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Link Roundup #23: 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. 4 things millionaires have in common, backed by research – The Ladders

What millionaires have in common:

  • Many are self-employed
  • They choose their careers strategically
  • They’re not geniuses but they have a strong work ethic
  • They’re cheap (read: frugal)

I highly encourage you to read the article because this is not some opinion piece, telling you some inspirational bullshit. The article is backed by research and every other sentence will make you rethink your whole life, like this one: ‘you’d need to earn 2.5 times as much money to be as happy as someone who is self-employed.‘

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How Zero Waste Malaysia Helps Me Save Money (& the Environment, A Little Bit)

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Confession: I entered the zero waste world a few years ago for its money-saving potential.

It’s been great. The communities are helpful, warm, encouraging. I had fun testing and trying out new lifestyle changes inspired from members of the zero waste community, sustainable living community, low impact community and so on. Among others, they encouraged me to:

  • include more plants and grains in my diet,
  • use a menstrual cup,
  • carry my reusable water bottle when going out,
  • stay car-free,
  • keep used coffee grounds to use as fertiliser,
  • significantly reduce my fast-fashion shopping,
  • and even helped me stay smoke-free (no more cigarette butts waste!)
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21 Totally Random Personal Finance Confessions

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Recently I saw a Twitter thread on bad personal finance confessions and I must say I love it! It’s so nice when personal finance gurus admit that they’re not perfect themselves. We all do things that are not necessarily good or ‘optimal’ for our money!


So I wrote a list of *my* bad personal finance confessions and it came up to, uh, quite a few. Some were not ‘bad’ per say, just random, so that’s what I’m calling it. Here there are – don’t judge me too much!

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Selling Online in Malaysia: My Book Sold Well So Here’s A Case Study

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In February 2019, I released my first book, Money Stories from Malaysians Volume 1 after almost a year of working on it.

It made RM9.5k within 2 weeks.

selling online in malaysia

… Actually, it made over RM10k. I received some generous donations as well. For example..

I know. I didn’t believe it at first. Just stared at that text for a long time, digesting what just happened. And that’s not the only donation I received too. Including this amount, I can safely say that I’ve recovered all upfront costs, and then some.

To show you my gratitude, I would like to break down the details and behind-the-scenes of selling online in Malaysia in this article. My product is a book but you can apply the knowledge to anything else. Hope it’ll be useful for you, for your own ecommerce shop (now or future).

#1 – Calculating cost price – Beyond the printing cost

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Link Roundup #22: 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. The Batshit Lengths These Guys Go to Retire by Age 40 – MEL Magazine 

THIS. Finally someone said it. This is why I never identified with the FIRE community.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of FIRE (financial independence, retire early), I really do, but what they say and do can be too much. The FIRE community idolises FIRE gurus like Mr Money Moustache and Jacob Lund Fisker of Early Retirement Extreme, who promote extreme frugalism as a way of life.

That would be fine. You-do-you and all. But it *is* annoying when some male members of the community complain about how hard dating is for them. They want wives who find their extremely frugal life appealing – the unwashed clothes and all. They label women who want a little bit more in life as ‘gold diggers’, and thinks the majority of women are ‘shallow’ because we like pretty things.

Moderation. Is. Key.

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22 Things I’ve Done to Make Money in Malaysia (From Kid to Adult)

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When I typed in ‘make money in Malaysia’, Google presented me with 570 million results.

570 million! In contrast, ‘invest money in Malaysia’ showed ‘only’ 37 million results!

So it’s obvious that many of you are interested in this topic. The articles presented gave pretty good suggestions on how to make money, too. Some gave part-time ideas, some gave side income ideas (what you can try), some gave ways to make money online, etcetera.

But none of them tells you what one person has tried in their personal capacity.

Here’s my attempt to do just that. Here’s everything I’ve ever done to make money in Malaysia (and beyond), from my childhood to now adulthood.

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6 Reasons to PreOrder Money Stories from Malaysians: Volume 1 NOW [ends 8 March 2019]

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  • Sale!

    Money Stories from Malaysians: Volume 1 Book + Ebook Package

    RM39.80 RM32.90     Add to basket

  • Money Stories from Malaysians: Volume 1 Book

    RM29.90     Add to basket

  • Money Stories from Malaysians: Volume 1 Ebook

    RM9.90     Add to basket
 
EDIT: Preorder period is officially over! Thanks so much for your support. If you missed the preorder, you can still make book purchases from the links above. 

Holy shit this is happening. Money Stories from Malaysians: Volume 1 is finally (almost) done!

At writing time, I’m in the midst of printing the physical copies and setting up accounts in ecommerce platforms beyond RoR platforms.

That’s not all. I still have to figure out the marketing and advertising, the contracts, the profit sharing methods, and a bunch of other stuff.

I was going to wait to sell the book until everything is done, but thanks for your advice, I have decided to proceed with the sales. Therefore I am happy to announce that the pre-order for Money Stories from Malaysians: Volume 1 is OPEN NOW!

Just to clarify, the ebook version is now available. The book version will be available and shipped out by mid-March 2019.

Here are some reasons to make your pre-orders now 🙂

Reason #1 – You’re curious about any of the 10 storylines

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Link Roundup #21: 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. Malaysia Hits Deflation for First Time Since 2009 Global Crisis – Bloomberg 

The deflation IS JUST FOR JANUARY 2019. As someone on Ringgit Oh Ringgit FB rightfully pointed out, one month’s stats is not a trend made. Plus, the deflation only occurred because Transport category fell so much (-7.8%).

But still, while we’re on the topic, I wanted know if deflation is good or bad. Learning opportunity and all right. This short video is the easiest way to learn about the effect of deflation.

I hope this deflation trend doesn’t get out of hand.

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Everything I Paid For During My 10-Year Weight Loss Journey

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I grew up fat. Or as my family calls it, ‘sihat’. I was the biggest in size in primary and secondary school. At my highest, my weight was almost 100kg. I was 20 years old then.

Now, 10 years later, my weight hovers around 75-78kg. My lowest weight ever was 72kg, right before I stopped keto diet. I think it takes this long because half the time I’m still unlearning bad habits accumulated over the years.

I’ve been taking fitness and weight loss seriously for about 3 years now and lost the bulk of the weight during this time. I have to stress that even before that I was non-stop dieting and trying to lose weight, but admittedly my attitude towards it was just warm-warm-chicken-shit. Now, I’m happy with my progress, but I know my fitness and weight loss journey is far from over. Someday I’ll hit the 60s range, just you wait.

To be honest, the slow progress frustrates me. I just want a nice body and be ‘the hot girl’ already. It takes all my willpower to consciously stop all the negative self-talk and remind myself of the progress over the years. That was also the main inspiration behind the [Personal] I Never Imagined Exercise Would Help My Career and Income, Until It Did article – I reread this piece every time I need a reminder of how far I’ve come.

How to save money on weight loss in Malaysia

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