Good. That's the most foundation. After you reach that 20k up you to decide which route you want to go. For me personally I won't bother with EPF.

You did not see the link I provided assuming you have like 20 years until you need to use your money.

See the above. Play with the number. You have to remember your capital is limited. You have very little money. So the only way to make it work is make your money work as hard and as efficiently as possible.
Both works for long term. Only difference is one will give you more money Vs the other.

You can always sell out everything and dump it into EPF to preserve the money.

Keep in mind by investing overseas
1. You protect yourself against the depreciation of ringgit. What this means is your hard earned money goes further Vs just holding ringgit. Ringgit depreciate at around 3%p.a Vs the SGD. So if you earned 5% in EPF, you are effectively only earning 2%p.a Vs if you put into something in SGD earning 5%p.a Yes such thing exist. That's why I use SGD as my EPF vs dumping into EPF.
By me opting for 5% p.a in Singapore, I am getting the true 5%
2. Your ringgit earns more. A 5% Vs 10%p.a double the returns. A 5% different matter over 20 years time period.

Yes returns not guaranteed but by picking EPF you are giving up opportunity cost (money grow faster and more efficiently than EPF) which means more money when you need it.

Do you need the money now Vs 20 years down the road. Ask yourself this question.

You can listen, you can ignore. I don't get anything either way. I was in your shoes before this. Focusing on just FD promos amanah saham cause scared to lose money. I realise early on I am losing more money by being safe.

Not really. If you know how. Yes there will be feess if around 3% as banks want your money what. But there are ways to minimise the fees.

But when you invest overseas, you do not touch the money for 20-30 years until you need to use the money. Treat your money as one way ticket. Never been seen again for next 20 years. Yes that is what I did and still doing. If you itchy hand put money this month then bring money back next month or few months down the road, guaranteed way of losing money due to forex movement and you are removing your money tree too soon. Once it is overseas leave it.

My advise collect RM50k in Malaysia first for safety reason before decide your next action..

If you are 55 years old next year, don't bother with tnf and nonsense. Use EPF s you can withdraw money anytime at 55 years old. If you are still far away then you need to decide if you want to lock up your moeny into EPF and cannot touch them for 10y+ (you mentioned you are 40+)

Spend as little as possible.
Try to do overtime where necessary.
Invest your money so they work as efficiently and as hard as possible.

Well there are several ways to do this... if you are already more than 55

https://www.kwsp.gov.my/en/member/life-stag...5-60-withdrawal

Else if you are 50-54

https://www.kwsp.gov.my/en/member/life-stag...e-50-withdrawal

The easiest is via i-Akaun. Just register and activate by visiting your local EPF center to be save. It can be done at home but if you / your dad often visit the counter best do it at the center to clear out any questions on how much he can withdraw and the limit for each withdrawal.

Once registered and activated, you can do the withdrawal anytime anywhere via online or via the app on your phone. The money will be transferred into the bank account (with the same name as the EPF account) usually within 3 days.

You can actually try now by withdrawing a little from your Flexible Acc 3 just to test the water on how to do it.

Not easy to summarise everything in a post. So I would say it’s really a mindset change.

Maximise your active income potential, then invest the extra money that you have after living expenses.

What kind of investment? You need to read some books first, then start to ask more specific questions.

Look into chainlink.

Unker here as well. grind hard to try earn money but feel useless. Even when make extra RM500 per month also barely make a difference. See ppl recommend etf, qqq, voo, BTC, Eth, angmoh ppl say they buy every two weeks every month few thousand USD, EUR, then see exchange rate walao RM500 is barely USD100 cant even buy 1 share. Like playing a game on hidden hard mode difficulty where your earnings divided by 4.3x.

Sometimes lose hope like no point. Unless you are in stem field or earning first world currencies or got gov pension the most you can do is to slow down the inevitable by buying few hundred ETF every year. Othe than that the other way is to sell scam products for commission. Otherwise, everyone else is just doomed to gov handouts and charity to survive. Sometimes just hope for quick n early death no need to deal with old body and failing health when broke.

While others were joking around and flirting with women, what I did in my 20s was that I went mad into mastering industrial skillsets off working hours...

What people have it wrong is that they assumed they needed to be paid at work to attend training... what you should do is to go on your own and self-study outside to climb higher...

You need to be a know-how to be truly valuable anywhere... I paid the price of doing grime work at B40 in my younger days, staying under the radar until I was truly a master...

And in this current era, I probably possess one of the most rarest coding skillset that is common, but often under-utilized in the digital marketing, MarTech (Marketing Technology / data science) and frontend development world... This took me into the M40 group..

In the Australian MNC I work in currently, I am more skilled than any of the international peers I work with, and I am more technically-skilled than my own senior here, which she does find me very daunting and that I rendered her useless...   

Life

Talking about life, as how things would have it for me, I do not come from a wealthy family and worked full-time while waiting for my high school graduation... But the total experience led me to set everything in proper order and I was more matured and self-aware than my own peers...

Investing

You need to stabilize your income and character first before going into investing...

Service

Once you possess any form of skillset that can truly set apart yourself from the market, you are ready to sell yourself out for a service... I have done this routinely until now...

Master a field... only then you will get into technical, or even invention level... Bloom's taxanomy...

Without specialisation, you are a master of none...

And please exercise more... You need more physical activity and put that focus constantly on yourself, than on outside thoughts... Train your mind to do so...

Frankly, if you're B40 there's not much use in investing. You should focus on increasing your income which will leapfrog any earning you can make via savings/investment.

Assuming you have some skill/talent at the moment. You should focus on letting people know your talent. Do good work and get your reputation up.

The best way to do this is to network, join events, meet people, increase opportunity. If you have to do some free work, just do it first. Your name has to get out there and be synonymous with quality and reliability.

From there your income will grow naturally. Then you can easily put money aside for investments.
Jack of all trades, and master of none
but often times better, than the master of one

^ That's the full quote.

Unless you're going to be the 0.001% of specialisation, normally the jack of all trades approach gives you better adaptability.

The emergency fund is important to have, its not an investment. Its a buffer for hard times, which you should try to avoid in the first place.

Please, DO NOT CHASE MONEY. Chase the fulfilment and output of your work, let the money come as a by product of that.

You have to consider the opportunity costs of every action you take. Sure you could work part-time promoter for some extra income. Earn a bit more money, or; you could use that same time and join events and get to know people with money/projects to do.

In 1-5 years, which do you think will give you a better outcome?

Actually the fundamentals is how much you can keep.
If your earnings is capped like mine cannot do anything.
Also can't save yourself out to financial security. Still need to invest.

If you're earning 2k/month, realistically how much can you save (if there's any money left after paying everything else) to invest? The time/effort is better used to increase your income.

Once you start earning more and can actually save (no lifestyle inflation), then investment becomes a viable option.

I'm not sure why you think your earning is capped, there's always ways to make/earn more. The only difference is where the diminishing returns start to happen. Going from 2k -> 4k is life changing. Going 10k-12k isn't that much difference. The former is also much easier to achieve.

Ts, i suggest u shut off social media and keep quiet for few days.

You are:
1) Overwhelmed. Calm down.
2) Negative thinking about yourself.

In these few days just treat yourself kindly. Make hot tea and sip it slowly in your balcony, garden, open area. Sleep early 10am, wake up early 5am.
No social media
No social media
No social media

Return back to your thoughts on finance once u are calm.

Yes. Live within your means, and when you earn more... don't increase your spending. Just keep the same lifestyle as you were with your lower income.

Lets say you are earning 4k now. Maybe you can save RM400 at the end of the month. Good, just keep saving that RM400. Then work harder to increase your earning. Then once you earn 6k/month, your savings per month should have increased to ~RM2,400

With that much margin in saving, your emergency fund would be settled quick. Then you can easily use that RM2k+/month for investment.
Working hard is important, but taking care of health is even more important.

You either choose when you rest, or life will choose it for you. If you let life choose for you, the timing will never be at a good time.

Get your pain checked, the location of pain is often not the root cause.

Here's a little tip. You need to set a more tangible goal to execute. Learning Figma in your free time while good, is just too general and very hard to gauge your progress to stay motivated.

Give yourself a one week challenge: Redesign the lowyat forum for mobile screen and in dark mode. Think and do UI/UX mockups, no need to be fully functional. At the end, you have an extra piece of work to show off in your portfolio.

The next week you can try implementing it in Figma and so on. Slowly build up your portfolio this way. In the creative field, a strong portfolio can get your further than just software skills.

Good luck, unker.

Different people have different B40 definition since its based on household.

How much your salary. If 3000++ net then ok already lar

You need both width and depth... You need width to complement the depth that's needed to go further...

If you're learning to do Figma, you'd end up learning about A/B testing, and also marketing psychology, complementing frontend marketing (UX conversions, writing and big data implementation onto your design) if it's for servicing / eCommerce sites...

There's a little bit of everything involved (data science, colourisation, SEO web developers' guideline, or programming limitation - if any workaround is asked)... But to truly go further, you need specialisation...

You get to apprehend bullshit that's thrown at you in case of workplace manipulation...

This sets you apart from the average job hopper...
Follow what Ramjade says... Legit guy on investing...

Best of luck, OP...

Graphic design do part time can make up to RM20k per month. Start sourcing jobs from SME like annual report etc.
No AI can replace graphic design so far, still got a long way to develop.