I'm 41. Working and staying in KL and in IT line. Earning 5 figure salary.

Like everyone else at a young age we didn't really care about the end game future after college graduate because we've just completed our studies and ready to embrace the world and contribute to it in hopes of making a mark on the world and help to improve it. The only future as far we would think of is where i would want to work, how much money i can make and how do i upskill myself and experience in order to improve my value as a skilled worker.

And sometime in the middle of the road, you think that you've gotten enough to settle in comfortably with some small chunk savings in the bank account. And you start to look for a gal and continue to spend spend spend to find the one true woman in your life and then you marry and spend spend spend to pay off your marriage debts and then settle down. Then you have kids and then a big chunk of your money is tied down just support that 1 baby and you end of spend spend spend to grow that child of yours in hopes it can grow up in a blink of an eye and support you when you're old.

One thing we tend to forget is that we're in the RAT race the moment we're born. It does not start when we're starting to work. You grow up, you go to kinder garden, you go to primary school, you go to secondary school, you go to college, you go to work.  On some extend some people would diverge either not going to secondary school nor not going to college but they all end up working at the end to sustain their lives. So tell me how many of you fall into these 2 categories.

If you're not then you've really made it at a really young age due to some good luck on your side or some good backing and support from family members financially to kick start some business which you might have had in mind.
Then that means your time is more valuable than mine and i'll save you the trouble of stopping here and move on to other threads which you find interesting. This article would be some one who went through a common rat race situation and still in their midst of building their wealth till they reach retirement age.
On the point of retirement age:

Everyone has their own opinion on what is the age to retire. And the key driver to getting this answered is how much have i made that i can afford to sustain my current living lifestyle with the saving i have and "till how long does i want this savings to sustain me till".

Don't forget that life expectancy in our area, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia has been increasing in the last 5.5 decades .

1960 = life expectancy
MY = 59.47
SG = 65.66
ID = 48.65

2015 = life expectancy
MY = 75.3
SG = 82.86
ID = 69.19

So by right you should aim for a life expectancy of 100 just to be save. Clean water, and improved medication has contributed to the factor of longer life expectancy and not forgetting better quality of food. It might seems 80 is the right target to aim for in Malaysians but i would suggest to aim higher due to the following further facts, cancer cure is around the corner, doctors are near a breakthrough in finding gnome which responsible for aging and are trying to slow that mutation, implementations of AI into medicine industries which helps diagnose symptoms of deadly deceases more quickly and accurately. Enhancements in nano medical, robotics/cybernetics in medical industry. Cryogenics for those who is now thinking whats the use of living till such an old age without any means to spend it. Well if you have kids, wealth is passed on so they don't need to ensure the hardship like you did and if you feel like much of that person who like to donate one large sum of money anonymously to any charity foundation. You can always opt to freeze your body and bring you back to life in next 50-100 years when they finally find a cure for aging. So age 100 would be the best and safest bet.

Again, if you've already f*ed up yourlife in K*ing, Cheoing and fagging and boozing like no other people almost on a daily basis then, feel free to keep it to 80 or less (whatever your health tells you)

So with the above i've already answered the "RE" part of things. In summary if you can't

Lets get to the juicy "FI" part. [U]

Again : A disclaimer here as this is merely my opinion and it's not financial advice. All statements here are given based on what I've observed or read and based on my knowledge and capacity in the investment field and macro economics.

When investing , 3 things you need to understand. Real wealth is not the money which you've accumulated in currency either in FIAT (paper). Real value or real wealth is measured on the item itself whether it holds any value without any foreign intervention.

Hence 3 things comes into mind :-
1). Commodities (gold, silver etc)
2). Health ( healthcare)
3). Consumer discretionary (Consumer consumables)

This would be a good general portfolio to focus as a base on any stocks or ETF investments.
Why the above 3? Well

Point 1 (Commodities), the actual product has hold it's value by itself even without a need to have others dictate the value because gold itself inherently has value. (Anything which is originated from the ground has inherit value). And humans has been using it for ages as barters from silver/gold coins till bartering a kilo of carrots etc.

Point 2 (Health), Improvements of researches and big pharma's involvement in racing for cures like Cancer , AIDS etc, would increase the need for health and medications. Also the earth with it's global climate changes will severely impact human population in the next 30-50years. It's already affecting us in asia where population of China is expected to decrease by 31mil from now till 2050. Ebola (found in circa 1976), Aids (1983), were all within 5 decades in some of our live times. There are more deadly strains which is slowly creeping up around the corner and for this period is the H1/H5 strain and also MRSA superbug which the next generation would need to come up with a cure.

Point 3 (Consumer goods), 2050 there would be about 11Billion people in the world. Are there enough food to feed the population. Thats why scientist are coming up ingenious ways to close these gaps through verticle farming and repopulating deserts , creating fake meats as a substitute. etc. Do you think there is enough food to go around for 11bil people during that time?. Not factoring climate changes and already crops and foods grown are beginning to take a tol due to climate changes. Not only scientist and farmers need to supply food to the population but they also need to ensure their current production yield is not impacted.

This is a good start for people who wants to start investing if they want to pick stocks individually. You can pick the above as a good start and invest then in other stocks like apple or google etc.. if you like technology type stocks. For me i personally dont invest in individual stocks. I'd rather go towards ETFs or SP500 in this case just to ensure 1 company falls it does not impact intirely on my position.

Main thing is to invest early as possible. And stay disciplined to it.
Remember : Compounding is referred as the 7th wonder of the world. - Einstein

The last 60% of the compounding comes in the last 5 years. So this is open to those who only has patience and discipline.
Remember : You can make 1 baby in 1 month by impregnating all 9 women's at once. - Warren B.
With every investment there is always some risk involves with higher returns. Only invest what you can afford to lose. So maybe on the save side, 70% (stable low risk eg, epf/FDs,PRS) 25% ( medium risk eg, unit trust,stocks,ETFs) 5% (high risk , which intails everything that falls under luck or at least 80% based on luck goes into this bucket eg, 4D, genting gambling, sports betting, forex, binary trading, bitcoin etc).

Things that i dont do:

a). I dont move my EPF cash into other financial institution in hopes of making more high profits than what's EPF is capable off.

b). I don't move EPF money out to pay forr my house loan, car loan etc. Whatever house loan you have opted for would have been based on your capacity to pay it during that period of time of assessment based current salary and age. If the house is just too high and you're trying to stretch yourself to pay for it then DON'T!!. And if you're thinking of using EPF money to cover some of that loan, DONT!!.. EPF is your last stance between you being able to survive not working or being a begger at the streets. Money in EPF is much safer than bank which guarantees up to 250k (PIDM) in an event of lost or foreclosure.  Maybe a way to keep in bank is not anything above 250k, and if you go above it, just open a new account in another bank and bank in the remaining.

c). I dont put money in Fix Depo. It's just a bladdy waste of time and doesn't allow the flexibility to take out at any time. Rather put into medium risk based investment

Good place to get a real practical calculator for retirement is at the link below:-
https://www.ppa.my/retirement-calculator/

One thing to note is that their inflation rate is 3% per annum. That means in 10 years it would be 30%, in 20years it would be 60%. and in 30 years it would be 90%. This is also very basic calculation where I've not even factored in compounding where the following years inflation increase of 3% is based on current price of an item. Also I've not adjusted for any fluctuation of inflation itself.

Yes it's a very scary thing to think about and i'm reading in this thread that people with 500k is talking about retirement or people with 1mil is talking about retirement. I dont know about you guys, but the real value of "FI" in my terms would be having some hard cold tangible cash about 5mil MYR. If the value of fiat has devalued by by over half, you would still have 2.5mil of actual held value to keep you going till ur remaining days. Of course some investment in the above 3 categories especially the commodities section would help hedge against these inflations.
Well that's my 2 cents folks. All the best lighting up on FAIIYAHHH.....