People close to me know that I think a lot about money and retirement. This is especially so when in 2017, I found an article quoting a 2015 Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) study which stated that the majority of people will fully utilise their EPF funds within 5 years of retirement. Imagine, assuming you retire by 58, having nothing with possibly another 10 to 20 years of life left. Despite that, I hadn’t really gotten off my ass to do anything till 2018, when Lembaga Tabung Haji (TH) announced a dividend so low (1.25%) that it almost didn’t beat inflation for the year. I decided I needed to do something, and fast.

I began this process of just talking to anyone who does any sort of investments, to lay out what I need to learn and know. I developed my overarching investment plan with a set retirement goal value and identified the various investment products one can participate in. I then decided to prioritise which ones I would like to invest in first. This then guided my deep dive into learning specific principles to follow for those products as I invest. I must have ended up talking to about 60 to 70 different people to understand how they are trying to multiply their cash as well as their thought process as to how and why.

With ASB declaring a 4.25% dividend and EPF likely to be around the same range, I think the process has paid off. The result for the year of 2020:

1. My unit trust investments are averaging 18% to 20%
2. My stock investments are averaging 16% to 18%
3. My cryptocurrency investments are averaging 90% to 120%

While I have not made millions or hundreds of thousands, it feels like a step in the right direction.

My goal for 2021 is to now look into ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) and P2P (Peer-to-Peer) Lending as additional investment options and to revisit Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB) loans if it still makes sense in this current environment.

PS: I welcome any discussions on the subject of investing, especially the ASB loan issue. It’d be good to learn from each other. Lol, hopefully for me, it’s not a situation of “mengikut Mak Tuin; clever clever squirrel jump, one day fall to the ground also.”