Well, 2020

Hello old friends.

If there’s one thing I’ve been putting off for years (+ given me anxiety because I have been repeatedly putting it off) it’s the revival of this blog.

When I first started this blog in 2014, it was really just a place to put my thoughts and essentially share the things that I’d learnt. I felt like we didn’t have enough of this content being generated in Brunei. And when I say content, I mean true unbiased content that wasn’t being touted by an insurance agent, or a banking representative, or a bank ambassador. There are definitely resources available but you would have to go the formal route and book some time with a financial planner who’s job is to provide financial advice, and they may or may not be affiliated with certain insurance agencies/banks/services and therefore would have a bias towards said affiliates. What didn’t sit well with me was this notion that you’d have to go see a “specialist” to manage your own finances. I don’t like that notion because it inadvertently promulgates this idea that managing your own finances is something that should be outsourced to an expert; that you don’t need to know how to do it – you just need to pay someone else to do it for you.

In my view, being able to manage your personal finances is a critical life skill and we all need to be able to do it. The term “personal finance” is scary cos you think ooh err I don’t know anything about finance, I never studied it in school. When someone says “finance” you’re inclined to think of men in suits and stockmarkets and big business and credit, all of these numbers and green upwards arrows and red downward arrows and line graphs that don’t make any sense to the regular joe. And maybe most people don’t seek out “financial advisors” because they think um well I don’t really have that much money actually, financial advisors are for millionaires because they don’t know what to do with all their money that’s just sitting around.

My journey into learning about all things personal finance actually started because the oil price crashed in 2014. If you’re a long-time reader of this blog you’ll know, because I wasn’t just writing about “money matters” (I even spelt it Muney just so it sounded basic and less scary so hey I really tried to make this stuff accessible guys). I was also writing about the potential impact of the oil price crash on Brunei; what does it mean and what could it mean. I diligently followed Legco because we had announced a 2.4bn deficit (if my memory serves correctly) and I dug up data from the JPKE website to create some charts to show just how closely our government’s revenue follows the oil price.

I work in the oil and gas industry, btw. Not sure if I ever said that in a previous post, but I figure that’s pretty obvious. And I was truly worried back then. I had just started work, I was fresh out of being a broke student and for the first time ever I had a solid paycheck coming in every month. I didn’t want to mess up! It was so easy at the time to just go nuts y’know, sakai lah sikit org baru begaji. Should I buy a car (there were so many people buying cars), should I get a designer bag (I was so late to the game already, people had them when they were students – squirreling away their student allowances so they could leave an LV store, heavy paper bag swinging on their arm). I knew what feeling financially pinched was like, and I really didn’t want to ever be in that situation again (if I could help it).

So it was the perfect storm, back in 2014.

I was a paranoid previously-broke student, I got a job at an oil and gas company that paid me a decent starting paycheck (not the best, I didn’t work at that O&G company that I’m sure you’re thinking of haha), I was finally earning money, I didn’t know what to do with it but I knew I didn’t want to mess up, and OH MY GOD the oil price crashed am I going to get laid off in six months, is Brunei going to be okay, we’ve just announced a deficit, the economy is so bad, unemployment is high, homina homina homina hominaAaAaAarghhhh

And so I did what any reasonable person would do.

Read everything under the sun about personal finance, researched all the banks in Brunei for a full list of their products and services to the point where I could (and still can, from memory) rattle off the interest/profit rates of almost all the accounts – the post is here which compares the interest rates of all savings accounts It’s still valid. And since I stopped blogging in 2015, I still get quite a decent readership and that’s one of the most popular posts. Basically I dove headfirst into the world of personal finance until my brain was full to the brim with everything I had learnt (and re-learnt, and re-learnt because I was obSESSED, I read so many different articles on essentially the same topics) and I felt like more people needed to know these things and that’s how this blog was born.

Just for some extra context, at the time I was single, kind of lost (and therefore threw myself into personal finance and blogging, and well trying to learn how to do my job at work). I was driving a car I inherited from my family – a very old Toyota Echo, which I truly loved. It was a 15 year old car but it was free and fuel efficient and got me everywhere I needed to be. I did not start off adulthood with fat savings. I maybe had a few hundred dollars knocking about in my old student accounts but my first paycheck was truly the very first step in building my personal wealth. While my family would obviously never let me go hungry, I was not (unfortunately) a trust fund baby haha.

So that’s where I started.

Fastforward it’s been 5+ years later. And alhamdulillah, I really think that everything I picked up when I was 24, 25 years old set me up for (I think) success. I stopped blogging cos I got “busy” haha I met the guy I eventually married. We got married with zero personal loans, we bought a car on a 5 year loan but I paid it off fully at the 2.5 year mark (so I am effectively debt free again), we moved into a house (which, full disclaimer: it’s a free ‘temporary’ house; we are squatting in what was previously a family rental lol) and have very slowly managed to furnish it with things that make us happy. And I’m very grateful that I’ve slowly managed to rebuild my savings – because obviously our wedding obliterated that.

I’m not saying these things to be a humble brag. I’m telling you (whoever is reading) this because I want to show you and tell you that’s it’s possible. There is an important disclaimer I must add: (1) I was a graduate of what are considered ‘prestigious’ overseas universities (government sponsored, alhamdulillah) and (2) I got a good “degree-starting” job before the unemployment problems percolated. I list these disclaimers because I am mindful that not everybody is a degree-holder (and there is nothing wrong with that), and not everybody is lucky enough to study overseas, and not everybody gets good “degree-starting” jobs. There are more people now who are earning three-figure salaries, if any salary at all. There are people now who are freelancers and entrepreneurs, and they don’t enjoy stable, fixed incomes. Some months are good, some months are bad – the question they may have is how do I save when there is so much uncertainty?

I am aware I am privileged. Good credentials, good job. But so many people with good credentials and even better! jobs have zero savings. They have luxury cars on indefinite loan. There is no financial freedom on the horizon. They are tied to their desks and completely dependent on their jobs. They have no emergency cushions – any small bump in the road, any unexpected expense, and despite their Mercedes Benz and fancy lifestyles, they will lose sleep and negotiate to tunggu payday. Similarly, there are people who earn only hundreds of dollars who sleep well at night and pave good futures for their families. They live modest lifestyles but they are happy. Our helper/maid who’s been with my family for almost 20 years managed to send enough money back home to build a house.

The bottom line is it doesn’t matter how much you earn. It’s how much you keep. And what you do with that amount kept.

So don’t fret and moan about how you don’t earn big bucks and therefore none of the things I talk about on this blog are relevant to you. And don’t be a hater and say it’s easy for me to say these things cos I work in oil and gas, gaji basar. It’s very easy to think that all your problems would be solved if you just earned a little bit more money, just a little bit more and everything would magically fall into place. If you earn $5,000 a month oh wowza you’re set for life you’d be a happy bunny.

Don’t pin your hopes onto some goal because the day you get there, if you still have poor financial management, it still won’t be enough. Nothing will ever be enough. I’m impressed I remember enough of my blog posts to be able to link stuff haha but here, go read up on lifestyle inflation. I even did custom clipart for it, that’s how invested I was.

So anyway, let’s cut to the chase. Why am I recapping and summarizing my life story and blog history?

Because it’s 2020 and guess what, the oil price has crashed again.

And because of COVID-19 the world is spiralling into what is anticipated to be a deep recession/depression, and the US is expecting their unemployment rate to jump from what is currently 3% to as much as 15% in the coming months.

I don’t want to talk too deeply about COVID-19, there is enough out there that has totally overrun our whatsapp chats and social media. You’re probably staying at home, working from home, travel plans all cancelled, etc. We are experiencing an extremely tumultuous and unprecedented new reality. And I think the best thing we can do is fasten our seatbelts and brace ourselves for the rollercoaster ride ahead.

In this environment, I do think personal finance is just as important as it ever was. And a silver lining is that this is one of the ways I want to “give back” (again). Maybe COVID-19 and all this time spent at home finally got me to face my procrastinatory habits and get back on here.

To all my readers, long-time old ones and new ones, whether you’ve read only 1 post or 20, thank you for reading. And some of you have left me really nice comments – thank you, truly!

I don’t gain anything from this blog. It is not monetized, I don’t even know how to do that. I’m not sponsored by any banks or insurance agencies etc. I only gain satisfaction hahaha. And I don’t mean bragging rights. Satisfaction because I’m encouraged to know that people find the content on this blog useful. If anything you’ve read here helps you in some way, that’s enough for me – it tells me that well this wasn’t time wasted, I’m not just siuk sendiri typing what is now a 2000 word blogpost.

So anyway – hi again, glad to be back. If there’s anything you’d like me to blog about in particular, please leave it in the comments. Anonymous comments welcome, I know how shy we all are online 🙂