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How I Spent My Money in 2019
A little over a year ago, I moved to Singapore. Plenty happened since then, most of which was reflected in the way I spent my money in 2019. Challenges came with my move such as building a network of friends from scratch in a new city and finding an affordable place to rent. The biggest challenge was juggling my expenses both in Malaysia and Singapore. I was paying off my car in Ringgit but paying rent in SGD. I’d use my credit card to pay for a meal during a weekend in KL and then back in Singapore, I’d be scratching my head figuring out how to consolidate my expenses.…
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The Costs of Being A Woman: Why I’m Choosing Not To Pay Them
This post comes after a lot of thought. Thoughts that I’ve mulled over for most of my twenties. Thoughts that have led to purchasing decisions, that have led to where I am today. The day after International Women’s Day, I was at a baby shower thrown for a heavily pregnant woman, who was a literal stranger to me. There I was, no idea who anyone was. To make the situation more awkward, I sat across a chatty young mom holding her 9-month-old girl precariously in her arms. “Only have children when you’re really ready for children,” she warned me. That struck me as odd coming from a new mom. In…
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Struggles of a Malaysian Shopper: Expensive and Lacking Quality
By Vanessa Ee-Lyn Gomes Raise your hands if you’re curvy and have a sense of fashion but nothing ever fits and is too costly. This seems to be a common problem in Malaysia. Shopping has always been a chore for me since I was young. At age 10, while most girls hadn’t “developed” yet, I did.Thus, upgrading my clothing choices to more mature selections of larger sizes, the kind suited for teens. It wasn’t particularly age-appropriate clothing, but it fit. While, most of my friends wore shirts with The Powerpuff Girls and other favourite cartoon characters, I was left wearing plain-coloured t-shirts and blouses. It didn’t stop there. As I…
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My 2018 Expenses and Income
Some days ago I read a blog post from Suraya of Ringgit Oh Ringgit in which she reveals her annual income and expenses for the last year. I thought, “Hey, I’ll do that too!” Naive, little ol’ me thought that this was going to be an easy breezy fun post to write. I was sorely mistaken. I spent the whole weekend confronting the numbers that my year essentially boiled down to. The more I looked at them, the more anxious and afraid I became about sharing it with the world. It’s one thing to hold those numbers close to yourself but it’s a completely different thing to let other…
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5 Financial Personality Types That Affect Your Money Habits
Sometime last month, I conducted a small personal finance workshop. One of the things we discussed is how our personality types can affect how we handle money. The diverse ways people approach money comes down to things like our upbringing, education, employment status, and where we are in life. It’s often overlooked that how we behave as a person affects how we view money, spending, saving and investing. I’m a firm believer that in order for us to be better at managing money, we must first understand what makes us tick. There are five common personality types we can broadly categorize ourselves into. 1) The Spender We all have that…
