How to save money

I recently started to ponder about how I came to saving what I am now.

Rewind back to 2013, this was the year that I decided to move out of my home and rent a place with my bf then.

We were looking at renting a whole flat, and came across one in Teban, near my family home. The rent of 1500 covered 1 living and 2 rooms. 

We signed an agreement to rent for one year. In the end we stayed for two years.

During this time, we also bought a 2nd hand car. It was a Proton wira car.

During this period, I couldn't save much because I was paying around 2k for the rent and car.

When we got married, we bought our hdb in 2016 and also changed our wira to a toyota altis car. Because we could pay the housing loan instalment using cpf, this was when I finally could start to save more.

Now I could save about 45% of my take-home pay. 

I beg to differ with people who advised to sell their place and rent one. Renting takes cash from your pocket whereas buying takes cpf from your pcoket.

To me, cash is king. Cpf can't feed me (cos I am just in my mid 30s) if I lost my job now. Cash can.

So to people who aren't saving alot already, I wouldn't suggest renting a place which takes more cash from you.

job

I think with the impending recession, I should be happy that I have a job. Even though it is not the perfect job, I can still pay my bills because of it. 

In my earlier posts, I wrote about thoughts of quitting my job. But I couldn't because I should not leave without securing a job. 

Everytime I thought of the next job  or my dream job, I can't think of any reason why any employer would employ me. Firstly I am in mid 30s, secondly I do not have the skills nor the experience - one could easily employ 2 fresh grad with the pay I am getting.

With banks carrying out retrenchments, it is even more harder to get into the banking sector.

I am resigned to being stuck at my current job, till I am axed or fired. 

My biggest fear is losing my job. But because of my passive income (from dividends from stock purchases), even if I were to lose my job, the dividends could help to cushion some of my expenditures.

Earlier I did some budgeting, my expenditure is 2k a month. My dividends are around 800 a month. In actual fact even if i were to lose my job, i could survive with a lower paid job - 1500/mth job. Nowadays, job easily pay 2k plus a month.

This gave me some assurance in that I would be able to survive even if my greatest fear come true.

Investing

Is there anything greater in life? What is my purpose here?

I have been pondering these questions for a while. Having read about the stories that people are going through, I wondered where do I want to choose to spend my time on.

I hope to use my ownself as an example of how a normal person can also reach financial freedom.

My goal is to earn at least 2k passive income from stock dividends. Assuming a 3% dividend, this means that I would need a capital of 800k.

Hmmm I am still 3/4 quarters away from this goal. Even if I save 2k a month, it would take me 25 years to reach 600k. I do not think I will live that long. My goal is to hit this before 40 years old, a mere 4 years away. This meant that I would need to invest 12k a month....my take home pay is not even half of this.

Though it is disheartening to learn this, it is a challenge to me to do this and I will think of how to hit this. Aim for the sky and hit the tree.

Ipoh 5D4N trip

My family decided to take a short getaway to Ipoh from 1-5 Oct 2019.

Why Ipoh? Because it is just 1 hr flight away from Singapore. Previous times that we went to Ipoh, we hire a private hire to drive us all the way from Singapore to Ipoh, this would take at least 10 hours since we would stop for frequent toilet breaks.

Ever since FireFly started flying to Ipoh, we started to take the flight route.

This time round, we decided to stay longer, 5D4N. We stayed two nights at Cameroon Highlands. Temperature range from 16 (at night) to 20+ degrees in noon.

Cameroon Highlands does not have much to shop, most stalls sells the same stuff wherever we went. So our main motive for going to Cameroon was to enjoy the cool weather.

So we roamed around to take some pictures, and then we go food hunting. For me, I am never a foodie, I do not know how to appreciate food so when my family went around eating Ipoh Zi Char, I just followed. They were saying how good this dish or that dish was, but all I could think of, was where is my coffee.

We ate until we are so full each time, I think all of us gained weight now that we are back to Singapore.

For me, as I grow older, I started to dislike travelling - I don't drink much so you can imagine the inner heatiness and the breath. Can't help it since drinking alot of water means always looking for toilets. I also don't go shopping (well this time round, I did some shopping because I desperately needed a pair of slippers after my sketchers shoes smelled badly).

I prefer to just stay at a hotel with walking distances to attraction. I guess to my husband, it is simply a waste of money to go overseas to do this.

Short recap of our trip
1) First 2 days spent in Brinchang, Cameroon Highland. A 2-hour drive from Ipoh town
2) Remaining 2 days spent in Ipho Town

During my short trip, somethings hit me. The kind of prices of stuff (be it food, clothings etc) way way exceed what an average Malaysian earns. E.g. a pair of Sketchers cost RM300+. In Singapore, a pair of Sketchers is from S$70. So for a worker who earns RM2000, the shoes is a whopping 15% whereas the same Sketchers is only a  3.5% for a SG worker.

I should be grateful that I have a well-paying job in Singapore. But I am not. I am always complaining about my job when I see others in less developing, doing all they can to feed themselves and their families.