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 🙂

Our own home: an introduction

Since it’s been so long since I actively blogged, it’s going to be a challenge to get back into the strictly “personal finance” groove – so I hope you’re open to a change of tone (but honestly I think I’ve said most of what I needed to say about the basics of managing money already). To be fair when I started the blog I did have a section put up for Home and one of my first posts was about how I rearranged my bedroom to avoid clothing clutter so I was never entirely devoted to the idea of personal finance only anyway. And a lot of the principles that I’ve talked about over the years are extremely transferable – they shouldn’t just help you rethink your money (in terms of strictly dollars and cents), I’d like to think they also apply to other facets of our lives.

Y’know, like having your own home.

So let’s get into it.

My husband and I were really fortunate to be able to move into our own place just a couple of months after our wedding. It’s sort of a rental situation (but without the high price tag of true rentals – let’s be transparent), so it isn’t our permanent home. While the house did have some basic furnishings, we knew that our decision to move into our own place (yay, “adulthood”!) also meant some serious out-of-pocket investments needed to be made.

Our first home purchase was a new kingsize bed and mattress (which we bought and had delivered even before our wedding). Shortly after, we bought a large refrigerator and then a 3 + 2 seater sofa set for our living room. By the time we moved in, we had also added a couple of rugs and miscellaneous items pulled from both our own personal “single” possessions (e.g. my little rice cooker from university days, pillows, bedsheets, mismatched plates, bowls, a couple of mugs) – but the house was still very much barely furnished.

Fast forward seven, eight months later – we’ve practically fully furnished our home – with the necessary stuff. By necessary I mean we’ve managed to build a cozy nest for ourselves, and we’ve had a good start fixing up the bigger “entertaining” area for when our family and friends come over. To some people the latter may sound unnecessary/extra but our families are quite big (we both have lots of siblings and an assortment of nieces and nephews) and it’s important to both of us to open our home to family and friends. On a regular day it’s just the two of us so we like having people come over to help warm it up.

Since moving in, I’m really grateful to say we’ve hosted two family BBQs, two hari raya open houses, a bridal shower, and a couple of birthdays. And peppered in-between we’ve had numerous occasions of family and friends coming over just to hang out and play board games.

So this is perhaps where I need to start digging around into my old notes to provide some context to this story.

Deciding to live in your own home is not cheap. You know that ideal version of adulthood you have of of aw siuk jua ah berumah sendiri sudah ani. Get that illusion out of your head real quick, macam sanang saja bunyinya. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great – I absolutely love having my own home – but be fully aware that you sign up for the good and the bad. The good will always outweigh the bad as long as you are able to manage “the bad” well. And what’s the bad? The cost of it, of course!

i’ve missed stock photos hahaha

I’m not even talking about owning and paying to build/buy a home, or even renting and paying monthly rental to occupy a home — even if you were offered to move into an empty house for free, its going to be expensive. Furniture, fixtures, appliances – this is all expensive stuff. And some of these things should be expensive stuff.

I once wrote about the myth of “investing in buying stuff” and I did conclude that it’s wise to invest in quality goods which will last a long time but to also be wary of the law of diminishing returns. I suggest you read that post (it’s still very relevant), so you fully understand what I’m alluding to. But if you’re lazy, I’ll sum up in two points: (1) spend a little bit extra to invest in quality, long-lasting goods, (2) the most expensive item on the shelf is not necessarily the item with the best quality or long-lasting value.

Long-lasting can mean many things. The first thing that comes to mind is durability – something that doesn’t break easily. Long-lasting should also mean timelessness. There’s no point buying the cheapest plates “just because they’re cheap and I need something to eat my dinner off of later tonight” when you know you’re going to hate them in a month and seek a more beautiful upgrade. Don’t buy fads/trends/your current favourite colour/unicorn stuff either if you know you’re going to look at them in a few months and think eh this is so last season.

So what I meant by saying “some of these things should be expensive” – don’t buy a cheap fridge, bed, shelf etc. that’s going to break within a year or two. And don’t buy tempory “for now saja dulu, biar tia psl murah anyway” stuff which you’ll likely want (not need!) to replace after a while.

We bought an expensive bed and an even more expensive mattress.

cue inappropriate eyebrow waggle

But truly – you’ll spend 6-8 hours asleep every single day for the rest of the foreseeable future. By virtue of dollar spent per hour use (which is a simple but very useful metric I might talk about in more detail next time), there’s undeniable value in investing in a good bed and a great mattress.

Our mattress cost $2,500 ok.

DAS ESPENSIF!!

How we made the decision was… “Decent” kingsize mattresses start at $900 anyway, and those are really uncomfortable. It felt like laying on the floor of one of those blow-up bouncers they have at kids parties.

not what you want your bed to feel like

We saw mattresses that cost $1,500, $4,000, even $12,000 (!!) at the same store. We lay on every single one and decided that there was no discernible difference in terms of comfort between the $4,000 and the $12,000. Naturally, we were looking to spend between the range of $900 and $4,000, in search of the ideal inflexion point (I explain what that is in the earlier old post about investments) and we landed on the $2,500 one.

My husband still sometimes says – especially after a long, tiring day at work and we’ve finally crawled between the sheets for some rest – buying our bed+mattress was one of the best decisions we’ve made.

Our bed frame was maybe $1,500 (heavy, real wood – no MDF or  plywood) so the two together cost $4,000 which – yes – is a lot of money. But in the truest sense of the word, for us it was a real investment. What are our profits/returns? We’ve never had a troubled night of sleep tossing and turning because we can’t get comfortable and we don’t expect to replace the bed or mattress in the next ten or maybe even twenty years. There’s no doubt that good sleep is worth investing in, even fitness and health gurus say the same. And a big part of getting good sleep isn’t just avoiding caffeine — it’s getting a good bed!

So durability and high quality (in this situation, comfort) is one matter. The other is timelessness, right? So we decided to go with a minimal, no-frills sturdy wood (heavy!) bed with clean lines. It’ll match anything and everything (whether we repaint the walls or change up decor over the years) because the wood is y’know solid wood – and it’s a cool-neutral toned wood which is really pretty too.

i found an almost identical one on trusty Google images!

I deliberately didn’t want anything with a padded, upholstered headboard because fabric will age, sag, and rip. And I didn’t want anything white (despite white furniture still being trendy) because that stuff will yellow over time. My bed at my parent’s house is almost 15 years old – also expensive, solid wood, and still looks as good as the day it was bought.

But wait – I’m not saying you must (!) spend $4,000 on your bed. Always evaluate based on what you can afford, and this is different for everyone. Please don’t assume I’m saying you need to pay thousands of dollars for a good bed to the point where you have to take a loan out for it (AVOID DEBT PLZ)! We could’ve probably settled for a cheaper steel bed from IKEA, which is just as durable, just as sturdy, and just as classic. But well, we wanted something else – and we could afford to spend a bit extra for it. Mattresses? Go to different stores, I’m sure there are comfortable ones for less than $2,000 – you’ll have to look and try them out yourself. Definitely keep your own financial capabilities and budget in mind.

Heck, when I was a student all I could afford was a second-hand mattress, a mattress topper (thin padding to go on top) and no bed frame (because a bed frame wasn’t necessary). Suited me just fine.

For our situation – $4,000 could get me a Chanel bag (I think? Haha) or a good bed. We can theoretically afford either one without going into debt… And well, we chose the bed.

Quite literally, because unconventionally for my wedding hantaran I didn’t ask for (and didn’t want) an expensive designer bag. We decided to secretly buy ourselves furniture instead and just put whatever we could get away with on the gangsa hehe. They were still meaningful purchases which we did actually want (and I did get a bag, just not a super expensive one), we just didn’t use the “hantaran” excuse to go crazy and splurge. Well that’s a separate post for next time, perhaps.

Anyway, I think I’ve said enough to hopefully set the tone for my upcoming posts. I’ve really enjoyed the process of building a home – carefully and deliberately curating pieces and putting it all together to build a cohesive whole, all the while trying to avoid clutter and useless/meaningless purchases – and I hope to be able to write more about that.

I’m also trying to photodocument that on Instagram at the same time, if you’re interested to see more pictures (and less words) – that’s still @yazmynz 🙂

our little living room where we spend most of our time

 

I’m aware this post jumps around all over the place and abruptly ends just before I get into real meat haha. Cut me some slack ok panaskan engine dulu.

An explanation and a TUMI luggage epiphany

The main reason I haven’t been blogging is because anytime I feel like I want to write something, I scare myself out of it because I think… Well I have to commit time and effort into writing something really long and thoughtful and well-structured (like before). I used to craft each one of my posts the way one would an essay, I suppose. I’d think about what it is I wanted to say, how best to say it, and I’d enjoy the process of selecting accompanying clipart (the more cartoonish and exaggerated, the better) to illustrate my points.

In general, I used to take maybe a day or two per post… With the exception of the extra-long ones back when I was tracking the drop in oil price and the ripple effects on government budget.  [k I just randomly linked two old posts, not sure if I linked the most relevant ones haha]

But I realize I shouldn’t have to see things that way. It’s so easy to let the trepidation of starting (or restarting) something new, or something big, or something big and new scare you off.  And then nothing gets done. Ever.

When I started this blog I did it for myself more than for other people. I had a lot of ideas, a lot of thoughts that I wanted to put down on paper because I’m very aware of how difficult it is to find even the most basic references in Brunei (what credit cards are, how to do routine stuff). It’s an even greater challenge to find insightful pieces of writing that stand the test of time. A lot of articles that go viral have a tendency to be deliberately provocative pieces addressing specific controversial incidents (e.g. a Ministry reshuffle, a policy change). Sure, these inflammatory articles erupt into a raging fireballs and get people talking for a while but they extinguish and become irrelevant, outdated, and forgotten just as quickly.

When I write, I hope to spark ideas and insight, to fan the flames of thoughtfulness and learning. The stuff written here isn’t meant to be sensational or particularly ground-breaking. I wanted (and want) to be able to get myself and my readers thinking differently about the more boring, every day stuff like personal finance, what it means to be financially independent (especially against a backdrop of a welfare society that’s unintentionally grown complacent and severely reliant on government handouts). Y’know, the ~general economy~ and just ~general life~ in Brunei. My tagline still rings true – I write about adult stuff, and that’s essentially what I want to do.

At the height of my blog, I had a lot of free time. I held a full-time job (and still do) but work was manageable and I did a lot of side reading about the stuff I eventually began writing about. I’m not going to lie – some days I had enough free time that I was drafting posts at my work desk, haha. It’s been two years since then and a lot of things have changed. One thing that has surprised me despite the ensuing inactivity is that this blog has sustained a pretty strong readership.

And every time I log in and see that I still get views – some people still stumble upon my blog on Google or who knows where and go on to read through pages or pages of old posts – I feel a pang of guilt and regret that I haven’t been able to keep this going.

People are looking for good things to read, heck even I am. I suppose I’m “lucky” (?) in a sense because I also like to write, I genuinely do. Life got busy and I got scared because I thought aw nuts I can’t commit to a two day post, maybe some other time. But now I realise… Y’know if I wanna write just write. I don’t have to commit to writing a book (which I’ realize I’ve almost done), just sit down for a couple of minutes gad dammit and say whatever it is you want to say! Taking actual baby steps is more important than telling people you plan to run a marathon.

So that’s my going-in attitude right now!

And how this started was today I was doing some online window shopping and I happened to also notice some advertised vacancies and I was hit with an epiphany… And I thought to myself damn I need to blog about that and I decided to just tell you what it is instead of scaring myself off again.

So I need a cabin bag bah.

I’m not even gonna bother looking for non-watermarked hahaha

The 4-wheel spinner, lightweight type cabin luggage.

I travel a lot – that’s what’s keeping me busy half the time, it’s work – and I don’t have a good bag for a 2-3 day trip. I lug around a duffle but it gets pretty heavy and my old cabin trolley bag the wheels ilang sudah the rubber cos it was old so it’s kinda rusak.

And I was looking online and saw a TUMI one for sale at about BND $450 (discounted from $800). I thought to myself hey that’s pretty “cheap”, I’d casually looked at the TUMI ones at KLIA yesterday (I just got back on work trip where I was lugging around my aforementioned duffle bag) and they were crazy expensive – upwards of $1200!

And well the cabin bag is pretty, sturdy, light, has four wheels, is a good investment etc. $450 is a lot of money, don’t get me wrong…. But market price is double that, and I’m a sucker for steals. Plus I travel a lot and would be looking for a good brand which will last years. TUMI is designer though and I’ve never owned anything TUMI but…. Maybe just this once? (I thought to myself).

So I added the bag to my cart to mull it over.

About half an hour later (cue dramatic video montage about national unemployment rates not improving, government emphasis on entrepreneurialism and SMEs, underpaid i-Ready apprentices: the new manpower reality) I stumbled upon a list of vacancies, which included:

• Waitress (full-time)   $300/month
• Tailor (full-time)  $400/month
• Tuition teacher (part or full-time)  $160/month
• Account Officer (full-time, 1st degree required)  $800/month
• Music teacher (full-time)  $1000/month
• Tukang gunting (full-time)   $300/month

 

 

I removed the item from my cart, closed the window, and decided I’d be okay to lug around my duffle bag for now.