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My 20-year Personal Finance Journey [PERSONAL]

BySuraya
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I started tracking my expenses at 17 years old. This year, 2025, I am 37 years old. That means I have been on a 20-year personal finance journey. Wow, what a journey it has been!

I thought I’d do a recap post on how I and my money management have evolved over the years. This post is more for my own benefit, a way for me to reflect back on my life. I hope you find my perspectives interesting and perhaps even useful for your own journey 🙂

So, in the past 20 years,

I’ve become financially stable

I started my personal finance journey by tracking my expenses in a notebook, in an effort to make my allowance last. Since then, I’ve learned the whole spectrum of money management – budgeting, saving, earning, investing, protecting, and more.

Today, Alhamdulillah, I am doing more than okay financially. In the past 2 decades, I can say I’ve made more good financial decisions than bad ones. Some of them include:

Without dismissing my own hard work, I admit I also had more good luck than bad.

My biggest luck? Hands down, having financially stable parents.

Going forward, I expect my financial situation to get even better, but I’d be happy even if it remains the same (taknak tamak lol). I know that if God wants to take everything I’ve worked for, that can happen anytime.

I’ve mostly viewed personal finance as fun

When I first started out, I had a mini culture shock when other people describe money management in negative terms. I’ve always seen personal finance as positive, fun.

Then I realised some people only learned personal finance because they *have* to. An effort to ‘pull their shit together’ after making some bad financial decisions or falling into bad financial situations.

Personally, I never had any bad debt to dig out of. I never made horrible financial mistakes (of course I have lost money along the way; mistakes are part of the process). I’m not saying I’m better, I’m just reasoning why I’ve always viewed personal finance as fun.

I genuinely like the game of optimising my finances. I like learning about earning money, saving money, investing, protecting. I like learning about the mindset, the psychology. It doesn’t stress me out. On the contrary, it energises me.

I like it so much I even spent RM10k to complete the Certified Financial Planning course so I can do my own financial planning lol (side note: I’m not a practising CFP).

I’m grateful for this positive mindset to money. It makes all the difference.

I learned than career path is not linear

When I was younger, I literally thought the only way to move upwards, career-wise is to move up the ranks in a company.

Actually, no. Life is not a point-and-click game, it is more like an open world game. You really can do whatever.

I started working since I was 18 (as an insurance telemarketer lol) and dabbled in a lot of freelance and gig work while studying (further expanded in the How to Make Money in Malaysia: 23 Things I’ve Done, From Kid to Adult article). After graduation, I joined companies, expecting to move upwards.

I never made it upwards, but God planned it better. Now, I am a self-employed personal finance content writer, speaker and digital marketer. I’ve written and published multiple books, including the best-selling Bergaji & Pokai book. I’ve delivered many workshops and spoke on many stages. I created the How to Buy Your Own Insurance course.

I’m nowhere near my sheroes, but I’m happy and really proud of the work I’ve done 🙂

I went for stability first, then autonomy

Like many people, I too wanted freedom and flexibility in my work. But to me, these things were things I had to ‘earn’, and not expect. I didn’t allow myself to quit my job without at least 12 months’ worth of savings.

So that’s what I did: I saved money through my 9-5 (and got lucky nothing major happened which depleted all those savings), then when the opportunity came, I started my own business.

Some people do it the other way around, and that’s fine too. Your journey is your journey.

I’m working on becoming a satisficer (rather than a maximiser)

One of the biggest shifts in my personal finance journey is switching from saving money mode to earning money mode. I am a natural maximiser – someone who does a LOT of research to find the best possible solution, so I did a lot of research on saving money.

I mean, I was OBSESSED with saving money – I’d try to save every little bit, down to the cents! Up til today I am a self-described frugal person. I thought this was a good thing, but what it actually did was waste time when I could be earning money!

Don’t get me wrong, saving money is a good thing. Except I tend to spend too much time and resources on something arguably unimportant, in the bigger scheme of things. In contrast, a satisficer is have already found their ‘good enough’ solution and moved on to more important problems.

Now, I try not to spend too much time on small matters. In the words of Ramit Sethi, Stop agonizing over the $3 questions (like spending RM5 here and there) and start paying attention to the $30000 questions (finding high income, big ticket purchases/expenses).

I still don’t own a house nor a car

While the temptation to own house(s) and car(s) resurface from time to time – they are, after all, traditional markers of ‘success’ – it just never made practical sense for me to pull the trigger.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not againse house nor car ownership. If one day it makes sense for me to own them, I will. I just don’t believe in owning them ‘just because’.

I no longer panic during market downturns

It took a while, but market downturns no longer bother me. I accept it as an inevitable event that will happen multiple times in my lifetime. So I lost money, so my networth decreased. As long as I have enough in the bank for day-to-day expenses, I don’t need to sell shit.

This is such a big change. I mean, I used to panic-sell my investments in my early-to-mid 20s, and now I just chill and ride it out. I’m happy with this evolution and emotional maturity 🙂

Lastly,

I believe personal finance is both systemic injustice AND personal agency

Coming from the social services line of work, I *know* how bad and inefficient policies can affect whole generations and demographics. I think I spent a good chunk in the last 20 years believing the government is mostly to blame for its citizens’ financial woes.

This believe is still true somewhat – there are people who are stuck in bad financial situations due to reasons outside their control. For example, I explained why our income is low in the 5 Reasons Why Malaysians Are Underpaid article. I also understand how hard it is to be in certain situations (4 TOUGHEST Financial Situations to be in).

However, I also believe in personal agency. There *are* people who, despite getting lots of help (from govt and others), will still blame everyone and everything but themselves.

There are people who were given materials and training so they can catch hypothetical fish, but choose to sell their hypothetical fishing rods for fast money. There are people who were given extremely cheap rent, but choose not to pay them.

To make matters worse, these people are so entitled. They criticise everything but hate it when they get criticised for their actions.

Haih, I don’t know. They annoy me, but I can only work on my own progress I guess :/

Anyway, these are some notable reflections I can extract out from my 20-year personal finance journey. I’m sure there is much more lessons I’ll learn in the future, and I can’t wait to test new financial strategies and adapt to them.

How about you? How long is your personal finance journey and what would you say is the biggest lesson you have learned about yourself? Share in the comments!


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