I am the founder of RinggitFreedom.com - a late-millennial born in Malaysia during the early 90's, an IT enthusiast and also a nerd who happens to have a strong interest in personal finance.
I have always wanted to start my own blog but have postponed these thoughts/ideas for as long as I could due to the lack of proper motivation / and other stuff that life throws at me and finally, here I am! I hope that by openly sharing my journey, it will help to inspire more Malaysians to start their own version of their financial freedom journey.
I've always fancied the idea of sharing more about my journey when it comes to personal finance - but it is very tricky in the real world due to the simple fact that we have to filter out certain information to either safeguard ourselves or avoid awkward/negative sentiment when it comes to friend/peers (one of my friends had a fight with me for just sharing "too much info". Yup, reality stinks...)
With a pseudonymous online presence, at least I get to be as transparent as I can without the need to withhold information and share my thoughts truthfully. If any of you reading happens to be my friend/family/colleagues - please continue to act as if you are not aware for me to feel safe/comfortable to continue my public sharing >_<
Why the name 'Ringgit Freedom', you may ask? Well - long story short, I was struggling to come up with some fancy brand name for a financial blog and just thought to myself and just decided that even if I was born in Malaysia with unfavourable ringgit currency against the dollars, I can still achieve financial freedom eventually. Just like Pikotaro's PPAP - put them together and we have the ringgitfreedom born. There's a full backstory during my early days podcast if you're interested to take a listen.
With pseudonymous presences, sometime I do feel a little disconnected from my audiences - hence I've decided to have a mascot to represent me, at least virtually ?
It's really your everyday-girl going about her journey towards achieving financial freedom in the long run - along with up's and down's along the journey.
The banner is inspired by how birds typically build up their nest, straws-by-straws, in order to have a comfortable home in the long term - exactly how we're going through our journey towards achieving financial freedom (except with golds/monies instead of straws).
I think I have my mom to thanks - as I believe part of her frugality were sow into my life since childhood days. I am lucky enough to start my first-job after graduating with above-average pay and managed to save above 25% of my gross-income at least for the first 2+ years of working.
Having said that - I have my strong view in maintaining a right balance between saving/investing for future vs. enjoying life as it is now. I am partly frugal, but I don't subscribe to the belief of extreme frugality. Not for me at least.
Life is unpredictable and before we know it, our life might have already come to an end. One thing for sure - I don't want to leave this world with a plenty long list of regrets (things not done) so I strive to enjoy live as much as I can, while being responsible to my personal finances.
And although I have had a good start, I also fell victim to the instant gratification and have made many impulsive purchase over the years that had hindered my progress towards Financial Freedom - you can read more about my old story here.
I'm a believer in the #FIRE movement, but not in its entirety. I don't believe in an extremely frugal lifestyle and I definitely don't mind to continue working. I just wanted to be work-optional and have the freedom and options, to work on things that actually interest me rather than things that pay me well.
Since goal-setting is crucial to have half the work done, I decided to go ahead and set my FI/RE targets whilst still figuring out what exactly I want in life. The 3 different FI/RE targets that I've set for myself since 2021 will allow me to achieve different kinds of lifestyles:
To achieve any of the above, my first stretch-goal / checkpoint would be to at least achieve my first-million net worth by end of 2025! With this achievement out of the way, I should be well on track to hit my Lean FIRE numbers by 2026 assuming nothing went off track!
Now that the storms are finally over, I am motivated enough to enforce my self-discipline that I had in the past, and restarted my financial freedom journey sometime back in Oct 2019. I am slowly rebuilding my retirement nests so that I can achieve my financial independence (being work-optional).
Fast forward to Dec 2020, I have managed to achieve an average of 42% savings rate for the past year. This may not seem much but I am very happy with where I am - compared to the times in 2019/2018 before I restarted my financial freedom journey where I have literally 0% savings rate, with RM0 emergency fund - you can read more about my years in review here.
Now my goal is simple, and I'll list them down below (and perhaps update, when circumstance changes):
That's it for now! I will revisit and update this section as I grow my blog further and see you in other posts!
"Together, we shall grow!" Join me in the journey towards achieving financial freedom together!
p/s special shoutouts to @dividendmagic whose blog I had followed since decades ago and definitely one of my source of inspiration when starting this blog, including the investment updates' format.
With the raise of scammers and identity fraud, I'll make it explicitly clear here on my website:
If you come across any other websites, profiles or persons trying to impersonate as me, please let me know immediately on any of my official channels above and report those profiles.
Remember, always practice due diligence in the online world.
Cheers,
Gracie Freedom
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