Afraid that I will mismanage my salary

[lynq]

@marsch Also i forgot to mention. Give yourself time to know what you want to spend on. Maybe 1 year or 2 years into your working life, your priorities/preference may change. Let the dust settle as well.

 

[johnsteam86]

@marsch Lifestyle inflation is real. I feel you.

Here are some tips I use.

1. Car: your needs. Are you in sales, need to travel outstation? Ferry old people or babies? Target an instalment of

 

[fizzywig]

@marsch Whenever people ask advice on what first car to buy when you first start working, I would always advise to just get a myvi. I know it doesn’t look fancy but it’s inexpensive and worth it. The value doesnt drop that much and is always in high demand. My myvi bought in 2012 I think still has a resell value for 20k (according to Google). Maintenance is also very much bearable, routine service is well below RM500. Car is only a tool to bring you from point A to point B, and you’re a pilot so you won’t be driving alot too I suppose.

There were times I felt I needed to upgrade my lifestyle and get a new car, but I didn’t do it because after checking the cost (installments & maintenance) I asked myself why do I want to spend so much extra when my current car can just get me where I need to be. I can actually afford to pay up a new car without loan, but again what for? Maybe I’m just not someone that needs a fancy car to stroke my ego. I did upgrade other lifestyle aspects like dining, traveling, shopping etc, I just dgaf on what people think when they see what car I drive.

I read some of your comments that you intend to stick to your ori plan to start paying your parents, and I’m really proud of your decision. Don’t take family loans for granted because everyone has a scoring system that works in their mind. It’s not written out like how the banks do, you won’t even know how it is being evaluated.

Once you start working, work on a budget plan and focus on saving your 6 months emergency fund. Set a target amount to save every month. For me, I didn’t had much commitments when I first started working, only had a car loan and a cheaper study loan, so I committed to save 30% of my salary and it kinda remained throughout the years as a minimum portion to set aside every month.

Good luck OP!

 

[marsch]

@fizzywig Thank you very much for the detailed response. I’m considering to buy a local car or maybe if i feel i wanna spend more on car, I’m looking for used Toyota cars like Yaris or Vios. But taking your advice, I’ll make sure to try to finish off my loans first before thinking of buying anything fancy.

 

[theologybuff]

@marsch Easiest way is to live one step below your income. Set aside X amount each month, put it straight into your investment (i.e. ASB), and forget it ever exists. If anyone asks, your income is the reduced amount. Don't consider it for anything that isn't a home purchase downpayment or a medical emergency. Not even if your parents got loan sharks after them.

Lifestyle creep is hard to resist because people have the consideration of unused money or spending power in their mind. Remove the money and put it out of your mind to deal with it. And it takes a very long time to learn to resist spending on unnecessary stuff you don't need.

Also, having a budget for disposable income helps. Once you get used to not breaking your own set up rules and never compromising for anything, it gets a lot easier to keep it going.

 

[marsch]

@theologybuff Thank you very much! I will keep this mind in the future

 

[theologybuff]

@marsch Regarding car purchase, I would strongly suggest setting up rules for replacement by another car. So say.. unless the car becomes too expensive to repair or perform maintenance (i.e. engine damage in flood or accident), or is a total loss in accident, you would keep the car for X number of years after your loan finishes. I will also mention to put the financial budget freed up by the car instalments then into your "out of sight out of mind account". You can save it up for the next car's downpayment, but ideally you'll want to keep the car for as long as it will service you.

Imho if you want to upgrade later for a girl, do it after marrying, not for the sake of wanting to impress her during the dating phase. Totally not worth it man.

And maybe don't get a manual car if you driving in the city and spend significant amounts of time in traffic jams. And if there's a possibility of having to drive through flooded roads, obviously you'll want to get a car that can do it (up to a certain depth I guess).

I think one of the biggest expenses for a fresh grad would be the purchase of cars. Phones, laptops, computer, and so on I think you'll probably figure things out by the time you reach rm15k spent. Which is miniscule compared to a car purchase you regret. Either ways, for those you would ideally want to have an expected lifespan for them as well, so you can stretch your money's worth as much as possible. For me, all three is at least 5 years and wait till security issues or game non compatibility to replace. Or damage serious enough to affect user experience and too expensive to repair.

 

[new_2_this_b_kind]

@marsch Not comprehensive or even a real solid advice lol but as a lazy person, this is what I do :

Make a budget first - fun money, saving, emergency, expenses - look at how much you have left for the car installment (take in consideration about the car road taxes, insurances, maintenance as well. foreign and/or more expensive cars would have a higher cost for all of that). Then do a research on cars in that budget

If you are afraid of spending your money instead of saving, do auto-labur instead. So far that I'm using ASB and Wahed, and this is what I do (auto-labur every month) + tabung haji cutting straight from my salary. So, with this, you don't have to do it yourselves and risking forgetting and/or tempting to use it on other stuff.

Have separate account for 'saving' (or rather money other than fun money) and an account for fun money. For example - maybank account + mae account , or bank account + touch n go+, or even 2 seperate bank accounts. One just for emergency, and another for use daily/monthly.

 

[chris_1989]

@marsch Go buy Honda go go just to show off

 

[gtfox26]

@marsch 8 to 10k salary? Thats a lovely problem I'd like to have

 

[baylaurel143]

@marsch First you gotta tell us what is 'cheap' to you. Some say Myvi is cheap. Some say Vios is cheap.

If you are afraid to mismanage, then buy cheap and save/invest the rest. If you commit to investing, your money sure won't fly around on weird shit because you don't want to affect your projections.

Unless of course you mati2 want to live within your means.

By right we should all live 1 step below our means.

 

[marsch]

@baylaurel143 I would say 1k monthly is maximum for me. I don’t really mind if it’s a secondhand car. As long as it’s reliable and wont make me fall into lifestyle inflation.

 

[growingchristian16]

@marsch Personally think you should only consider getting a car after the first few salaries because then youd be able to see your own cashflow and with that you can determine a budget.

Lifestyle inflation creeps on you, because youre earning more, suddenly youre spending more too. One rough month and tires need replacing, a service is due, rodtek and insurance pun. Suddenly that 1k car feels reaaally tight cause almost half of your gaji is already gone to the bank and your parents