Question: do you know your own budgeting style?

Kinda? Loosely?

Is it working?

Kinda? Not really?

Well now’s a good time as any to improve on your budgeting style, try a different one, or maybe find out the name of the method you’re doing now. You may find a style that may work better for your personality, or even help you to achieve specific goals (ie paying off debt).

See if you can find your description in any of the budgeting styles below…

If all of us were a Homo Economicus, we’d never make a single financial mistake. Not one. The ‘Economic man’ is an infinitely rational human being, who makes decisions purely on the pros and cons of options provided.

But alas, we’re not. We’re Homo sapiens, humans. Hormones released in our brains affect our emotions and decide on our behaviour, almost all the time. Being aware of it helps, but not as much as we’d like to think.

What I’m saying is, everyone makes stupid financial decisions. And sometimes we do it even when we know the decision is objectively stupid. 

It’s like… being aware that binge-eating is not good for you as you’re stuffing your face (hello dis me). Or continuing an extra-marital affair despite knowing your life will fall apart when you’re caught cheating.

Oof that got dark. Anyway, going back to personal finance.

The point

‘No’ is a complete sentence, but I also understand its nuance within the context of Asian culture: rejection. A social faux pas in our ‘save face’ culture.

Therefore, learning how to say no without actually saying no is something that I had to learn organically, through observation and experience. My (Western-centric) reading materials certainly didn’t teach it.

And combine that with my natural leaning towards ‘agreeableness’ trait (as per Big 5 Personality Trait), which values harmony and peacekeeping over being confrontational – if I didn’t learn how to say no, I would have just agreed to almost every financial request out there. Women take note, because many of you tend to have this same trait too.

Obviously that wouldn’t have been a good financial move. So I’ll just go ahead and say this: to be good with money, you have to learn how to say no.

Financial requests you should learn to say ‘no’ to

Did Covid-19 change the way you spend money?

Common sense said it did. Almost everyone has been affected by the pandemic, in one way or another (notably, following MCO rules to the best of our ability, correct not). Most people are spending more on groceries and online shopping, and less on everything else and offline purchases.

This is my guess based on what the media reported, but how true is that statement in my personal life?

So I thought, hey why not make a direct comparison of my spending pattern, before and after Covid-19 hit? In what way did my personal spending change, in each expense category? I can do this. I track my expenses. I have the data.

For the purpose of this article, I’ll be using,

• Before Covid-19: My average monthly spending per category (as recorded in My Total Income and Expenses in 2019)
• During Covid-19: Data collected since MCO started on 18 March 2020 until time of writing, (almost exactly 3 months worth of data)

Expenses Comparison: Before & After Covid-19

Conclusion

As you can see:

• Biggest increases are in categories: Donations & Gifts and Business
• Biggest decreases are in categories: Dates & Travel, Insurance & Medical, Public Transportation, Misc Wants & Social
• No or minimal changes in categories: Groceries, Misc Needs, Food (Non-Groceries) & Mobile
• Overall, my expenses actually increased by almost RM500, if compared before and after Covid-19. Mostly due to Donations

Old me would be worried about appearing to be humblebragging, but new me embraces and – dare I say it – is proud of my own actions. I didn’t just encourage people to donate, I also put my money where my mouth is. Almost RM3k per month in donations is really stretching my budget but if there’s a worthy YOLO occasion, this is it.

How has Covid-19 affected your monthly expenses? Which expense categories significantly increased and decreased for you? Let me know in the comments section 🙂

Like many of you, I, too, enjoy a nice round of YouTube binge-watching. I mean, who doesn’t go off to YouTube when procrastinating work, amirite? AMIRITE.

The purpose of this article is two-fold:

(1) to expand your idea of what fits under the category of ‘personal finance’. Too often, ‘personal finance videos’ mean videos about saving money and investing (how-tos, advice and motivation), but I think it’s broader than that. Many of the videos I’ve listed below are not ‘classic’ personal finance videos – usually they’re lumped under the catch-all ‘lifestyle’ and/or ‘parenting’ niche – but they’re useful as personal finance references.

(If you’re looking for the stereotypical personal finance Youtube listing: 8 Malaysia-Based Personal Finance YouTube Channels to Follow)

And, (2) make myself feel a bit better about the hours I spent watching them lol. At least I can tell myself ‘this is personal finance research’ as I click on the next suggested video.

Without further adooooo

(As much as possible I prioritised Malaysians in this list, because hell yeah support Malaysian content creators)

#1 – Grocery haul videos

Hey, you. You want to achieve financial freedom in Malaysia, but don’t know how. You may not even know what that entails. Financial freedom is like one of those meaningless phrases, like ‘paradigm shift’.

Let me help.