FI/RE is not a bad thing, nor it is a bad philosophy in life. Life is more than just work, and if a person is able to find that they have the capability to RE at age 40, it should be nothing short of an achievement for them. It could be a new generation way of thinking, rather than baby boomers whose mentality was to work to retirement at 60. With regard to whether this mentality will hurt the society and economy, this is very ambiguous.

My opinion on RE on how it will hurt the economy is only when and if these people who RE underestimated their financial capability, exited the workforce too early and find out few years down the road that their skills and experience are outdated hence unable to find employment again resulting in the need to depend on the govt to support them.

For those people who want to FI/RE, you should be able to meet a certain criteria :
1) Have certain skills and knowledge within your industry that when you retire, other companies will want to leverage on your experience that they will pay consultation fee, or employ you as a part time consultancy

2) Made certain connections that other companies would want you on their BOD as a non-executive director to manage the due diligence of company management

3) Have a stable recurring private business that no longer require your day-to-day management, e.g. petrol station, 7-eleven (convenience store) branch, fast food branch, laundromat (debatable).

4) Have multiple real estate portfolios (all paid up) that will net you a sizeable rental income. NOTE : if your real estate has a loan, its pointless - only count those with full loan settled, and giving you a net return. Besides real estate, you can also count on other types of investment assets like bonds, shares, REITS with a substantial value (total est , hmmm , maybe RM 5 million and above?).

For those that do not tick these criteria, please forget about FI/RE. The reason? It's because those that have FI/RE envision themself to be able to live a comfortable and stress free life where they can dine and enjoy themselves day to day with no worries on their expenditure - travelling and what not. For those who say they want to RE on a 2k-3k monthly income, may I ask what can you do with your life? In order to live within those means, you will have to live thriftily - you definitely wont be able to enjoy your retirement as you have planned. You will be so conscious with your expenditure that the rest of your retirement life will be drab and boring - then you will realise that actually being in retirement is not that fun.

I previously mentioned the conditions to FI (RE if you achieved this at a younger age). Above is exactly the condition you have to meet in order to become FI - as in the case of @Showtime747 it is having multiple businesses (should be stable and recurring) and a significant enough amount of investable asset (which in this case provides capital gauranteed but stable returns - when you have a large enough investable asset, even a lower percentage return is enough to let u live handsomely).

When you are FI/RE, you will realise that you have more time on your hand and will slowly be bored of your lifestyle, sometimes even your hobbies won't be enough to fill up your time. Those FI/RE will actually prefer to work part time - meaning they are either high ranking/or owner that they don't have to be bounded at their desk 9-5 - i believe this is the true meaning of RE, whereby you can still work but under your own terms. So if you want to go golf at 10am and go into office at 2pm you can do that. You don't have to be completely retired.

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?

Oh okay, then its fine. Lowyat has alot of sensitive people like me. Anyhow here's PR requirement for you knowledge https://australmigrate.com/australian-pr-benefits/

When you are FI or as actually as people feel awkward of acknowledging, rich - meaning that you are a successful person (good career or business). I think this is an even bigger motivation to the kids that if they work hard, they too can achieve something of that status.

Those that laze around at home , not doing anything - they are not FI. They are just bums who think they can get through the rest of their life on that little savings they saved up.

This post has been edited by cfkoon: Sep 14 2018, 12:20 PM

You are not getting the point. If you are really FI, you will have many source of income to keep yourself busy - instead of just "bumming" at home. Managing your finance at that stage can even take up alot of your time - besides that you will probably have lots of friends and partners in the business trade. That is what happens when you are truly FI.

If you are just bumming around yr home not doing anything - you are just RE, think you can barely be FI. If you think just "working" for 20 years is enough to be FI, think again.

I agree Sydney (even it being the most exciting city in Australia) and in general Australia, can be pretty boring at night. There's practically no night life! Malaysia definitely has more things to keep you busy with at night compared to Sydney.

I studied and stayed in Sydney for 4 years and I can only survive through because I had sports, uni friends who stayed nearby, and studies to keep me busy.

I believe even if Garysydney has friends, i think you meet them prob once a week or so, and at your age don't think you all can do much exciting activities right haha.

Now that you mentioned it, you know its bad when some of my weekly activities that I look forward to is shopping at Woolies

But nevertheless I still kind of like the Sydney lifestyle - beach, sun, laidback lifestyle, though you don't get as great food there. I think spending half/half between the two countries would be a good choice.

Someone that don't earn substantially. Category : Unemployed.

I see you can't detect sarcasm.

I doubt you will be able to "earn substantially" if you are bumming out at home. Not a trait of successful FI people.

Haha im sure all you ever do is "heard" of it. Try achieving it first, then you can find me to discuss more yeah

But with someone bumming out at home, maybe the fella can only ever "hear" about it.

Ah its been quite a number of years but I still reminisce about lifestyle back in Sydney, there's pros and cons. However I do expect my working lifestyle to be very different from my time back then, I would even say 9-5 and then nothing to do at night.

Nice food you mentioned, but yeah I don't think they are that great, best is probably DTF (and they cost a bomb) DTF malaysia much better (more suited to our tastebuds) but any random Chinese restaurant can match the ones in Sydney. For my malaysian fix, I normally went to Mamak (and around Chatswood) and I also heard a few Msian restaurants opened up around town. Ayam Goreng 99 is also one my fav (but its far for me - I went to Macq U , Macq Park)

Regardless, nothing beats Msia, nowadays we have so many varieties besides the "traditional" Msia food - that you just cant get anywher else.

Yeah very good food there. Food is more Indo/Msia - but has that classic Msia taste.

When you are young and ambitious, it will always never seem enough - I blame it on the expensive car prices in Malaysia. If prices were just the same as what we get in other markets (after exchange rate) could easily just get Ferrari and be happy with it.

When you are older, money is no longer a priority I guess.

Your life experience is a pretty good lesson to those who are trying to plan for FI/RE but being young and hasty, they dive straight into risky ventures (not to say risky assets but risky decision making). Such as those, for example, that plan to take out multiple loans for real estate with intention to sublease and make a fortune. Personally I have experience whereby someone did exactly that, and then realised they could not afford the monthly loan repayments, but did not want to lose their investments and took on personal loans to "cover" short term (which of course spiralled after that). So yeah, when you see some people foolhardily "lay out" their plans to achieve FI

Anyway those were the days where the financial market are less regulated and documented. In todays time, after 2 financial crisis - the markets are more stringent than ever (I even had a tough time applying for a CC credit even though I had shown that my assets were many times over the credit limit I applied - this Malaysia i tell you)

Talking about gen z, see the kids these days - prob their family are just average earners but they live their life as if they are princes. See the spending on clothes and shoes (most of them are still in uni) one piece of shirt - 1k , shoes 2k-3k each. Everyday can go cafe and dessert place one dish rm30.
They want to be FI/RE? slowly wait for magic to happen.

This post has been edited by cfkoon: Sep 21 2018, 03:33 PM

I find this too general, too simple advice (as you have said is not a spoon-fed enough answer) as its not clear enough. If I'm reading this as a youngster, this does not guide the decisions that they make in life that will allow them to reach FI. Also most of them are far off from retirement, so basically what they want is to be rich enough that they can not worry about their spending habits.

My take on this view :

1. 20-30 years old - Work hard, climb up the corporate ladder, increase your income while trying to maintain and minimize expenses. If you really start from nothing, work hard - try to live in a responsible way, gather experiences and invest in yourself (knowledge, connections) - don't waste your time and money to go clubbing, bar everyday (socializing once in a while is fine, connections made), spend money on expensive shit, having extravagant weddings.

Also, don't invest in real estate too early, I've seen sooo many peers trying to buy their first house too young (25-30years old) either for own use/ for "investment" - only burdening yourself with liabilities (instead of growing your invest-able income, you are now forced to pay interest on your loan)

2. 30-40 years old - Armed with greater financial income (higher position, better salary, good amount of savings/investments). Now this is where compounding can really work in your favour - faster rate to keep growing your money. Better investment options, more opportunities, chance to increase avenue of income. Of course expenses would have also increased with bigger responsibilities, but as always money management comes into affect here.

3. 40-50 years old. Pay off house loans, get rid of existing debts (or only take in Positive debt - meaning you can work that money better than what you pay on the loan). Even have opportunity to start a business. You may be nearing the end goal of your FI/RE.

Can't talk too much of going into 30 - 50 range, maybe others has better idea and opinions about this.

It all comes back to contentment, which was previously discussed. Depending on your own personal expenses, even RM2k-3k can be FI for a person who only spends like RM 1.5k-RM2k a month. And if the person is happy then so be it, to each their own life haha.

But most of our discussions should be focused towards those "youngsters" whose view on FI/RE will be to passively earn RM20k a month, living the good life - travel with no worries, spending everyday weekend on fine dining (imo even if everyday, you will get bored of fine dining, no one will want to fine dine everyday ) drive nice car, live luxurious life. So thus our discussions will be catered for this audience.

This post has been edited by cfkoon: Sep 24 2018, 04:35 PM

Regardless of high income tax in Aus, residents get so much more back in terms of welfare, safety, public amnesties. If I am able to trade 10% of my salary for those things in Aussie (well not Malaysia of course, because you know, Malaysia is still a lazy country and likes doing substandard work) such as public safety, well maintained roads, health benefits - I will gladly pay more to beautify my standard of living. This is the MAIN difference between a second class country like Malaysia and first class country like Aussie.



Back to FI/RE topic, its very simple bro there are many ways to invest in yourself and by that I mean in knowledge and skills. There are many life skills that one can obtain to further improve your financial position. For eg if you are already an Undergrad, you can choose to pursue an MBA during weekends or weeknights. Then in those MBA classes you may be able to meet new friends and connections who all wants to better themselves, they may be 'atas' or not 'atas' (and don't underestimate others, just because they have not succeeded in life now does not mean they might not 10 years down the road - don't meet people with ulterior motives , smart and rich people can sniff those out in a second). Invest in connections means you can be friends with them now and 10 years later you realise that you are lucky to maintain relationship with the guy.

I know lot of young guys want to meet ppl with "good connections" and "winning mentality" but then realistically you have to ask yourself. Why would your peers who are successful (lets say rich too) want to get to know you? Rich successful people want to stick among rich successful guys. Its a tough world, now you have to think - what can you bring to the table (truthfully not everything resolves around money) that allows you to enter to their circle of friends. For eg. lets say you are a doctor (but of course at this age, you have not achieved much) - but you have good knowledge in medicine. When you mix around more "atas" ppl , you can give them free medical advice, give them a quick checkup - and then they will start to think ok this guy may not be successful atm , but he has good medical skills and knowledge. Now 10 years down the road, you are a specialist doctor - now opportunities may arise , those friends who you have been in your circle decides to invest in you and start a franchise clinic - BOOM you are their no.1 choice. Now the same can be said of many other skills and knowledge (accountant, you can help them do tax, architect - you can help them to do free house design - example here la - i don't think i can spoonfeed more, the rest you think yourself.

For side topic, im gonna be realistic here, if you come from average family with not so great background meaning your parents aren't going to be leaving you much (or you may have to support them) then that means you have to work 2x or even 3x as hard. If you are 20-30 and you want to be FI/RE by 30/40 it's going to be tough, you may have to wait till you are 50/60. What you can do? Take on a couple jobs, if you are banker during the day (invest and study computer science at night) then you can part time do projects for others. or study photography and you can take on a couple of photoshoots at low price (so this is what is known as hustling).