FIRE is just a sugar coated excuse or reason or justification for people to go through hardship at work. A carrot or a dream dangled in front of people for them to go through the present moment with a hope of a much better future.

Some calls it scam cause it's a long journey, 10 - 20 years down the road. A lot of things can & will happen in between. You may or may not obtain the carrot/dream or perhaps you may partially achieve what you wanted. Nevertheless, it's still a good motivation tool for people who are still headless chickens at work.

As mentioned by others already, the key is to strike a balance between FIRE & YOLO. Those are 2 extremes has been around since ancient time. It's probably known as something else back then & most likely be called something else in the future. So find your balance or your middle path between the 2 extremes. Everyone's middle path is different, there's no 1 single middle path for all. So those who are more tilted towards FIRE, stop imposing your ideals/beliefs onto those who are more tilted towards YOLO. Same goes to those who are more tilted towards YOLO, don't pressure those who are more tilted towards FIRE. Everyone's different.

For those who complain job sucks, boss sucks, client sucks, work sucks, I'm unlucky, s/he is fortunate etc etc. Learn to seek for answers within rather than blaming everyone & everything else. More often than not, the solution is within - just need to look & work on it.

But your accounting freelance is basically trading your extra time for money no? Your time is 24 hours a day only. So there's some sorta limit (aka not so scale-able), unless your increase your earning per hour rates. How practical is it to achieve 1:3 day job to freelance income ratio?

Take it with a pinch of salt, but from my observation....accountants or whoever working in the finance department can climb up quite obviously. The CFO from my last MNC company climbed his way through from a normal exec from the Big 4. I noticed the same trend for those working in the accounts department in each of my previous employment. The key difference is, the one that tends to climb up very quickly exhibits very obvious leadership characteristics on top of being good at their work.

What I'm suggesting is, increasing your daytime job income via self-improvement should be the better path instead of increasing freelance income as the opportunity is much better no? If you suck at your daytime job, chances of you suck at your freelance is kinda likely too no? Both daytime job & freelance is basically trading your time for income.

IMO, the function of freelance is to gain extra pocket money or something to keep your mind active when you retire at 60.

RM300 per 3 hours, assuming you spend 3 hours each working day, that’s RM6k per month assuming you have roughly 20 clients. RM9k per month assuming you work 30 days for 30 different clients, right?

If you climb up the ladder, you could earn more than your freelance & network with higher profile people. The higher you go up, the higher level people you get to meet. Attend annual budget seminar = meet more high leveled people from your industry. Manage a whole department = network with other head of departments & more.

That’s why I was throwing some food for thoughts for you to reconsider growing your day job income instead of being too focused on your freelance. But don’t get me wrong, doing freelance is great too. Just that depending on what you’re planning to achieve at the end of your career, balance out between day job & freelance.

The amazing wonders of having a more open mind; you’ll learn really fast from various different perspectives.

Yes it's a great stepping stone indeed. Agree with you, the key is to find the balance between both that can help achieve their personal long term plan; whether to become a highly positioned person in the corporate world before retiring into a freelancer or to leave corporate world earlier & build own accounting firm.

Seems like the opportunity presented at you now is gearing you towards existing corporate life earlier to pursue your own accounting firm
Opportunity comes & goes, capitalize on it while the window is still open.

Have you met or do you have client from the retail world?

Yes. As your property price increase, rental should increase in tandem too. But in reality it's not always the case. Buy & Sell market is often different from Rental market.

Some places, people dislike buying those properties but lotsa people wanna rent. So the rental rates increase, you can sometimes collect more rent than the monthly installment. On the other spectrum, there are places that people prefer to buy instead of rent. So the rental rates are low while the transacting price is high, this is a losing end for landlords.

Don't use invoicing software? You're referring to softwares like Autocount, MYOB, Peachtree or cloud ones like Financio, Biztory & QuickBooks? Then each & every sale will have an physical invoice generated? Only half of my sales have invoices i.e. sale to other businesses (B2B). While my B2C sales don't have any physical invoices. So ideally even my B2C should have an invoice too for my own recording & filing?

Yes I am facing a huge problem tracking my cost, especially to determine my COGS. My COGS fluctuates so regularly to the point that in my inventory, even for the same identical product, they has different COGS because they're bought at different periods. Is there any method to solve this challenge with MS Excel? Barcoding may solve this issue because each item details can be captured & tracked. But woah, the software alone will cost several thousand, the printer will cost several hundred & the stickers will cost few hundreds too. Then not to mention the labor cost to stick the barcode on all the products during inbound phase

Rather than calling it a rule of thumb, I'd prefer to call it an ideal scenario
It really depends on what you're trying to achieve; capital gains from flipping or steady income from rental. Those aiming for

A lot of people shares the same rule of thumb like you too, met a lot of them already. That's why you see sometimes a unit is left empty for so long without tenant cause the landlord stubbornly refuse to rent below their monthly installment despite most other landlords around them are renting at a significantly lower price. Mostly is due to ego la haha & they're super rich anyway with multiple units around KL vacant. They easily can afford to go tenant-less for years, I was so so so tempted to become their property manager to earn some pocket money from short termed tenants until they get a long term tenant

If you're in the property market, you'll know which developer's project can buy & which developer to ignore one la. Some developers are indeed hopeless, so don't need waste time with their projects. Especially those that are busy promoting in the malls & every property events. Good projects will be half sold already before launching - internal staffs including the boss & all their friends will sapu first.

I bought a brand new property in Shah Alam for RM180k, been collecting rental 20% higher than my monthly installment. After RPGT is gone, hopefully can sell RM300k+ & snowball to next project.

Ho mai gaddd.....that's basically a manual barcode method aka stone age barcoding
Only viable for those al-cheapo misers lol, this method will make accountant smile but retailer puke Looks like for this issue, somebody have to puke - either the accountant or the retailer

Ok, I'll put more thoughts into it & see if can innovate something from there or not

If you're not a flipper, then find those places that you foresee people would prefer to rent than to buy. Then the rental market will increase & hopefully exceed the monthly installment. Yes it's mainly the market forces in action.

Hang on, I'm lost half way there cause I suck at accounting - need more layman terms
Basically when I buy, I add in the actual cost incurred value into the inventory?
But when I sell, i minus off an average cost instead? If that's the case, the figures won't tally no even when I sell off the whole inventory? Cause a variable cost is added in while a fixed cost is minus-ed out.

Thanks! I'll research further into that, hopefully it won't be too confusing to me

As mentioned by @MUM, it depends on several factors. Is it doable? Yes of course but is it wise? That's something to consider.

Car loan is a very straight forward one, due to its fixed interest (nominal interest rate). So if you can generate more ROI than your car loan's Interest Rate, then just keep the car loan & continue using your extra funds to generate better returns. Can service your loan & can even get some extra pocket money for yourself.

Home loan is a bit different cause the rates aren't fixed, it's a bit more complex but same logic applies: If you can generate better ROI than your loan's interest rate, keep the loan & use the extra funds to generate more money for you.

There's good debts & bad debts, understand the difference & learn to leverage on good debts to bring you higher. A lot of people here has the mentality that debts = bad bad bad. Hope this opens up your vision a bit.

You'd be surprised, there are quite a number of experienced veterans or retirees around. I've met a few already, it's quite easy to tell based on the way their write.

Macro economics = seeing things in a very big picture.

If more & more people are being miser or "living frugal", generally the economy will go bearish as majority population are holding onto their hard earned money. Money is something that's meant to be passed around, hence the term "currency". The more it moves, the economy will grow. Government implements either expansionary or contractionary fiscal policies to drive up to or lower down the economic growth.

Ultimately the FIRE trend will burn back at the same people who practices it if more & more people follow suit, making it a trend until it affects the macro-economy. Lesser spending leads to lesser economic growth. Lesser economic growth leads to possible deflation or worse; stagflation. Then investors gain lesser & lesser from their investments, pushing their FIRE goals further & further. In the worse case scenario, investing yields nothing & saving loses its value every minute.

FIRE is only ideal in a bullish economy. Where majority of the people are spending & actively contributing to the economy. That's when lotsa bank/govt borrowing is happening, driving up cost of funds & pushing up the market's ROI rates. When the ROI is high, investors' portfolio flourish as well.

So the whole concept of FIRE or the number of FIRE people are kept in balance by the market forces. When too many people jumped on the FIRE bandwagon, the economy goes bearish. Hence, pushing people's FIRE goals further or forcing FIREd people back into the workforce - essentially reducing the number of FIRE people.

Just take it with a pinch of salt. The people around this particular sub-forum tend to be of certain type or mindset. So quite a number of ideas/opinions/suggestions/statistics given here are leaning towards a particular area only. Even within LYN, if you move to other sub-forum, you'll notice the mindset can totally change.

A lot of people in KL & greater KL manage to live decently with RM2-3k per month.

Cost of living in Aussie is higher indeed, I was living there for 2 years or so
Poor days will have Maccies, Subway or pizza from some random shop. Average days can afford some Asian takeaways & rich days can go Western cuisine.

Over here, Maccies is rich kid food & Subway is nearly twice the price of Maccies

It changed name already?

It’s basically socializing & networking. As mentioned already, it’s more about what value can you bring to the table?

Life is pretty much giving first before getting anything in return, really like an investment i.e. you have to cough out some money first as capital before getting any returns. So invest in networking too e.g. join seminars or some paid events/functions to meet with certain people. If you’re cheap, start with free events first. Just staying caved up in your house & office ain’t gonna bring you anywhere.

So once you’re meeting people, your first investment paid off. What’s next? How you’re gonna attract people & at least hold a decent conversation? Again, invest in yourself first - personal grooming, skills, knowledge & experience. Thus having a good skill, info & look presentable is important to keep people interested in you.

So once you’re sociable & networking well, keep it up. Continue “meeting up” the high potential individuals more regularly. You wanna socialize with “atas” people, don’t you need you need to “yumcha” in atas or at least slightly above average places? So this cost money too. This is when your lifestyle will grow more expensive as your income grow too. Getting golf club membership, go golfing with CEOs or having access to VIP places, exclusive passes/invites etc etc.

Just start off with free events/function first & work on your basics. As you go along, things will make sense by itself. Most importantly, be sincere & enjoy what you’re doing.

A Sept'19 account that knows "/k's 20k/month". That's 108% a /k dupe & most likely just a kuda.

But there's quite a number of those kinda people here too; blow water kuda. Throw in some high quality bait, kopi pasta materials, plucked some statistic from thin air & kuda all over. Then new users calls them sifu/master. When the account finally ripen, it's ready for aromachong round 2.

Well like you said, just answer sincerely assuming it's real. There's nothing much to lose anyway.

When you said that you don't understand, i thought you don't understand the underlying meaning. But if you're referring to don't understand as in what's wrong, then there's nothing wrong to answer or not. Just personal preference.

You're a kind soul, keep it up as this place needs more people like yourself. There quality here has been dropping over the years.