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 nett profit 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 :)