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 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.  But the purchase rewarded me with 33,330 Mokafa points that are convertible to SAR66.66.  I'm therefore fine with the 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.