Making money from the money you don't own

Can you?  Of course you can.  I did this before.  The very first attempt was successful.  The second one is still in the making, though I've used my own money to repay the interest free loan.  I now see another opportunity to do so here.  I am going to try it out with safer and less risky investments, learning the lesson from the second attempt.

Let me first share with you some background.  I have a credit card here and with the current limit, I am eligible for SAR30k cash advance.  Below are the setups here that make this plan workable.

• E-wallet top up, although is utilising the cash advance allocation, is treated as online purchase.  Thus, if the top up is made from a bank account to an e-wallet belonging to the same parent company, there is no charge at all and because it is considered as online purchase, there is no requirement for immediate repayment to avoid charges.  
• The fixed deposit accounts here are still giving good return rates.  5% is still possible although they fluctuate and can change frequently.
• Even some savings accounts can still give you above 4% return rates.
• Loyalty points are directly convertible to cash.

FD rates here, no kidding

Now, here are the strategies.

1. Reload my e-wallet with SAR30k using my credit card on the first of the month.  Because the billing cycle begins on every first of the month, it will only be charged in the next round of statement i.e. not due until 25th of the next month.  So, I will have a total of 55 days to invest.
2. Transfer the SAR30k from the e-wallet to another bank that can give higher return rates with the negligible transfer fee covered by the loyalty points I gained from other purchases.
3. Put the SAR30k in a fixed deposit account that gives around 5% return per annum, and that will give me around SAR125 for 30 days.
4. Keep the SAR30,125 in a savings account that gives 4.2% return per annum for the remaining 24 days and that will give me another SAR83.
5. Repay the SAR30k on the next day and I will get about SAR200 to keep from this small 55-day investment that is not even using my own money 😁

Let's go!

Thank you Oman Air! Half a year that's worth the wait ... and sweat

😏 

Let's start with this smiley.  When I talked about the SAR11k+ that I had to convert into more affordable installments, it was for the one-way RUH-COK Oman Air flight tickets via MCT for the three of us to go home for Eid.  Flight tickets were super expensive at the time and choices were extremely limited due to the tension in the region.  One option that I found was to fly from RUH to COK via MCT and subsequently take a cheap Batik Air flight from COK to KUL on a separate PNR.  At least that was the plan.  The RUH-COK leg alone cost us SAR11,110 😓.

We were unfortunately denied boarding at RUH for one reason that I overlooked and honestly was not aware of.  That we needed visas to transit in India because the tickets were bought separately.  Sigh.  Ever since, I was trying to get some refund from Oman Air, whatever amount that they're willing to refund, although I wasn't hopeful because the mistake was due to our oversight.  I suppressed the details when contacting the airline, taking advantage of the current situation then and mentioning only about being denied boarding 😛.

The first response received was that I would be entitled to a full refund, which was to my great relief.  But it was a long silent after that.

First reply.  Great!

When I followed up later, it was a different story.  The airline said that there was no change in the itinerary, which was true, and that I would only be refunded SAR207.  Fair enough as I was willing to accept whatever amount refunded.  Again, a long silent followed.

Later reply.  Ok fine.

I kept following up until the end of July when they finally said that the refund had been submitted for processing and would be credited back to the card in a month.  When I did not see any credit by early this month, I followed up again and the airline said that it had been processed and should be settled within the week.

Finally, today, I received the following notification from the bank.

Ping!

Which is to my pleasant surprise and great relief.  I was expecting a SAR207 as said, but they refunded me fully, Alhamdulillah.  Well, almost.  The refund was SAR25 less.  Many thanks to responsive Oman Air customer service.  I am now chasing another airline that no doubt should refund me because they cancelled the flights but until now has chosen to remain unresponsive and ignorant.

3D2N Riyadh-Madinah

Riyadh-Madinah route is honestly darn boring.  You see deserts most of the time with the same look and feel.  A 7 to 8 hours journey by car for me is almost unbearable.  I need to stop and spend a night in between.  For this trip, we spent one night in Unayzah on the way to Madinah and another in Al Dwadimi on the way back.  The original plan was to spend the night at Afif on the way back, but the hotel we booked didn't seem to exist.  So, we continued the journey for another two hours to Al Dwadimi, a bigger town compared to Afif spent the night there instead.

The chosen route

Visiting Madinah is no longer a purely spiritual journey for us as we do it more and more often.  We take time to visit other places too along the route.  This time were Al Majma'ah Historic Old Town, a traditional house at Al Rass, Al Musawkaf Market, Al Nakheel Avenue for dinner and the Nofa Wildlife Park on the way back just before entering Riyadh.  Since we were not following the conventional route this time, the journey itself was like an open safari.  We saw camels and sheep along the way and stopped by an oasis for a quick lunch.  So nice 😍.

Al Majma'ah Old Village

As the name says

Lesssgo!

Oasis in Al Mahdi

A random camel crossing the road

Funding Societies year-on-year performance comparison

End of April 2026 marked my second anniversary with Funding Societies Malaysia.  As I reflect and reevaluate my investment here, I also tabulated the returns for the past two years.

Returns for the last few months of 2026 are dwindling as I started to move some capital out due to FS' degrading performance.  I started to see more and more payments defaulted.  Some have even entered the no-recovery state.  However, I will still maintain my investment here for as long as its return rate is at par with the EPF's.

Month	2024	2025
May	1.73	312.86
June	7.01	326.46
July	20.63	332.76
August	74.29	365.89
September	185.95	330.55
October	202.54	348.70
November	212.03	310.20
December	214.09	342.09
January	271.86	333.85
February	241.75	264.45
March	327.48	163.17
April	303.80	208.95
Total	2,063.16	3,345.87

Investments worth keeping

In the name of diversification, I've been exploring and investing in a number of different investment types for the past few years.  They are giving me returns that range from 3% to more than 50% in extremely rare occasions and especially if they were having campaigns and promotions.    In my opinion, the main challenge to these investment instruments is that our EPF is giving good return, which renders those giving lower than that unattractive.  After these years of trials and errors, I've resorted to keeping only the following in my investment portfolio for the moment.

• A savings account that still gives 5% profit rate p.a. since introductory promotion.  However, maximum deposit amount is kept at RM2k with no overall quota.  Good enough for emergency fund.
• A trading account with a broker that I've been with for more than 20 years.  I don't actively trade and some of the stocks are meant for investment rather than trading.  I just leave it open and active.  At least whenever I see opportunities in the market and feel like taking the chances, I have the means to do so.  In short, it can potentially give higher returns than EPF, but loss is also a possibility too.
• Another trading account-cum-savings because it is giving some 3+% p.a. on idle money in the account.  If no cash upfronted, it would act just like the other trading account above.
• A crowdfunding (debt funding) account that is currently giving around 7% p.a. return.  However, with each default, the rate can significantly drop and lately, the number of defaults is growing, hence my venture into another one below.  If I choose to only fund guaranteed debts, the nett return rate would be around 5.95%, which is still competitive.
• Another crowdfunding account that I opened due the degrading performance of the above.  At the moment, it is giving me a nett 6.3% return p.a. with defaults still standing at zero.  I also have one crowdfunding account here in Saudi that is giving up to 15% p.a. nett returns.
• Two trust fund accounts for me to experiment with unit trusts.  There are loss risks of course, but one fund subscribed last year is currently recording 70% unrealised return.  Should liquidate this soon.  Don't be greedy.
• A few FD accounts here in Saudi because FDs here are still giving around 4.5% to 5% return rates p.a.

Any other investments that are giving lower RoR p.a. than the above, in my opinion, are not worth keeping.  How much capital do I put in each?  That is not something that I want to share 😀

Tweaking to make ends meet

Not really to make ends meet actually.  Our ends always meet, Alhamdulillah.

This month however is a bit challenging.  My credit cards are overwhelmed with charges of cancelled and last-minute replacement flights for Eid break with refunds, if any, of the former still on the way, thanks to the US war on Iran.  In short, if I don't do anything, all of my salary this month will completely go towards settling the credit card balances.  So here are my strategies to help ease the financial challenge.

1. Maybank Ezypay plus.  From time to time like now, Maybank is running an interest free with zero upfront fee when we convert our purchase to six-month installments.   I talked about this before.  A new trick that I learnt to maximise this benefit is to perform the conversion on the day your monthly statement is going to be out.  This way, the purchase amount will be reversed on the same day, but the first installment will only begin the next day and will be in your next monthly statement because of the processing time.  In my case, I managed to reduce the due balance from some RM14k to only RM3k+ after converting the ticket cost of our KUL-RUH journey.  So, so good.

2. There is a similar offer here for AlRajhi credit card holders.  It is called Tasaheal.  However, unlike Maybank, AlRajhi allows conversion to installments after the statement is out, as long as the due balance has not been paid in full.  Obviously, the first installment is going to be in the next monthly statement.  The offer is not as interesting as Maybank though.  I had to pay SAR49 upfront fee plus SAR7.35 VAT and the interest free offer is only for 3-month installments.  Well, good enough because I am converting SAR11k+ 😅.  I had to otherwise pay some SAR30k for credit card alone this month.

These strategies will allow me some space to breathe.  I can also have some cash buffer while waiting for the next few months, which are going to be very exciting because they are summer months where you're going to enjoy paid vacation 😁.  Alhamdulillah thumma Alhamdulillah.

How much do I passively make a month? A snapshot.

When I talked about getting my money to work for me, I really mean it.  Ever since, I will always look for investment opportunities that will make my money work harder and harder for me.  From time to time, I also rearrange my investment portfolio in order to optimise the returns.  

After some time, I think it would be interesting to know how hard the money has worked for me 😁.  I summarise my investment portfolio in the table below without the capital of course just to get some idea on how much, at least, I am getting a month.

Since this post is not sponsored, I will keep the investment names hidden.  This is not my complete portfolio.  I only include investments that guarantee returns (realised) here and exclude those that fluctuate (unrealised) and those that do not credit returns monthly e.g. EPF & ASNB.  Also, all of these investments are shariah compliant.

Name	Description	Profit in January 2026
V	Micro-investment platform	RM29.40
FS	Crowdfunding (debt funding) started in 2024	RM319.00
C	Another crowdfunding started last year	RM111.22
B	Similar to V.  It is also giving 3x bonus points that are convertible to cash, and the profit here has taken that into calculation	RM73.74
ARM	Savings account that is giving > 2% p.a. profit	RM11.08
TG	Can be considered as a savings account that is giving > 2% p.a. profit and credited daily	RM50.66
AM	Savings account with promotional profit rate of > 2% p.a.	RM26.35
K	Savings account with promotional profit rate of > 2% p.a.	RM9.60
ARB 1	Savings account that gives > 2% p.a. returns and credited daily	SAR46.93
STC	Savings account that is currently having promotion and giving > 2% p.a. returns	SAR117.52
ARB 2	FD that matures in 3 months and I've started this more than 3 months ago and now consistently getting return every month.	SAR306.25
Total		1,101.75

Alhamdulillah.  The data have it that I did make more than 1k last month.  Though only slightly more.  More than enough to settle the monthly bills.

UK & Eire trip 2025

Yes!  Another family trip just before the year 2025 ends.  This time, we started the trip with just the four of us and we started from Saudi of course.  Angah waited for us in Cork, his new home for the moment.  In the wee hours of 14th December, we left RUH for LHR, arriving LHR at around 5.15 am.  Shortly after, we left LHR for EDI to get to our first destination, Edinburgh Castle a.k.a Hogwarts Castle.  Weather was supercold, windy and gloomy when we arrived, and we went straight to the castle right after dropping our luggage at the hotel, stopping by a Christmas market on the way.

View of Edinburgh from the castle

Edinburgh Christmas market

We left EDI for ORK the next day and arrived at the latter around 9.00 pm.  Achik & I stayed at the hotel room while Abah & Along went out to pick Angah up.  Soon after, our family of five reunited again.  Yeay!!!

Click!  Five in a frame

After breakfast the next morning, which was not that early anyway, we left Cork for Dublin because Angah needed to settle his residency permit.  We spent the night at a freezing Christmas market in Dublin where Along & Achik enjoyed ice skating that they missed in Edinburgh.

Dublin Christmas market

Ice skating duo preparing for a show

When we returned to Cork the next day, it was already dark.  We had to postpone our trip to Cobh and went to another Christmas market instead.  This time, an indoor one, which was less freezing.  We went to Cobh after breakfast and check-out the next morning, dropped Angah at his home and then went to Cork airport to begin the return journey to Riyadh.

Cobh, we made it!

It was a very short trip indeed, but one where we spent time together, which makes it so priceless.  Looking forward to another one soon!

Lecturing in Saudi

Yes.  I’m back into the workforce not long after posting about surviving early retirement 😂.  It’s not about money for sure.  I was ready for a complete retirement.  It’s just that I somehow have a feeling that I may be able to contribute for a couple more years before attempting to retire again at 50.  My LinkedIn status has always been ‘career break’ since July 2023, not ‘retired’.

When a matching and interesting opportunity came by early this year, I just tried my luck.  Everything went smoothly and the rest is history.  I was hired starting from 17 August 2025.  Below are my discoveries so far.

❤ Salary.  Even the basic salary is higher than my last drawn gross salary and that is only half of what I get.  Allowances constitute the other half and all are income-tax free.  Zero deduction.  WYSIWYG.

❤ Lots and lots of leaves.  60 days of annual leaves.  Yes, you read it right.  You don’t get this even after more than 20 years of working in Malaysia.  On top of these, about two weeks each of eid leaves and leaves for the whole of Ramadhan too.  Basically, I only need to work for eight months and get paid for 12 months 👀.  Too good to be true.  I hope it is true.

❤ Lots and lots of cosy cafes.  This may depend on the institution.  I can find cafe in almost every corner and there is a food court too that includes popular fast food restaurants like KUDU.  Lots of snack vending machines too.  So rich.  So nice.  So fat?  Huh.

❤ Flat system.  I’m not sure what to call this but here, you’re not addressed by your rank.  Whether you’re an associate professor or assistant professor, you’re a Dr.  You get the same office and the same loading.  KPIs are the same for all PhD holders.  Depending on the kind of person you are, you may like or dislike this.  I love it and am very comfortable with it.

💔 No mid-semester break.  It’s a straight 15-week of classes followed by two examination weeks.  Can hardly breathe.  I guess after so many leaves including the whole of Ramadhan, you can’t afford to have more breaks.

💔 Very very few public holidays.  To be honest, only two.  The founding day and national day.  For someone so used to so many public holidays, these are scarce.

A bitter reality of unit trust funds

Maybank launched goal-based investment (GBI) about a year ago.  It is basically unit trust funds based investment where you can combine a number of trust funds in one group, determine the percentage of each, put on a fixed amount of money and Maybank will do the purchase.  I decided to try and created a goal comprising the following funds.  The idea is, since we have to put aside RM270/month for our children’s takaful premium that we pay annually, maybe I can try to generate something from the cumulative amount before we actually use it a year later.  After the creation, I started RCA-ing this fund on monthly basis until it reached a point where I decided to stop.  The main reason is that the performance of the fund kept declining and I was concerned that we were going to lose even more.  I put the remaining into a safer investment instrument.

Stopped RCA-ing in February 2025

Only recently it started to show growth and is giving positive return, which is just nice because it’s about time we have to pay for the annual premium.  I finally closed this goal on 10th July 2025 with RM6.60 loss.  A margin that I can tolerate and can be covered by the profit from the remaining amount that I put somewhere else after I stopped RCA-ing.  I’m now looking at another instrument to start another year of RCA.

From RM0 to SAR 170 in 170 days

Ever since Malaysia Airlines’ joined venture with Mechant Trade to introduce Enrich Money, Maybank treatspoints has become more valuable and useful for me.  Living abroad, the only meaningful redemption for me is Enrich miles.  But we don’t travel with MAS that often either.  With Enrich Money, Enrich miles can be converted to Enrich Money points on one-on-one basis, which can then be converted to cash at the rate of RM1 per 40 Enrich Money points.  Yes, you heard it right.

Enrich money is having a promotion until this Monday where you can get 10% extra Enrich Money points when you convert from Enrich miles.  I converted 4000 miles recently and got 4400 Enrich Money points.  That will give me RM110 when converted to cash.  Enrich is also having a promotion starting this Tuesday where we can get 20% extra Enrich miles when we convert from Maybank treatspoints or any other banks’.  12500 treatspoints give me 1000 Enrich miles and I have around 25k+ treatspoints at the moment.  If converted within the timeframe, they will give me 2400 Enrich miles, which in turn will give me 2400 Enrich Money points that give RM60 when converted to cash.

Altogether, I will get a total of RM170.  If converted to SAR in one go, this will give me SAR149.82 at the current rate.  So the trick is to convert extremely small amount at a time.  At the current rate, RM0.03 will give me SAR0.03.  That’s a one-on-one conversion rate.  But you have to do it many times 😅.  Converting RM1 a day I think is doable.  That will take about 170 days to complete.  After 170 days more or less, I will have SAR170 in my Enrich Money wallet at no cost, except the very minimum effort to do the daily conversions.

Surviving early retirement

Attaining financial independence and retiring early (FIRE) may not be as exciting as it sounds.  Friends of my age, especially ladies, have been talking about it for years but still working until today.  I know someone in particular who decided to retire early at the age of 54 but returned to work in less than a year and still working today beyond the age of 60.  It has been exactly two years today since I opted for early retirement in July 2023 at the age of 46.  Things have been great so far.  Given a second chance, I would still choose to retire early.  How did I survive?  Here are two tips from me.

First and most important of all, you have to have adequate savings to support your lifestyle post retirement.  This is of course not something that you start working on a few months or even a few years before retirement.  It has to be way earlier.  In my case, I started working with early retirement in mind.  So, I planned and tailored everything accordingly.  Savings, lifestyle, loan tenures et cetera.  The key is to live moderately below your means.  Not to the point of starvation of course.  We travel a lot and dine out quite often.  We could have done more, but we didn’t.  That’s the point.  This is also useful after retirement because you basically just maintain the lifestyle.  No downgrading required.

Secondly is to find ways to keep yourself occupied each day.  Your mind and body are so used to doing full time job for years and it is not a good idea to suddenly stop everything, though it may sound pleasing.  This is the time for you to do all the things that you like and are passionate about but never get the chance to do because of you were busy with work.  Your brain and body need to keep moving.  At least, create something that you can look forward to each coming day.  For me, I occupy myself with two things in particular, gardening and investing.

Since most of my investment instruments are based in Malaysia, my days start as early as 3.30 a.m. when funds like Versa and Wahed update their prices, and KLSE pre-opens.  I usually get up at 3.00 a.m. for Subuh prayer, depending on the season.  Subuh prayer time ranges from 3.30 a.m. to 5.30 a.m. throughout the year here.  Between 4.30 a.m. and 6.30 a.m. I’ll be busy preparing husband & daughter for work & school respectively, ironing clothes, cooking breakfast and all.  I will resume monitoring investments from around 6.30 a.m. after the leave, until 7.30 a.m. when the market takes afternoon break.  Funding Societies and CapBay also usually publish new investment opportunities after and around 7 a.m. as well as crediting any principals and/or profits returned.

During the market break from 7.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m., I will tend to my plants, wash clothes, which is not done daily and defrosting the necessary to prepare for lunch.  Stock market here starts at 10 a.m.  At 11 a.m., I will battle for Funding Societies investment opportunities if there are any, and also check on new opportunities that will start at 3 p.m. (8 p.m. MYT).  When KLSE ends at 11.45 a.m., it’s time for me to go to the kitchen and start cooking for lunch, which will usually last until after 1 p.m.  That will be the time for me to check on the last batch of investment opportunities from Funding Societies that will open at 5 p.m.

At 1.50 p.m. I leave home to pick up daughter from school.  While waiting for her in the car, I will check on the performance of Halogen funds, which update at 2 p.m. every weekday.  At 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., I will battle for investment opportunities at Funding Societies, if there are any of interest.  Throughout the day too, I will check on the performance of various unit trust funds and foreign currencies that update at different times.  Stock market here ends at 3 p.m.  After 7 p.m., I will check on the investment instruments in Malaysia that give daily returns.  Five hours later, often in my dream, I will check on the similar investment instruments here.  Then the next day repeats …

First visit to Madinah as a Saudi resident

We visited Madinah the first time as a Saudi resident in September 2023.  Yes, this post is long overdue.  We drove there 😅.  That was the only striking difference I think.  It took us around seven hours to get there from Riyadh.  This visit was also to complete my Hajj trip.  I didn’t get the chance to visit Madinah after Hajj as I had to leave early.  For record, I left for Hajj with KT110 and returned with KT9 😬.

Achik was super excited because everything was like new to her.  The last time we visited Madinah was in March 2013.  She was few months shy of three years old then and could barely recall anything from the umrah trip.

2013

Ten years later

One year experience with Funding Societies

In the search for an alternative investment instrument that can potentially gives higher returns than the EPF, I stumbled upon Funding Societies.  Crowdsourcing was one of my research areas, so it is not that difficult for me to understand the mechanisms behind it.  The experience is not bad at all.  In a year, I’ve managed to gain more than RM2k returns from a total of RM 50k capital that I gradually increased from few hundreds initially.  As of today, my annualised profit rate is 8.8%.

Returns growth to date.

However, like any other investment types, it is not without risk.  The risk is when the issuers (SME companies that make loans) default payment.  The Funding Societies team will do the necessary and take appropriate actions if that happens and we will be informed.  Nothing we can do beyond that.  Fortunately, for me, all such issues have been resolved.

My practice is to balance between guaranteed loans and non-guaranteed loans.  The former has lower profit rate (but still higher than most other instruments) but repayments are guaranteed.  For non-guaranteed loans, I will take time to go through the factsheets before investing.  I will only invest in companies that have excellent (prompt) repayment track records.  This will help to reduce defaults, although there is no guarantee.  My advice is to avoid setting the auto-investment bots, unless for guaranteed loans. 

How to avoid unit trust’s sales charge?

If you’re used unit trust investment, you will notice that there is sales charge that comes with its subscription, usually deducted from the total amount.  That means, the number of units are purchased after deducting this charge from the total amount invested.  The sales charge can range from 1.5% to 3%, which can be significant if you are investing a large amount.

I recently found a trick to skip this charge.  Very simple.  Purchase the unit trusts via KWSP (EPF) i-Invest feature.  EPF allows its contributors to use up to 30% of their Account 1 (now Retirement Account) balance for the purpose of unit trust investment.  Based on my experience so far, there is no minimum amount required and all unit trusts purchased so far via -Invest are free of any sales charges.

If you’re concerned about using up your EPF savings, fret not because you can always voluntarily contribute up to RM100k/year to make up for the ‘lost’.  One of the cons that I can think of is that, you are limited to the list of funds that EPF has approved i.e. funds that are regarded as safe.  These usually exclude the high-risk-high-return ones.

Mission 1300

This is another challenge that I’ve created to keep my brain working.  I have SAR1k that I want to keep in my multi-currency account.  Sadly, it only accepts deposit in RM.  So I had to sell the SAR first before I can keep it in the account.  I sold the SAR1k and was paid RM1220 based on the exchange rate at the time.  Now, I want to buy back the SAR1k and of course I won’t be able to get it with RM1220 due to the spread.  At the current rate, I will need around RM1300 to buy SAR1k, hence the mission.  That is about RM80 or 6.5% more.  Can I possibly get it without using my own money?

Fortunately, there is a number of options nowadays for investments that offer high liquidity i.e. that allows you to withdraw anytime, as early as T+1.  I tried and compared three options.  The newly launched Maybank goal-based investment (GBI) and Halogen crypto currency-based fund (subscribe here), and a regular savings account that offers 3.88% p.a. profit.  GBI is like a portfolio comprising a maximum of five funds that you can choose and determine their respective percentages.  Most importantly, all of them, at the time of writing, are free of any subscription/sales charges.

 

Option	Buy date	Buy price (RM)	Sell date	Sell price (RM)	Return (RM)
GBI	13/05/2024	1220	31/05/2024	1249.33	29.33 👎
Halogen	15/05/2024	1220 (NAV 1.2048)	31/05/2024	1557.61 (NAV 1.5382)	337.61 👍
Savings	15/05/2024	1220	31/05/2024	1221.94	1.94 👎

Halogen is therefore clearly the winner in this case at this time around and managed to meet my target.  I finally bought the SAR1k happily ever after at RM1292.20.

RM24k challenge

Hi,

It’s all about money and wealth portfolio growth now that I don’t have much else to think about during my spare time.  What would you do if you are offered a free loan to be paid back in six interest free installments?  With no upfront charges nothing.  Sounds too good to ignore although I’m not in the need of one at the moment.

Maybank recently launched the triple offers, one of which is the EzyCash-i i.e. the free loan mentioned above.  Not sure how they will benefit from this.  May be in the hope that people default repayments, resulting in interests :). Just a guess.  Based on my available credit limit, I can get around RM24k.  Should I grab the offer, at the very least, I can put it in a savings account that bears no less than 3.8% profit p.a.  Based on my rough calculation, that’ll give me some RM320.29 (1.36%) upon the last repayment, which is better than not doing and getting anything.

However, I have wilder idea that will allow me to have more than that after the last repayment :p. It’s not without risk though.  Let’s see.  I will update you on this six months from now, Insya-Allah.

Spotless journey update 1

I started this journey to spotless face some time in November 2021.  I don’t consistently update about the progress as I didn’t really see much of it.  I didn’t have the time to really care about the spots during Hajj and then busy adapting to the middle eastern weather at the new place.  After some time, I resumed the spotless skincase routines, adding new dark spot serum and mosturiser that I’ve never tried before because they’re not available in Malaysia.

After more than two years, I think the improvement is becoming visible.  Photo on the left is the condition at the start of the journey and the one on the right is the condition now.  I’ve tried almost everything.  Products that contain Alpha Arbutin, Niacinamide, Tranexamic acid, Vitamin C, Salicylic and Glycolic acids.  So, I don’t really have a regime that I can recommend.

Then (left) and now (right)

Hopefully it will be gone completely soon.  I don’t mind waiting for another two years for that :)

Getting your money to work for you …

Today, I am going to talk about getting our hard earned money work harder for us.  Basically, make it get more money for us.  Of course you earn something by just leaving it in your savings account somewhere.  But how much can we get?  At most 1% per year but most of the time, the rate is a lot lower than that.

We can invest more actively in stocks for example, but as we know, the risk is higher and it takes time for you to get the rythm and start making money.  Another not so passive, low risk option is by taking advantage of banks various campaigns and promotions as they compete to attract potential customers/investors.  For this, you may want to do your own research or subscribe to portals that can do this for you such as RinggitPlus.

Here is one example that I can share with you.  Let’s assume that you have RM10,000 available for passive, low risk investment.  If you just leave it in your savings account that gives 0.25% return, you will get RM25 after a year.  Early this year, I found two attractive offers.  Al Rajhi Islamic savings account* that gives 4% return, which is extremely rare and RHB Islamic fixed deposit* that gives 3.8% return after six months.  The former offer lasts for only three months from 1 January 2024 to 31 March 2024 and the later for two months from 31 January 2024 to 31 March 2024.

*Link may not work after promotion ends

What we can do in this case is to put the RM10,000 into Al Rajhi account for the first three full months from 1 January to 31 March that will yield RM99.45 return (4% x 10,000 / 366 x 91 days).  Withdraw the 10k from the savings account on 31 March and put it into the RHB fixed deposit that will give you RM191.04 (3.8% x 10,000 / 366 x 184 days) upon maturity after six months.  You will get a total of RM290.49 after nine months, which is equivalent to 3.87% per year.  You still have three more months after that to look for somewhere else for your money to work for you.  The return is certainly more than the RM25 or RM100 if you manage to get savings account that gives 1% return.

This option is of course if, for some reasons, you have ruled out ASB and EPF.

Some words of advice though, if the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Don’t be greedy.  Stick to only known and verified financial institutions.

Living life as expatriate

It was never part of our plan to be residents of another country, until recently when my husband was headhunted for a job in a middle east country.  The offer was good and made us question ourselves, “why not?”.  So, here we are, starting our life as expatriates.  Getting acquantanced with the new environment is neither easy nor straighforward.  The culture, the language, the weather and the cost of living to list a few.  Despite other benefits, we have to admit that being outsiders, we missed the perks of a citizen.  We look different whenever we go out.  We are the minority.

Of all the things, prices of items hit me the hardest.  Everything is more expensive here.  I always find myself comparing them with the prices of the same items in our country.  Thus, scouting for cheap, or at least reasonably priced items at least to me, has become my new hobby.  I also revive my passion for gardening, focusing on edible garden, to cut costs.  From this point onwards, this blog will share our experience living in the middle east.  Happy reading!