I wrote about my great fear of investing before, and how it has paralysed me for many, many years. For the longest time, the fear of making the wrong decision prevented me from making any decision. But in late 2021, I got off my butt to finally, seriously dip my feet into investing waters. In 2022, I am now “swimming in the lake”.

But the path from scaredy-cat to confident investor didn’t happen overnight. It took decades of mistakes, bad decisions, and some good ones, to get me here.

Here’s a summary:

2000-2012: Er, you do it lah. Pushes money at advisors

When I started my financial adulting life in the 2000s, there were no bloggers, no FIRE philosophy, and hardly any good, sound information about investing in Malaysia. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the … lack of information about finances.

The only book I could find that was accessible (read: not a textbook) told me to pour most of my money into fixed deposits, so I did. Back then, FDs could easily earn you a 3% interest rate, sometimes even higher, and at one time during the economic crisis of 1998, it soared up to 8% to 10%! I also got what I thought was medical insurance, but turned out to be an investment-linked insurance plan instead. (Yay.)

Around 2010 or so, I started reading a few personal finance blogs, but it was mostly US-centric. However, by then I was overwhelmed by another thing: My debt.

I had a RM120k mortgage, about RM10k in credit card debts, and around RM10k more in a car loan. I was barely scraping by on a RM3000 to RM4000 salary. I was obsessed about getting rid of my debts, so 2008-2010 was spent whittling them down.

After paying down most of my consumer debt, I had some spare money, so around 2010 or so I opened a unit trust account with a colleague who was a Public Mutual agent. I just let her decide what funds to put my money in. I also withdrew some money from EPF to invest in unit trusts. Now I realised that was a big mistake, as my unit trusts underperformed EPF. (Big sigh)

2012-2015: Aussie wilderness years – I take a break from investing

I moved to Australia. And invested zilch at this time. I used to dollar cost average into my unit trust before, but during my Aussie years, I just stopped. The only good thing I can say about my finances then was that I preserved most of the capital that I brought to the coutnry.

During my time in Adelaide, it was a struggle to hang on to every penny I earned. I was starting at the very bottom of a completely new career, studying aged care to eventually become a registered nurse, so I was earning a pittance.

I learned a lot about frugality and sustainable living during this time and actually learned to enjoy it! However, I was intent on figuring out a way to live free of the need for money.

I also learned that Australia was a hella expensive place to live.

I discovered that I really disliked not having a steady paycheck. I never got used to the variable pay of my casual jobs in healthcare. Sometimes I get job cancellations on the same day itself. Sometimes even a few minutes before my shift was to begin! This really stressed me out.

I knew this was no way to build wealth, and if I wanted to get out of this path I had to do something drastic. And that drastic meant moving back to Malaysia.

I wrote at length about why I returned to Malaysia (it’s one of my more popular posts). But besides career considerations, I also wanted to live a financially independent life sooner rather than later. In Australia, it would take me far longer to achieve that. Perhaps, never.

So I moved home to Malaysia … despite obtaining the much valued and prized Australian permanent residence visa.

2015-2018: Oh s*** WTF is going on with my $

I returned to Malaysia and was gladly back to getting a regular paycheck from my full-time journalism job.

During these years, I made some serious fixing of my finances. I paid off my housing loan to fix a decade-long financial mistake to finally became debt free. But during this whole process of righting my finances, I realised I just had no clue what was going on with my finances or how to make them grow.

My EPF was in a much-diminished state because I used some of it to pay off my housing loan and I hadn’t added to it for more than two years. At that time I didn’t know that you could add extra to the EPF. If I knew I probably would have done it, sigh.

I knew I had to do something about this, but I felt paralysed, not sure where to begin. So, I wasn’t investing during these years either 😔, nor was I DCA-ing into my unit trusts.

However, I started investing into a PRS unit trust for the tax advantages. (FYI to non-Malaysians: If you invest up to RM3000 per year in a PRS unit trust, you get tax relief) Again, I relied on a PM agent to decide the funds for me.

2018-2021: I copy what you are doing lah

By this time, more Malaysians were blogging about personal finance (check out this list of Malaysian PF bloggers). And they were a big part of my financial education. Around 2020, with time to spare thanks to being jobless and stuck at home thanks to the pandemic, I started with Stashaway. Once I got a job mid-2020, I began loyally DCA-ing into it.

In Nov and Dec 2021, during my digital nomad days in Penang I began to dabble into all forms of investing: I opened accounts with various stock brokerages and bought my first blue-chip stock and REITs. Heck, I even opened a Luno account to buy some cryptocurrency, but its super volatile nature never really appealed to me, so I have never gone beyond depositing more than the initial RM300.

I made so many mistakes during this time, especially with roboadvisors. But I’ve come to believe that you probably can’t learn without making these mistakes.

2022: Boglehead investing style; 100% control freak

At the start of 2022, I realised that my foundational finance knowledge was shallow. I read finance 101 books and watched Youtubers who talked about various investment securities to know the difference between equities, gold, bonds and more.

I began investigating this “index funds” thing that so many US Personal Finance bloggers kept writing about, and fell down the rabbit hole of learning about index investing.

Transformative books such as JL Collins’ Simple Path to Wealth and John Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing finally lifted the fog that clouded my understanding of investing.

To my joy, I discovered that I could invest in US ETFs via local Malaysian brokers. I experimented with a few, namely:

• MIDF Invest to buy VXUS and (Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund) VTI
• Rakuten Trade to buy Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF (VTI) and Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund (VT)

Choosing the right ETFs

At first, I was determined to buy VTI and VXUS, but realised it was just easier to buy VT because:

• I don’t have to pay brokerage fees twice. I don’t have to buy VTI and VXUS separately, and thus save on brokerage fees – VT is VTI and VXUS rolled into one. VT has roughly 60% US stocks, 40% the rest of the world
• It’s self-balancing; I don’t have to rebalance myself.
• If I want to lean more on US stocks I can easily just buy more VTI.

How I’m investing now

Currently, I’m trying to adjust my rather Malaysian-heavy portfolio. I’ve stopped investing in Malaysian shares as I feel I have more than enough with EPF, my Public Mutual small-caps unit trust and PRS.

My current strategy is just to:

• DCA monthly into VT.
• Invest in an Asia Pacific PRS

Yeah, that’s it.

After decades of confusion about the subject, I can’t believe how simple investing has become for me.

And it’s a relief to know that investing doesn’t have to be so hard.

How about you? What was your investing journey like?

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