5. What to do with money - Formulate a plan to invest your money ie. stocks, shares, bonds, UT, property etc. Only save 6 months of your salary in 1 month auto-renew FD for emergency
6. Hard - Saving money is not hard, it just takes discipline. Keep it up.
7. Young people should enjoy - There are many ways to enjoy, throwing your money away is just a small sample, why follow the minority?
8. Advise - If you are renting now, consider to purchase a property in which your monthly loan payments = your current rental. If you are sharing a home, then rent out extra rooms in your property to recoup. See, no need extra money can invest already.

Any more questions?

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 11 2010, 08:45 AM

Aiyo.. how you guys manage to squeeze your expenses so low....

My monthly spending on food & groceries only also exceed RM 1k per month already..... that's for a family of 2.

Wei.. wrong formula lah, you are expecting every 26 year old earning 4.16k a month to have a net worth of 1.3 million? The real formula is as follows. Remember to minus all debts from your asset.

Net Asset < Age x Anuual Income / 10 = Underachieving
Net Asset = Age x Annual Income / 10 = Normal
Net Asset > 2 x Age x Annual Income / 10 = Overachieving

Eq. 26 yo x RM 50,000 /10 = RM 130,000 That's more like it, no?

Yep you got the right formula, i use divide by 10 for easy off hand calculation. The calculation is meant for you to retire,not for when you are working. If you are still working it will be a benchmark for you to follow. The reason is that as you get older, you have more expenditures and also more income, so everything is slower. Using the calculation on a young person, will just be a motivation.

Also the figure is not pure savings, it is also including investment income and it will accumulate.

Yeah, keep investing all of your cash, if the market falls, you will have no where to run. Cash is king if you know how to use it wisely to backup your investment. When the market goes to free fall, those with cash and guts makes the biggest killing out of those retail investors.

Every asset is essential for investment, be it cash, equity, properties, bonds or commodities. There are no 'useless' asset, only those who don't know how to utilize them effectively.

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 29 2010, 10:40 PM

If you qualify for ASB, put all your money into it until you max it out, then only you can consider other investment. If not, then you can consider other investment. If you have enough financial education, then you must have formulated a plan already to invest. If not then continue to read & learn further, if yes you can let us know your plan here, and we will help you as best we can.

Well no need to become so aggressive in defending your view, if you are an experienced investor, you must understand there will be a lot of different opinions on each investment, it depends on your outlook, risk tolerance and preference. So there is no right or wrong investment. If you strongly believe in gold as the best investment for you, then it's fine, it's your money to risk it anyway.

But, not everyone will share your view, that's why we have a forum, to express your individual view. If you ask me, I would say I am not in preference to gold investment, and I do think that gold prices are way overbought, prices cannot go up indefinitely. Therefore reflective on my views, I have not bought any recently.

In my opinion gold is not a good investment, you are just waiting for the price appreciation, there is no interest, dividend or cash flow, further more actual industrial gold usage is much lower than the amount being produced, so supply > demand (other than speculators). For Bloomberg and MSN finance, we see it all the time, but most of the time the mainstream media is mostly just noise, if you follow everything they say, you will make investment mistakes. Well if I am wrong and price of gold shoots up, I am not in a loss anyway, my other investments are performing nicely for me, so I will not miss gold.

P/S Is my grammar acceptable for your status?

This post has been edited by gark: Jul 20 2010, 12:32 PM

Still studying already have these kind of dreams, wait till you come to reality of working world, then you will see it is not so easy. This is the typical spend spend spend until you are broke mentality, where everything also want and not willing to cut back, and thinking the whole world owes you a living.

If you want to fund all of your dreams above, suggest by getting employment with salary of at least 7-8k per month, which after taxes and EPF you will be left with 5k-6k only, which is barely able pay for all of which you mention, including a new car, new house, high family expenses, high insurance and vacation. Good luck cause you will need it, unless of course if you already have another income stream.

Many people with much much higher earnings also don't dare to dream like you do.

This post has been edited by gark: Jul 23 2010, 12:14 AM

You have not included the re-payment for your car and house loan, as you have mentioned that you will need a car and don't want to rent. Unless of course you plan to stay with your parents and use their car. Also your salary no need deduct 11% EPF kah?

This post has been edited by gark: Jul 23 2010, 12:30 AM

It's never too late to save for retirement. Have you calculated your retirement and perhaps your children education needs? A lot people underestimate all these cost, and then the suffer in the golden years of their life. Calculating these will let you plan for the future.

Like sky mentioned, it is best to splurge (like for vacation) with the extra income from investments, every extra sen from the salary should be invested. I am waiting for the day when my investment income can finally replace my salary income....

cshong,

Don't plan too much on how you want to spend, this is useless as this is a never ending cycle. The richer you are, the more you feel that you need in life, so money will never be enough. Maybe one day you are earning big bucks, you might want to explore remote islands in the south pacific via a charted sea plane, then you will also feel that you can't afford it. (Eg. Bora Bora Island )

While you are still a graduate, you have plenty of freedom, time and money to do what you wish in life. Focus on how you can maximize your earning power be it, by excelling in your job, doing side projects or doing business. However you put it earning money is never easy, but since you are young and relatively uncommitted, this is the best time to try. If you fall down so what? You are young and can get up easily again.

I have a friend doing IT as well, in the morning he is an administrator of a big company, at night and weekends he does contract programming jobs, and he runs 2 companies, 1 for custom programming and another for site design, which he outsources to his contacts. Put it this way, even though he is getting lots of money, but he have almost no free time to enjoy it. When asked to go for vacation, he is not afraid of the cost, he is afraid of the time and fear he cannot complete his programming jobs dateline.

So one cannot have everything in life, learn to live a life of balance and you will realise your dreams one day if you work hard enough.

Worst advise you can to anyone, you will put them deeper into the debt hole.

Well it's commendable that you are saving a large portion of your salary. But it seems you are not paying for any house or car loans. If indeed in the future that you will be burdened with the additional loans, then perhaps your net earnings might not be enough and you need to cut down further on your expenses. Expect at least rm 1,500 for car and property loans. Maybe extra side income might come in handy then.

For your current savings, instead of packing into a savings accounts and get nothing, what are you doing with all the cash savings?

To achieve financial freedom, for my definition, you will need a total asset which is 25 times your annual/required income.

This post has been edited by gark: Aug 11 2010, 12:30 PM

Well it's very lucky that you have a free car and place to live now. But eventually you may want to purchase your own property and a vehicle. Purchasing your property is not necessary only after you have family, it is part of your invest-able assets for your future as well. So maybe you do need to plan for a property purchase sometime 3-5 years down the road.

For investment, you need to keep 3-6 months cash equivalent for liquidity and emergency. You can keep in savings account or 1-month auto-renew FD.

After you have the emergency cash sorted out, then only can you decide your longer term investment, these investment depend on your risk tolerance, so it depends on which investment is suitable for you. Anyway never invest in something you have no knowledge in, always invest after you have done all your sufficient homework. Why throw away your hard earned money, on something you don't know?

The 25 times is based on 4% withdrawal per year, also included conservative inflation. With the 4% rate, it is unlikely you will run out of income and assured that your asset will continue to gain with inflation. That is real financial freedom.

This post has been edited by gark: Aug 11 2010, 02:34 PM

When you apply for a 1 month fixed deposit at a bank, you can have the option for it to automatically renew every month. The interest obtained every month can be credited to your savings account or added back to your fixed deposits. If you opt to add to your fixed deposits your amount will compound higher.

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Added on August 11, 2010, 11:19 pmIt's never too early to start.

This post has been edited by gark: Aug 11 2010, 11:22 PM

1. Insurance costs should be no more than 5%-10% of total income, in this case, it is ok, but if you want more coverage you may consider more.
2. There is no minimum limit to engage services of a financial planner. Smart planner knows that income can only go up.
3. Usually no, unless the financial planner is also agent for the insurance company.

Anyway beware, there are lots of self proclaimed financial planners out there with no certification.

The percentage serve as a guide for a family total income lah. If only one parent is working the 5%-10% should include the children and spouse lah. For non income generator, they should not have life insurance as they have no income to protect, but they should have medical. For older person, IMHO, life insurance should cease at retirement and health insurance somewhere around 65-70, cause the price will be exponential from then on.

Well that's my thinking, could be different from you guys.

This post has been edited by gark: Aug 15 2010, 12:49 PM

PBGF fund price today is 0.7801, also they have paid out dividends recently. I think you get your info from the wrong fund or wrong place.

They paid 8 sen per unit on 30th June. So at current prices per unit of PBGF is worth 0.7801 + 0.08 (dividend) = 0.8601, therefore you actually gain, not lost money.