All, there are active communities in oversea that working on FIRE by hard saving, investing and living below our means.
For sure there are also FI or already RE people in here.

Appreciate to share your experience; Pre-FIRE and Post-FIRE life.

Thanks

#I’m working towards FIRE and currently saving/invest 50-60% of my monthly salary. (On top of this around 20-25% spent for commitment like ASB loans and properties).

Before someone asking, I like to make it clear that I'm currently under full expat package which company provide accommodation, transportation and COLA.

BUT AGAIN, I like to hear sharing from all who working towards FIRE so we can learn in term of planning, lifestyle, achievement, obstacles and etc.

:confused:
mid 20's
started to work 5 years ago in KL after graduating from over seas (only do partime there)
no $$ helps from FAMA
70~80% of income used for investment

invested in properties, from just 3 years ago

have not let go of any properties yet. (so no flipping here)

having a 7 digit net worth....yes net worth

I think it is ok to get loans for the 1st one and 2 properties, assuming the pay is used to sustain the repayment of your first 1 & 2nd properties.
assuming again 10% down payment (100k for 1 million property)

the rental yield of these 2 properties must be definitely very good and stable to be able to get sustained income to get another property ...

thus whatever earned from the 2 properties will be use to get the 3rd property (30% downpayment at 300K for the 1 million property)

then, the rental yield of these 3 properties must be definitely very good and stable to be able to get sustained income to get another properties ...

it is amazing, how much money can be made (7 digits net worth) in 3 years

you hit the jack pot....repeat the cycles few times,, one can buy a village.

  :thumbsup: 
Ramjade....can try follow this?... since you're having some attributes similarity...young, frugal and money saving smart...

I see my post is dubious to many.

Since my studies was fully covered including expenses, whatever I earned part time, i slowly brought back home, its 5 figures in SGD. And no I'm not in some illegal or immoral industry. I worked all sorts of jobs there in whatever spare time I had, photography, crew, promoter, tutor...anywhere from 8-50 sgd an hour type of jobs. Since starting full time work, which started in KL and still is in KL, my income has always been in 5 figure territory. I do not only rely on FD to grow savings that is not invested in props.

1st and 2nd prop is residential, subsequent is commercial. 1st was a mistake, bought from dev, yield is just over 4% which don't even meet the interest: am trying to exit. 2nd was the effort of 8 months of patience, non stop viewing and lowballing sellers until I got a unit more than 6 figures below market value. Believe seller was in dire financial difficulties, and he actually already had an interested buyer, who just wanted to push him another few k down from his asking, I offered to buy at the asking price and got it. Student rental play prop, yield is 9% counted at the market value, more than 10% at the price I got, incl renovate and furnish. I don't think I am not overestimating the value of my props: I take an average of the latest transactions listed on brickz and from the owner group chats.

Sorry to those who feel bad or disbelieve me, I'm being honest, I don't want to boast, I just wanted to inspire some young people my age and its not about the income. Its about the discipline in work, expenses and investments. Some of my work days are as long as 14 hours when I need to. Never buy investments without weeks (or months) of study, made that mistake on my first prop. Never overspend. Some of my friends with 4k income a month probably think I earn less than them, from my lifestyle. I grew up in my grandfathers' attic, sleeping on the floor, eating rice with fruits and veges that me and my grandma stole from neighbours' gardens (sorry guys XD) or expiring old meat that my uncle, a wet market worker, was allowed to bring home. When I see people my age spending 110% of their income, with the 10% from parents or credit, and all the spending going to non investment expenditure, it just pisses me off.

Sometimes I found it funny, property investor took the latest value of the property price and then valued that property at that price, just to make their own net worth higher.

It's like people who keep stocks but valued their stock at selling price instead of the cost price.

Sorry, it looks unrealistic. There's no actual gain but a number for boasting only.

I wouldn't valued my properties at market price.

When you valued your property at market price, then the return from your rental income will drop unless he can raised the rental as he wish. He claims his average rental yield at 6%. Is the 6% yield on his property is based on market price or cost price?
A small Company where I work, I only have 1 account to work on. I will let you guess, how much time I need to finish one month of accounting work?

Company that has less than 1m revenue per year and requires monthly accounts, I can charge at least 300 per month. My time cost is probably less than 3 hours/month.

Now, you know my average fees / hour, do you still think 1:3 ratio is not achievable given the time i have at work and after work.

Edit: The only thing I need more, is the connections. As accounting work is all confidential, I can't go sell my service because I'm unknown to them. Most of my clients is recommended by friends or clients.

You are right that yield will not shown in any net worth statement but it still comes from the properties.

How can you valued your properties at market price and have your yield based on the cost price. Isn't this misleading on the yield?

Are you going to calculate your dividends received against the current stock market value also?

I like the idea of financial freedom/independence, mainly because of the option to quit the job if I want to, no need to hang on to the job just because of the paycheck
This world is realistic, any company can, and will sack anyone if they would like to, as long as they can find a cheaper substitute.
So we have got to have an option for ourselves, i.e., our plan B

Have been working towards it for few years

Don't think RM 1M is enough though, perhaps at least RM 5M, enough to separate a few portions, e.g., 1 for FD, 1 for long term investment and 1 for short term investment or the like (didn't plan for so details as things changes all the time)
Anyway I tihink if can reach RM 5M net capital, then with the ability, there should be no problem at all to be FI/RE and do the things that I want to do

All the best guys

I think those with FIRE mindset are not ambitious. They are contented bunch of people

If you read back the pages, they are talking about RM2k to RM5k per month to retire.

With such small amount, capitalism failed big time.

Coming back to analogy of RE and smoking. You can see the trend of enacting laws that “preventing/discouraging” both acts. Smoking become more and more restricted. And EPF contribution/withdrawing age deferment and extending our official retirement age are being talked about more and more. It doesn’t only happen in malaysia, but all around the world
RE is a trend. And my hypothesis is coming from the Macro-Economics point of view that RE is a selfish act that if a sizeable population RE, it would have an adverse effect on the economy

Again I give you the smoking analogy. You can argue that the smokers population is very small thus the effect to the other non-smoker is negligible. But regardless of the number, smoking is a selfish act. Because it affects people around you. And when half of our population becomes smokers, then it would become a big problem.

I think so too. FIRE although is a trend, but no many people will achieve it.

But in my hypothesis (and remain as a hypothesis), if a sizeable population achieve RE, it would have adverse effect on the economy. It is not a good thing. And a selfish act like smoking

And the root cause of their problem is their disliking of the job. RE is just a get around. Not the true solution

If they have a job they are passionate about, they won’t retire at all 

All in all, what I want to say is FI is a good thing. But RE is a bad thing, both personal or society/economy as a whole

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.

Don't get me wrong - i actually feel quite young at heart.

I look at myself in the mirror and i see a lot of grey hair (i color my hair black but there are a lot of parts where it is hard to color like around the ears so i just leave it as is) - i have even noticed a couple of grey strands on the eye-brows!! It is just that the body is slowing down a lot and we cannot do anything about it!! I even find it hard to get up after i squat down! These are things that makes us feel old. Like in winter here, i have to put a scarf around my neck when i get up in the morning!! I never used to have to do that in my 20/30s!! This is one of the reasons why i want to retire in Msia where it is a lot warmer. I prefer warm to cold (esp nowadays when i am older). Sydney (even though not very cold compared to Melb) is still a bit cold for older residents esp in winter.

He is not confused. Who are you to judge his plans and capabilities when it comes to where he wants to stay or retire. That is entirely up to him whether you like it or not. He already said he prefer to retire in Msia due to warm weather being his preference, but maybe he has to think about uprooting his entire family or such.

Whether or not he has enough resources to do what he wants, its his own matter, he is just sharing his own experience and past. Y

Here's a simple question for you : Can you update yourself on Australian PR Visa requirements before asking dumb questions like having to live in Sydney for half a year to maintain his visa?

Actually both my wife and I prefer to live in Msia. I haven't gone back yet because the preservation age (when you can start accessing your super) for those born in 1962 is 57 which is next year. Both my wife and myself are born in 1962 so both of us can start drawing out our super next year. I would probably try living in KL next year and if we don't like it, we can always come back to Sydney. I have about 40+ weeks of long service leave (which can be taken on half pay to reduce the tax) so i plan to start taking my long service leave around July next year.

I can take close to 2 years (on half pay) of leave before i decide whether i want to return to my job. My wife loves KL (as all her relatives are in KL and she has no relatives in Sydney) and she will probably 'force' me to stay on even if i don't quite like it in KL  . Even on half pay, i will still be getting about rm10k/mth which i calculate should be quite sufficient for both of us. I can draw down a little on my super if that is not enough. My wife also has rental from her 2 apartments in MK which will give her about rm6k/mth net. I suspect we probably won't need to draw on our super until i retire officially after i have exhausted all my leave and long service leave.

We can afford to spend 6mths every year in each country but i find life a lot more interesting in KL esp after retirement (and we have no children). Sydney can be very boring (even though we have plenty of friends here after having lived here for so long) in old age. You see a lot of lonely old people here.

Haha bro, you are definitely young and in a hurry 

At our age, everything is toned down. Not so hot blooded. Final decision can always wait. Gary has already thought of everything for a few years, and will still be thinking until the last minutes ! 

But eventually one day you will be like us....

Bro... He still healthy n below Aus official retirement age. Still many years ahead. Lol

I think it will be a lot easier to achieve FI for singles and couples without kids. Couples with young kids may have to defer the FI timeline by quite a significant number of years esp those parents that are thinking of an overseas education. Kids nowadays cost a bomb and unless you have both partners earning significantly, that figure for achieving FI may have to start with a 6 (i.e. 60s)  . Even though public education is free in Aust, i think i have been able to retire a lot earlier than my peers due to me having no kids.

P's: I noticed there are quite a lot of financial-savvy contributors judging by the comments that have been posted in Finance, Business threads.

I've been reading this thread since the start with much excitement. Especially since I've followed the FI/RE sub-Reddit  for several years now but as others here have mentioned, there isn't much content there focused on the Malaysian context (or at least I've not found it yet)
However, now after 600+ posts, I'm confused on what's the current intent of this thread.

TS's original intent states :
If we are too strict about the topic of FI/RE, then we might as well read articles about it to ensure it is on topic. Forums are great because of the anonymous interactions. The things discussed so far are not exactly off topic as they are relevant to others aspects of FI/RE that may derail the plan to FI/RE. Take away these relevant musings and the topic become very dry.

This post has been edited by aspartame: Sep 21 2018, 09:10 PM

hmm.

for those who already fire.

what you guys do after that. for if no work like no objective in life. lol