Suraya, Author at Ringgit Oh Ringgit

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Suraya

13 ^th
February

Under-RM2000 Travel: 4D3N Luang Prabang Trip

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Did you know that the town of Luang Prabang is one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centres? If you didn’t, the prices there will remind you, because damn do they jack it up for the foreign tourists. And it was mostly foreign tourists – I didn’t see many local tourists.

I’m not bitter or anything – it’s great that the tourism industry provides such good income for the locals – but yep you definitely need some play money to make the best of your time there. It’s just that I’ve heard how ‘Laos is practically under-developed Thailand’, and expected lower prices, but many places in Luang Prabang charge higher than downtown KL, and even Singapore!

I’ve also heard how Luang Prabang is a ‘sleepy town’. Thought 4 days is enough to explore all of it (heck, I had enough of Hong Kong after 3 days), but in hindsight I should’ve stayed longer. There were more things to do than you’d think!

Luang Prabang Trip Overview

11 ^th
February

Link Roundup #20: 10 Things to Know This Week

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Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂

1. 7 Ways To Deal With Burnout, According To Science – Bustle

“There are.. three main elements to burnout: “exhaustion, cynicism (less identification with the job), and feelings of reduced professional ability.”

06 ^th
February

[SPONSORED] I Asked Hard Questions to the CEO of Funding Societies Malaysia

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What does Mr-Stingy, Dividend Magic, KC Lau, Blackbelt Millionaire and myself have in common? Aside from the fact that we all maintain websites with personal finance content, that is.

All of us do P2P financing as one of our investments. We lend money to companies.

In particular, and most strikingly, all of us chose Funding Societies Malaysia as the P2P financing platform of choice (note: referral code. You get RM50, I get RM50).

My experience with Funding Societies Malaysia so far

(scroll down if you just want to read the interview with Kah Meng)

When Funding Societies Malaysia contacted me for a collaboration opportunity, I was excited. I was already an existing user, with RM10,000 in my account.

04 ^th
February

Budget Update: January 2019

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Budget Update: January 2019

Wake up. Brush teeth. Make coffee, have breakfast. Check my daily to-do list. Anxiety. Take out phone, scroll online for hours for distraction. Tell myself to get back to work. Anxiety. Find food to eat. Repeat until midnight. Repeat for days on end.

January 2019 should have represented a new start and a new beginning, but it didn’t, at least not for me. For much of the month, I was stuck in a destructive procrastination mode. I’d spend hours mindlessly scrolling the web and eating comfort food, knowing that those behaviours are my unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Guys. I want to do so many things. I want to achieve so many things. But they’re overwhelming and I fear failure and instead of rising up to the challenge, I… get anxious instead. When I feel that way I just want to distract myself (phone) or feel comforted (food).

Does this happen to you? What do you do to break yourself out of that spell?

30 ^th
January

How My Dream Home in Malaysia Would Look Like

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I’d like to introduce to you one of my favourite books in the world, New Aging: Live smarter now to live better forever by Matthias Hollwich with Bruce Mau Design. Found it at the Big Bad Wolf Booksale some years back for RM12. One of the best purchases I ever made.

New Aging is a guidebook to optimising how we live, how to design our lifestyle so that we encourage lifelong happiness, productivity and self-development. I used to fear the ageing process (as we all), but this book helped me reframe that thinking, and even develop a positive attitude towards it.

28 ^th
January

[PERSONAL] How Money Affects My Dating Life

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Received a request to write about the topic of dating and money (thanks for the suggestion, Carrine Yap!) This is an interesting topic for sure, something I haven’t done before. Rather than talking about how I manage finances in a relationship, I thought I’d go one step further and talk about how money affects my dating life.

First of all, a disclaimer. This is how money affects *my* dating life. I’m not telling anyone how *they* should date. I’m just saying, due to my background, privilege and money mindset, this is how I choose to go on dates and get into relationships.

So with that in mind, if you view yourself as a bit of a traditionalist or conservative, I ask you to skip this article altogether, or read with an open mind. Comments like ‘men should be the one to do X’ or ‘you should be more Y’ will be deleted. *You* can do that, go ahead, nothing’s stopping you. You live your life, I’ll live mine. I don’t attack you, you don’t attack me. Fair right? 🙂

Dating and Money Approach #1 – Like money, personal relationships are private matter

23 ^rd
January

[SPONSORED] 4 Things I Learned from Kenanga’s Investment Event

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On 12 January 2019, I attended an investment event organised by multi-award winning Kenanga Group. The name intrigued me right from the start – you don’t come across something like Market Outlook Symposium 2019: Smart Investing or Dare Betting? every day. Held from 9am-2.30pm, the event packed in five speakers (and a lunch break). You can check the agenda of the day and speakers’ profiles here.

I had fun live-tweeting the whole event. Click on the Twitter thread below to read 50+ tweets giving play-by-play account of each speaker’s presentation. Among others, you’ll find stock picks by Kenanga Investment Bank’s Head of Research, a warrants trading tool (that may help you get double-digit ROIs), what to do with your money during bear markets and more.

I’m seated and ready to live-tweet #KenangaGroup‘s #MarketSymposium2019 event, starting soon! Follow and RT this thread for investment outlook in 2019 pic.twitter.com/KcvRakWrce

— Suraya Zainudin (@surayaror) January 12, 2019

Here are some things I learned from the event. Some commentaries are not specific to the event itself, but an overview of the general investment events scene in Malaysia. This article is sponsored by Kenanga, but all opinions are mine.

#1 – The Kenanga-organised event… exceeded expectations

21 ^st
January

Link Roundup #19: 10 Things to Know This Week

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Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂

1. 16 Influencers Shared Their Best Money Tips in 2019 – Mr Stingy

Mr Stingy aka Aaron Tang compiled money tips from 16 personal finance thought leaders in Malaysia and beyond, including: Lee Ching Wei (of iMoney), KC Lau, Pakdi, Julian Ng, DividendMagic, Stanley Lim, Charles Tan of KopiandProperty, GenXGenYGenZ, Natalie Pringle of The New Savvy, RinggitOhRinggit (me!), Dawn of SGBudgetBabe, Farid Bahrudin, Mohd Kauthar, Faiz Wahab, Kevin L of Turtle Investor and Lionel Yeo of The Cheerful Egg.

Will you find money tips that’ll work for you? With 16 people, chances are you will, so go give the article a read!

16 ^th
January

4 Things I Learned After Getting Paid for Influencer Services in Malaysia

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Since I started Ringgit Oh Ringgit, I’ve been lucky enough to be approached by brands that want to work with me. I’ve done sponsored content for at least 10 companies now, including some pretty big names in the financial space.

Like I mentioned in my What It’s Like to be a Personal Finance Blogger in Malaysia article, I didn’t set out wanting to be a ‘KOL’ (key opinion leader), or an influencer of any kind. In fact, hearing people calling me a KOL/influencer is still weird. It only sunk in after a friend sat me down and berated the shit out of me. Thanks friend for the tough love approach, I appreciate it, even if you did call me some unprintable words.

So with that in mind, I thought it would be fun to write about my experience so far, and a little bit about influencers in Malaysia. Here are some things I learned.

#1 – Influencers sell attention, a high-value commodity

14 ^th
January

12 Malaysia-Based Personal Finance Twitter Accounts to Follow

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If you love personal finance as a topic but have not explored Malaysian Twitter yet, do I have a treat for you today.

Following my popular personal finance Instagrammers in Malaysia article, I thought I’d compile the Twitter version pulak. Here are some Malaysia-based personal finance Twitter accounts you definitely should follow. Note that I have intentionally excluded other personal finance thought leaders in Malaysia who don’t use Twitter as their main engagement channel (bloggers, Instagrammers etc). I also exclude Twitter accounts maintained by finance-related companies and media.

This names in this list links directly to their Twitter accounts and appear in no particular order. If I missed out anyone, do let me know (or leave a comment with a link to the profile!)

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