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.

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.

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.