Hello Grasshoppa,
Our personal finance journey starts from the moment you receive your first allowance from your parents or family. We learn to manage our money differently & our parents play an important role in educating us to manage our finances. No doubt, some of us are taught well by our parents, however, some may receive lesser guidance on this. Personally, I learned to save money from my daily balance using a piggy bank but somehow I never had any savings back then. That money that I accumulated was used to buy things I like such as video games & other unnecessary items. Up until I was 21, I had zero savings in my bank account.
I bought my first house when I was 23 years old & when I was 25 years old, I quit my job to start my gym business with RM45,000 debt in hand. That was a bad decision from my end to go all-in with my business especially with zero experience in managing a business on a big scale. The problem kicked in when my business was not profitable enough to cover the salary of my business partner & me. I had to keep paying my loans such as car loan, housing loan & personal loan which amounted to almost RM4,000 a month. That was when I started to do my clean food side hustle & later on my 9-5 job again.
The moment I started to work was the moment when I started to clear my debts & even managed to build my retirement portfolio again. It took me a really long time to learn how to manage my money in a good way & I learned it a hard way. Even up until this day, I am still improving my personal finance skill by just managing them in a different way. From being extremely frugal when I was paying off my debts to be less frugal in my current spending.
After I cleared my debts, I was working on my FIRE plan & my plan was to be a millionaire by the age of 35 & retire at 40. As of now, my retirement portfolio is nowhere near a million Ringgit as this pandemic has taken a toll and resulted in a delay in my plan. I had to tweak some of my plans especially due to the unstable income from my current business. The good thing is, my 9-5 job is under the essential sector & it is performing well during the pandemic. My new business is also affected as there is no demand during this pandemic & I expect it to be slower until the sports sector can fully run again.
My ex-boss once told me that, “change is the only constant in life” & I cannot agree more. Sometimes we have to adapt, learn & tweak our plans based on different circumstances. The pandemic is unexpected to many & it has taught all of us many lessons. The good thing is, I still have my 9-5 job despite having my other businesses affected. During this time, I learned to adapt & made changes to ensure I am still working towards my retirement plan.
Although the pandemic has affected me to a certain extent, my retirement goal remains the same. I may achieve it later than my old targetted dateline but I am still confident that I am able to make it sooner or later. It is all about making changes whenever it is necessary & keep moving forward. I am confident that you are able to do the same too as long as you keep adapting towards achieving your goal.
OSS!
