When it comes to managing my finances, I am mostly self-taught. A lot of my personal finance principles were cobbled from books, videos, influencers and Internet articles.

I read my first personal finance book way back in the early 2000s. It was by a local author whose name I now don’t remember, but his number one strategy for attaining good financial health was through aggressive saving. His investment strategy of choice? Fixed deposits. 

Yes, I can almost see you wincing. The advice is horribly outdated today, but that book started me on the right foot to manage my money better.

But after over 10 years of DIY-ing my finance education and achieving big milestones such as paying off a six-figure house loan and funding a eight-month emergency fund, I still have a foggy sense of panic that I’m on the wrong track.

What I needed was expert eyes on my financial health, so, I got in touch with a finance advisor, who was recommended to me by a friend. 

The cost and the service

Initially, I was worried that the service would be expensive, because from what I have read and heard, finance advisors usually charge thousands. But to my surprise, this finance advisor, let’s call her May, only charged me RM250 for the whole session. However, note that I only paid for getting a financial check-up. Some finance advisors will give you 20 to 30-page reports. Some will even manage your finances for you. 

May will only evaluate the health of my finances and recommend strategies to manage or improve it.  

What I like about May is that she is product agnostic, meaning that she is not limited to just one or two types of financial products.

How I felt: Terrified!

So, a financial checkup is very much like a medical checkup, and like medical checkups, there’s a part of me that is going: Maybe it’s better not to know!

So, I was understandably nervous before meeting May. What is she going to say about my financial health? Can I turn things around? Am I beyond hope?? 😱

But like medical checkups, it’s really better to know what’s wrong so that we can proactively deal with a problem before it balloons into something unmanageable.

Evaluating my financial health

We had our first appointment during a relaxed lockdown period, so we met at my private office. Before our session, she told me to list down all my assets and liabilities. 

Figuring out my net worth

I listed all the assets I have, which was 

• Unit trusts
• Stashaway 
• Fixed deposits
• EPF
• Property
• Car
• Savings (FDs, mostly)

Initially, I didn’t include my car in the list of assets because I subconsciously did not consider it an asset! But it is, despite it being a depreciating asset.

She also asked me to provide her information about my insurance. I felt quite uncomfortable sharing this information with May because I felt as if I was laying out all my cards on a table and being judged for it, so to speak. 

I have no debt.

All in all, I have a positive net worth. The actual figure surprised the hell out of me — it’s a milestone of sorts.

We then proceeded to discuss my overall financial goals. 

Retirement: Can I FIRE?

I told her about my Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) goals. She quickly keyed in the figures in her spreadsheet and bluntly told me that I would probably need more money if I want to retire early, and that at my current stage, that’s not possible.

My heart sank!

But as we discussed further, I realised that she misunderstood what I meant by retirement. In her mind, retirement was zero work, zero income. I knew that when I “retired”, it would mean having a business of some sort where I made some income, just that I won’t be depending 100% on it to survive.

To me, retirement meant the ability to choose the work that I love, and not to have to work full time at a certain salary anymore. 

Also her idea of retirement funds is to draw on the funds until it goes to zero. And I wondered how about factoring in yearly interest from investments?

For example, if you have RM1,000,000 which earns you an interest of RM40,000 a year, and you just live on that RM40,000 and don’t touch the capital – wouldn’t your retirement fund stretch further?

Yes, I was super worried that I was doomed to work till I’m 75, but it appears that it isn’t so. As long as I invest a certain amount every month from now on, and don’t touch my investments until I’m 65, I’ll reach my retirement goal.

Basically, she’s saying that I’m Coast FIRE — all I need to do now is to earn enough to cover my living expenses until I’m 65. 

Personally, I felt depressed that we can’t retire on less than RM1mil. I can’t help but think that if we have a lifestyle that is less reliant on money, will it make a difference? Say, if we grow our own food? Live frugally?

And if it is true that we need at least RM1mil to retire, how are most Malaysians going to do this? Around 67% of Malaysians will not have the minimum amount of RM240,000 in savings upon retirement. 

This is really troubling to me. 

Do we tell them, too bad, you’ll be working till you’re 90? How can we help them?

Cash liquidity: Waaaay too good.  

Ironically, I have too much cash sitting around doing nothing. It’s a good problem to have as it gives me options, especially during these pandemic-stricken times, and I cannot tell you how much this situation saved my bacon in 2020 when I quit my job without another lined up, but I cannot let this be status quo for years.

I’m not investing enough

The “too much cash” problem highlighted a major problem: I wasn’t investing enough.

If this continues, I wouldn’t be able to meet my retirement goals, which means I need to start parking my cash into investments. Pronto.

She recommended several investment vehicles to me, which I thought was a bit too adventurous for my conservative, risk-averse self, especially since I have a high fear of investing. She said that my investments needed to be more adventurous because of my shorter timeline to retirement. 

She also evaluated my existing unit trusts to see if they performed well. They were not bad, but one was not worth it and she advised me to switch out when the market is better.

Insurance – can still be optimised

I have enough insurance coverage, but it can be enhanced. I expected her to pooh-pooh my investment-linked insurance, but she said that it was a good plan for my needs. (Everyone said that they are the worst, but as May and I discussed further I realised it suited me due to the way it worked.)

At the start of 2020, however, it would have been a different story. I had not upgraded my coverage for years, so my medical insurance was a pathetic RM100,000. If anything had happened before I upgraded it, say I ended up in hospital, I suspect it would be very expensive to upgrade it after! 

Now, I have upgraded it and it’s over RM1 million, which makes me shake my head at the skyrocketing costs of healthcare.

May recommended that I rebalance my insurance so that more will be in critical illness rather than life insurance, which I honestly don’t need much of as I don’t have dependents. 

May also recommended that I strengthen my insurance coverage with personal accident insurance, which I have always ignored. PA insurance is not expensive, but will provide you an income for years if you were disabled in an accident. 

May taught me how to determine the coverage we needed: [annual income] x [years of income]. 

So, let’s say I need about RM40,000 a year to live. 

Therefore, I should aim for an insurance package that will at least give me RM40k x 10 years. 

My will – all done

She was terribly impressed that I had my will done at age 35.

Me: I have quite an imagination and have thought of every apocalyptic possibility.

Okay, I did my first will before I left Malaysia for Australia through a lawyer. I wanted everything in order before I went for my big adventure. 

Then, in 2017, after returning to Malaysia I did one with Rockwills as I wanted something more solid and permanent.

After hearing the nightmare stories of what people had to go through to claim the estates of people who passed away without a will, I wanted to spare my family that pain.

Final verdict

May congratulated me, saying that my financial health is in the green zone.

“So don’t worry so much!” she laughed. (She noticed I was crazy anxious? Who knew.)

May took about two weeks to come up with my report, which she emailed to me. Full of spreadsheets, pie charts and graphs. But all in all, simple enough for me to understand. (The image above is part of the report.)

And in it she listed simple steps to improve my financial health. I was really impressed it even included recommended unit trusts to invest in! (And they’re not brand specific.)

For just RM250, I received a lot of information and very concrete advice on what to do next. 

I like that she carefully explained how she came to her conclusions. I, for one, learned so much as she went through my insurance and unit trusts investments and explained their fundamentals to me, a numbers-averse person.

I consider the service I got as a “financial planning service” for the average Malaysian. I don’t earn T20 figures, I am solidly middle class and this is affordable and useful advice for people like me. 

If you need to have a clearer picture of your financial health and need concrete steps on what to do next, I highly recommend getting a financial check up from services like May’s.