Been past the stage and regret not retiring earlier . Slight procrastination for RE and time flies past in a blink of an eye. I have more than met my target .  Concentrating most of my cash into KWSP although i have a few properties plus FD. Sold most of my stocks. I am a Malaysian, born, studied and worked here all my life. With the lowest academic qualification possible, i have worked and moved up the ladder carrer wise. In more than a decade in my working life, meeting daily expenses has been quite a challenge.

Only reason i think, of being able to accumulate enough for retirement, is being quite debt free and commitment free for most of my life except for the first house i bought. No purchases were on hire purchases, no buying of insurance n medical. Only local holidays, remember my first overseas holiday was in my late forties.

I am not frugal and do not believe so. Sonewhat remember the story of a lady saving her best crockery set for use on the occasion that never come. Life is made up of wondrous experiences and frugality somehow will crimp it. Do not worry too much and count the number of grapes you have everyday. There is a lot of people sharing their experiences on financial planning that sometimes i have trouble comprehending. My advise is to only do things that we totally understand and results matter no matter whatever the reason may be. Dont really believe in stocks investment eventhough i got my major headstart in wealth  accummulation using stocks.

Have a few friends who on mandatory retirement, travel the world. A few enjoyed it very much. One friend who is a former professor in a local University seems quite lost upon retirement. Retirement should be the time when we make new interest and live our life as we were and all our academic and career achievement no longer holds water socially.

In my opinion , a person should aspire to retire early so that we can reconnect with our friends and family that otherwise we dont have time for and also pursue our own interest not because we need to past the time but because we want to.

My monthly expenses is around RM13k. I would think most of it is due to eating expenses as we rarely cook at home.

In my opinion , a person should aspire to retire early so that we can reconnect with our friends and family that otherwise we dont have time for and also pursue our own interest not because we need to past the time but because we want to.

My monthly expenses is around RM13k. I would think most of it is due to eating expenses as we rarely cook at home.

Thanks for sharing. Really appreciate it.
I love your thinking below and I’m fully agree with you. Also, we can use the time post-retirement to reconnect with community especially the unfortunate ones and helping them in which areas that we capable of.

I have a few questions if you don’t mind;

1- How long you have been retired?
2- RM13k monthly expenses are from first month you retired or has been gradually adjusted?

Thanks

I have done a lot of research in retirement expenses in KL lately in the past 12-24 mths. I have spoken to a lot of couple retirees (over 60) in kl and most indicate that they would be very happy with between rm5k and rm10k of passive income coming in every month (with no rental/home loan/car loan left to pay). For those who are used to a lifelong habit of being thrifty, it seems to these people (couples) even having rm5k/mth to spend is a godsend luxury.

I am currently back in kl for 7 weeks (holiday) and it really intrigues me what a different society kl is compared to Sydney where government welfare is so prevalent. I never worry about cost of good healthcare in old age in sydney but it seems this is a constant worry for the average retiree in malaysia.

Been past the stage and regret not retiring earlier . Slight procrastination for RE and time flies past in a blink of an eye. I have more than met my target .  Concentrating most of my cash into KWSP although i have a few properties plus FD. Sold most of my stocks. I am a Malaysian, born, studied and worked here all my life. With the lowest academic qualification possible, i have worked and moved up the ladder carrer wise. In more than a decade in my working life, meeting daily expenses has been quite a challenge.

Only reason i think, of being able to accumulate enough for retirement, is being quite debt free and commitment free for most of my life except for the first house i bought. No purchases were on hire purchases, no buying of insurance n medical. Only local holidays, remember my first overseas holiday was in my late forties.

I am not frugal and do not believe so. Sonewhat remember the story of a lady saving her best crockery set for use on the occasion that never come. Life is made up of wondrous experiences and frugality somehow will crimp it. Do not worry too much and count the number of grapes you have everyday. There is a lot of people sharing their experiences on financial planning that sometimes i have trouble comprehending. My advise is to only do things that we totally understand and results matter no matter whatever the reason may be. Dont really believe in stocks investment eventhough i got my major headstart in wealth  accummulation using stocks.

Have a few friends who on mandatory retirement, travel the world. A few enjoyed it very much. One friend who is a former professor in a local University seems quite lost upon retirement. Retirement should be the time when we make new interest and live our life as we were and all our academic and career achievement no longer holds water socially.

In my opinion , a person should aspire to retire early so that we can reconnect with our friends and family that otherwise we dont have time for and also pursue our own interest not because we need to past the time but because we want to.

My monthly expenses is around RM13k. I would think most of it is due to eating expenses as we rarely cook at home.

Hi,

You mentioned that you have several properties, but then you have been living "debt and commitment free" for most of your life, except for the mortgage for your first home. So any "magikal" advice you can provide to those who inspire of being like you, myself included? I have yet to take on any sort of debt in my life except for credit card, and if you could enlighten me on how did you accumulate several properties with no debt, I would be happy to take you out for lunch.

I would say you did not read properly. First rule is not to accumulate any debt even credit card. For instance some credit card do have 0% interest to stretch payments for a number of months. To me that is debt which should not happen regardless of whether it is beneficial. If you read correctly , i did say my initial accumulation came from initial investment in stocks. I am no financial gurus so am in no positikn to guide anyone as you may have gathered when i say i have the minimum academic qualification. Just take my comment with a pinch of salt will do.

I would say you did not read properly. First rule is not to accumulate any debt even credit card. For instance some credit card do have 0% interest to stretch payments for a number of months. To me that is debt which should not happen regardless of whether it is beneficial. If you read correctly , i did say my initial accumulation came from initial investment in stocks. I am no financial gurus so am in no positikn to guide anyone as you may have gathered when i say i have the minimum academic qualification. Just take my comment with a pinch of salt will do.

Yeah, I did read that you had your headstart from stock investments. So the answer to my question is that your property portfolio was bought with cash from your stock investments. That answer would be good enough. And the reason I got my credit card was for my business and my necessary expenses like petrol and groceries, which I promptly settle in full at the end of every month. I do not need to owe banks money as I provide banks with their liquidity.

Credit card is good debt when use correctly.
1. Replace your cash with credit card and milk the banks for their card rewards.
2. Always use credit card to spend on what you need only. Don't need to spend more than needed.
3. Always pay in full and before due date so that banks cannot charge you.

My dad retired when he was 43 with a family of 5. He then took the family over to Australia and retired there. 

As someone who witness his post retirement life, I will caution those who are retiring young without a proper post retirement plan.

First and foremost, retirement days are long and boring. After 1 year,  I could see my dad was bored out of his mind. He started to micro manage his 3 teenagers life, and needless to say he was major PITA and our relationship soured.

Secondly, it was very financially dangerous as he started to dabble with online gambling via trading stocks and CFD. Initially it paid off but soon after he began to lost alot of money. He then invested in a franchise, but that failed as well.

Thirdly he lost his mental sharpness as a result of the above. he was very successful when he was young and had accumulated alot of assets. However he lost a lot of money when he disposed of a few aluable assets just prior to the 2008 boom.

It is however not all doom and gloom la. His 3 kids went on to get almost full scholarships so he only spent less than 100k for their education. Each kid has 2 degrees so pretty good value there. All the kids are also self sufficient and reasonably successful in career, never needing money from him even when buying their first homes.

He is naturally a hawk so the retirement life didn't suit him at all. At 55 he went back to work full time and now runs 3 businesses.

University, scholarship and 3 businesses all in Australia?

since you needed about 5k-1.8 (from rental) = 3.2k per month expense

you now have 1mil + 2 mil + 200k, after full payment condo mortgage 550k, still balance 2.7mil

2.7 mil x 4% FD rate = 108k pa...or 9k per month, use that to top up yr monthly expenses....

balance about 6k pm....save it in FD again...to earn extra interest for more money for future use....

well, that is just a simple examples to measure to know if you can stop work/retire early now, cause YOU like to spend more time with your son.....if that is your goal

Thank you very much for the reply.

That's basically how i calculated too. Only thing that worried me most is son's education expenses in the future (everyone saying education inflation gonna be high).
Should I put some money the dual currency investment from a bank?

Credit card is good debt when use correctly.
1. Replace your cash with credit card and milk the banks for their card rewards.
2. Always use credit card to spend on what you need only. Don't need to spend more than needed.
3. Always pay in full and before due date so that banks cannot charge you.

Fully agree. Take full advantage of credit cards, of accumulating points while settling any outstanding debt fully before due date. Credit card is useful only if you can comfortably settle each monthly bill. It's a no no if one tends to accumulate debt.

Last time I had a few cards from different banks to take advantage of various promotion but it was difficult to keep track of payment, leading to some missed payments and penalty charges. 

Nowadays I just use max 2 cards for any transactions above RM50.  All my insurance, utility bills, etc also autodebit to credit cards. 

Thank you very much for the reply.

That's basically how i calculated too. Only thing that worried me most is son's education expenses in the future (everyone saying education inflation gonna be high).
Should I put some money the dual currency investment from a bank?

My dad retired when he was 43 with a family of 5. He then took the family over to Australia and retired there. 

As someone who witness his post retirement life, I will caution those who are retiring young without a proper post retirement plan.

First and foremost, retirement days are long and boring. After 1 year,  I could see my dad was bored out of his mind. He started to micro manage his 3 teenagers life, and needless to say he was major PITA and our relationship soured.

Secondly, it was very financially dangerous as he started to dabble with online gambling via trading stocks and CFD. Initially it paid off but soon after he began to lost alot of money. He then invested in a franchise, but that failed as well.

Thirdly he lost his mental sharpness as a result of the above. he was very successful when he was young and had accumulated alot of assets. However he lost a lot of money when he disposed of a few aluable assets just prior to the 2008 boom.

It is however not all doom and gloom la. His 3 kids went on to get almost full scholarships so he only spent less than 100k for their education. Each kid has 2 degrees so pretty good value there. All the kids are also self sufficient and reasonably successful in career, never needing money from him even when buying their first homes.

He is naturally a hawk so the retirement life didn't suit him at all. At 55 he went back to work full time and now runs 3 businesses.

Fully agree. Take full advantage of credit cards, of accumulating points while settling any outstanding debt fully before due date. Credit card is useful only if you can comfortably settle each monthly bill. It's a no no if one tends to accumulate debt.

Last time I had a few cards from different banks to take advantage of various promotion but it was difficult to keep track of payment, leading to some missed payments and penalty charges. 

Nowadays I just use max 2 cards for any transactions above RM50.  All my insurance, utility bills, etc also autodebit to credit cards. 

I think the same too, but there are those who still would not believe in credit cards, probably due to their own spending habits and deficiency in self-control.
I do not spend on anything for my own satisfaction, apart from the necessary groceries. My credit cards are strictly for my own business expenses, and I do no carry forward any unpaid balance because as I have mentioned, I use credit card not because I need the cash, it is just a substitute for cash in return for some perks. Therefore, I do not see my credit card usage as 'debts' as I technically do not owe banks any money over a month.

Thank you very much for the reply.

That's basically how i calculated too. Only thing that worried me most is son's education expenses in the future (everyone saying education inflation gonna be high).
Should I put some money the dual currency investment from a bank?

My plan for record purposes. I've been on a journey of investing since 2007 when I was 20. I opened my first Super account and I had about 70k then invested in shares and also retirement account.

What I realised is that the longer I do this with increasing net worth, the harder it is to achieve a consistent return of even 8% across my investment due to the various investment products and the need to keep track of them. Not to mention the volatility in the market in the last few years really made me doubt if I can achieve the same consistent return of circa 10% before Trump became president.

At 32yo, my household networth is close to 3M. I have an additional 2 investment properties worth about circa RM900k returning at a consistent rate of 4% (equity of about 150k and the rest loan).

Our current total yearly expenses is about 120k/year and household take home is about 250-300k. Last few years was a lot more but this year I've started to take it easy. I however can reasonably expect this go up to about 500k as the wife is flying high in her career.

I personally do not plan to retire (work until at least 75-80) and at my currently work load, I can easily get 10k/month working 3-4 hours a day.

I have a very conservative expectation on my rate of return at only 5-8%/annum and our household can add an additional savings of at least about 100k a year.

At this rate, at 55yo I can expect a future value networth of about RM15-27M (assuming all invested) but with a present value of only RM7-12M based on inflation rate of 3.5%.

Based on the above at 55yo, my present value monthly active income should be RM10k (day-to-day profession), passive income should be a minimum of RM28k (4% FD rate) + rental income (if any). This excludes any inheritance we may/may not receive, but both our parents are very wealthy with networth more than 10M each.

Based on the above, I can reasonably conclude that we do not have to put any more effort into retirement planning and can pretty much go into cruise control. Of course the above do not take into account the vicissitudes of life. However I've been quite conservative in my income projections so hopefully this sets off any potential unfortunate events. We are also very well protected in terms of insurance coverage (about 2.5M life and TPD coverage each) + medical insurance.

At the current point in time, we are very contented with our modest terrace house and 2 non luxury cars. We only focus on doing my job well, spend moderately and enjoy the company of friends and family.