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This year I made an effort to read more, mainly because reading is something that I’ve always enjoyed but have not done much in recent years due to other commitments, and partly because I feel like I’ve been looking at the world through the same lenses. So much so that sometimes I forget not everyone in the world shares the same views, opinions and beliefs as me; and that everyone, even the ones that I perceive to be shitty people, are living lives as vivid and complex as my own. I feel like books help us understand that, be it fiction or non-fiction.

So i went on to Goodreads and pledged to read 6 books for the 2019 reading challenge. It was a little disheartening at first because I took a look at the average number of books pledged and it was some insane number somewhere in the 60s. I felt better after taking a look at the results from previous years and seeing that that most people never follow through with their pledges.

I had the books picked out and was pretty on track, I even prepared a blog post to talk about the books after I was done. But reading got completely thrown out the window after September due to work and other commitments. At the end I’ve only finished 3 books (Where Rainbows End, Fellowship of the Ring & The Two Towers) out of the 6, so that post will have to wait for another day.

The future

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately: I want to have a theme for each year where I either learn or dedicate a significant amount of my time to focus on something, it can be learning a new language, learning how to code, learning how to cook, getting into gunpla painting, diving, rock climbing, learning to play the piano, hiking, it can be anything. I remember coming across a similar concept when i was going on my usual youtube binges and stumbled upon this guy that would spent a month learning everything about something, and on the next month he would move on to something new.

Wait let me look him up real quick..

Oh i found him! His name is Max Deutsch and he is a self described obsessive learner, the video i watched was the one where he tried to beat Magnus Carlson at Chess after a month of training. His endeavor obviously failed because, well, as the top comment suggests: that is the equivalent of trying to beat Usain Bolt in a 100m dash after a month of training. Nonetheless the concept resonated with me and it became the backbone of my idea. Only I thought a month was far too little time for me to commit to something, and i decided that one year was a more reasonable time frame.

I guess you could say that 2018 was about managing (or at the very least understanding) my finances, and 2019 was about getting back into reading for pleasure. For 2020, I’ve really thought long and hard about this because I don’t want to pick something that I ultimately will not follow through with , and I want to be 100% committed to what I’ve set out to do. 2020 is going to about health and fitness.

On books

Having a new focus doesn’t that I won’t keep doing or be interested in what I’ve done in previous years, if anything I’m motivated to do even more and I want to keep building and building . I received an email for the 2020 Goodreads challenge this morning and I’ve pledged to read a total of 10 books next year. I didn’t want to get too ambitious because I started the 2019 challenge somewhere in July and I didn’t even meet my target of 6, i think an average of 1 book a month (with 2 months off reading) should be pretty achievable assuming I don’t pick up anything too lengthy (basically anything written by Stephen King or George R.R. Martin). I do already have a few books in mind, just checked my Goodreads account and I have a total of 71 books on my reading list, so I’m pretty much set for years to come. Nevertheless I’m always looking to add new books to the list and I’m really interested with what other people are reading or have read so please do add me if you’re on the platform! Here’s the link to my profile.

On finances

In terms of my finances, one of the goals is of course to limit my spending on food and entertainment which got a little out of control in 2019. Overall I do feel more stressed because of increased responsibilities, and I know I said last year that because of different commitments, the only people we should really be comparing to is ourselves, but it’s such a human thing to do and I can’t help but feel a little demotivated. I guess this is a mindset change that has to come from within and something that I have to work on. Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with 2019 considering that I bought a shit ton of stuff towards the end of the year (spent a whopping 8k in December LOL).These 2 years were about learning about my spending habits, building up my emergency fund and accumulating capital. Next year (and the coming years) will be about distributing that capital to generate returns.

On goals

Growing up, I had a lot of things I wanted: a nice pair of shoes, Gundam model kits, the Pokemon Adventure Mangas, the latest gaming consoles, a personal laptop, braces, headphones, a story book collection and the list goes on. We weren’t poor by any means and I lived comfortably for most of my life but I knew their struggles and I didn’t want to burden them even more with things that aren’t exactly necessities. But because of that and because of the way I grew up, a short term goal of mine has always been to buy myself things that I wanted as a kid. I’ve written about this before, to me the best thing about working is the feeling of being in control and being able to do whatever I want, getting these things and slowly checking of my list of childhood dreams, gives me a sense of satisfaction that I cannot begin to describe. I will probably write about this some time in the future.

In terms of what I have planned for the future, my medium term goal is to find that balance between work and personal life. I love audit, I see value in the work I do, I see how can I contribute to add even more value, I am fortunate enough to be working with people I actually like, and the growth & learning curve I’ve experienced is something that I don’t think i will ever be able to find or replicate in other fields. It’s just.. the working hours become really taxing physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s a trade-off that I have accepted for the time being but it’s not something that see myself doing 3-5 years down the line.

Ah long term goals.. I have a task in 2do called “Set aside time for personal goals” which as of today is 1023 days overdue (not exaggerating), still haven’t figured that part out yet, I’ll let you know when I do.

On ♥

How can I talk about my year without mentioning the person who was there for all of it? It wasn’t a rough year for us by any means but it was definitely a a year where we grew a lot, especially in the few months leading up to the end of the year. We’ve had some minor arguments but I think I speak for the both of us when I say we’ve never gone to bed feeling angry or sad because we’re always open about the way we feel and the way we think, and we’re so comfortable around each other I feel like I’ve known her my whole life. That is a blessing and a curse because you learn so much more about a person you thought you already knew, you notice little things that make you love them a little more every time, but you also see some of their quirks and sometimes it frustrates or annoys you (like how she never wants to order a drink but drinks from mine every time). I look at myself and I am a deeply flawed human and I wonder how could anyone ever love me but yet she does. It’ll be our 3rd year together this year and I can’t wait see what life has installed for us because I know we’ll make it through, together.

 

Here’s to 2020,

♥ Ken

People who are close to me know that I’m a big advocate for tracking your expenses. I got interested in the idea early 2015, because not knowing where i spent my money has been and my guess is will always be a pet peeve of mine, but I never had the discipline to do it up until July last year when I started working. The end of this year marks the first year I’ve tracked 100% of my income and expenses¹. I’d like to share some of the things I learned and hopefully convince you to do the same or at least start thinking about money differently.

The importance of budgeting

Much like task management systems, there are a ton of ways you can budget your expenses, the envelope system, the 50/30/20 rule, reverse budgeting, YNAB. I’ll probably do a whole separate blog post on this someday but I think the key thing to keep in mind for every budgeting methodology is that you have to be completely honest with yourself in terms of your expected spending and income/savings, and also know that you probably have to make a few tweaks after looking at your actual expenses 3-4 months down the road. A personal example I have is that when I first budgeted my monthly expenses, I set the amount I was going to spend on food² every month to 800. After about 4 months I realised that it was completely unrealistic because I was spending about 1000 or a little over 1000 every month on food alone.

The thing with money is that you have a finite amount of it but infinite ways to spend it, so the fact that I was spending more of my resources on food meant that I either had to spend less on something else, be it entertainment/clothes/hobbies, or it meant dipping into my savings, or the logical step which is to simply spend less on food altogether. I’m not gonna tell you to buy a crockpot and start cooking your own meal (though that’s certainly a good way save money on food), because ultimately it’s your money and you get to decide how to spend it. The point isn’t to force you to live a certain way, but to own up to the way you choose to live and be realistic with your expectations.

Seasonal Expenses

The mistake most people make is not taking into account recurring expenses, or as I’d like to call them, seasonal expenses. It refers to expenses that come and go, much like the seasons. For example car insurance, road tax, quick rent, medical check-ups, PS plus subscription fees, gym membership fees, the list goes on and on. Failure to account for them in your budget is a recipe for disaster, you can probably recall the times when you thought that you were doing well in terms of saving only to be hit with the annual car insurance payment which costs 1000, then 2 months later you realise the tread on your tyres have gone bald, and that’ll cost you another 800. To account for this, I’ve listed down all my seasonal expenses and I calculated the monthly average expected to be spent, and every month I set aside the money by transferring it into a another account in pocket expense. This is super effective because by doing that you get a realistic representation of your actual disposable income. The balance you see in your bank account isn’t all available for spending.

The spreadsheet I used to compute the amount I have to set aside every month

A separate account in pocket expense I created, I’ve set up a recurring transfer so that 285 is transferred into the account monthly.

Breaking it down

For obvious reasons I will not be disclosing my income but I’m ok with showing my expenses. I spent a total of 41k this year, and boy was that hard to say, but this is reality. As expected, the 2 major categories that account up to 60% of my expenses are food and car expenses. I would also like to say that it’s incredibly ironic because I spent more on my car than I did on food this year.

I just want to point out that unlike some of my colleagues, I’m lucky in the sense that I don’t have to pay for rent which could account for 20-30% of your income depending on where you choose to stay relative to how much you earn. I also don’t have student loans that I have to repay. My only real commitment is the installment for my 14 year old Vios which I bought from a relative early last year. And I know that some people reading this don’t even have to deal with that because their parents have already paid off their car, that’s great news for you and please consider yourself very very lucky because I know fresh graduates that aren’t from KL and are therefore renting, repaying PTPTN loans, and are paying monthly installments for their car. These 3 things alone makes a world of difference in disposable income between 2 fresh graduates earning 3k a month (1.2-1.5k by my estimates). The fact that two people earning the same amount of money will end up having a disparity in disposable income of 1+k means that they will ultimately lead very different lives. Therefore my opinion is that there is no use trying to compare with your peers because everyone has different obligations, and if you are the person with a mountain of debt you get discouraged pretty quickly. The only person that you should compare yourself to is yourself. Know where you stand, look at where you want to be, and keep moving towards it.

I don’t think it’s possible to cut down on car expenses because most of it are unavoidable costs (installment, parking spot rental, petrol, general maintenance). The one place that I can definitely cut down on is food, getting into the habit of meal prepping will help, and perhaps choosing cheaper options rather than expensive restaurants when going out for lunch with colleagues. But honestly a big chunk of it is attributed to paying for weekly family dinners, reunion dinners or birthday meals which really adds up because these places aren’t cheap. Overall I think it’s possible to bring it to a little under 10k. In terms of savings, I’m actually doing better than what I initially budgeted, probably because I have other sources of income other than my full time job. I wouldn’t be able to save nearly as much if I didn’t have that and continued my current lifestyle, which got me wondering if I should live as though I don’t have these extra sources because ultimately I won’t be able to sustain this forever. That’s something i will have to think about but overall i’m very satisfied with how I’m doing. If everything goes according to plan by the end of next year i would have saved enough to down pay a condo.

Summing it up

I personally use pocket expense³ to track my expenses, it’s an app i find to be most suited for my needs, but any other app is fine as long it keeps you consistent. Don’t fall into the analysis paralysis trap and overthink this, just pick one and go with it. In terms of budgeting methodologies, i don’t adhere to a particular one but I’ll link a few good places to start and a few rule of thumbs to keep in mind below. I hope to do a more extensive version of this somewhere down the line where I breakdown my thoughts and line of thinking, but for now, I wish every one a happy new year, here’s to a better 2019.

Links:

Reddit r/personalfinance wiki

Budgeting 101

How to budget

How to cut unnecessary spending

I have $X, what should I do with it?

Like all my previous efforts to write as often as possible, this one inevitably failed. As I gather my thoughts on how put 4 months of my life into a single blog post, i realize that there are simply too many things to begin with.

October flew by like a bird, or maybe it didn’t, maybe i just remember it to be that way, I don’t know, but it seemed like it did. Then came November when i flew to Miri, Sarawak for, well, for work. I was there for like 3 weeks and the first week was pretty nice, I’ve never been to Sarawak and I felt excited because frankly who the fuck wouldn’t. I started to miss my bed midway through the second week and by the time the third week came i was pretty much begging to get this thing over with quickly so that I can go home, take a nice shower and snuggle myself between the sheets for the rest of my life.

December wasn’t any better, mostly because of work. In audit we have “peak periods” and that’s the time of the year when we’ll be the busiest (though technically we also have something called the “super peak” which as the name suggests is one level above peak but I will not go there today). The problem with my team is that we’re handling multiple entities and we have multiple reportings that we have to do and if what I just said doesn’t make any sense to you it basically translates to I HAVE MULTIPLE PEAK PERIODS IN A FUCKING YEAR and though the learning curve is steep and you learn a lot, and i mean a lot in a very short amount of time, it really sucks the life out of you, so there’s that.

Then comes January which is like this month which is the month when we’re supposed to be like super motivated to accomplish our goals and stuff and set new year resolutions that will inevitably fail. Well in a stunning turn of events i find myself viewing fireworks from the top of an oil tank 3730 kilometers away from my friends and family. I then find myself staying in floor 32 of a 44 storey condominium for two weeks and working and sleeping and eating in that order. And after what seemed to me like an eternity I’m sitting down here in the evening of, unbeknownst to me until today, the 20th day of the month in my home at my desk writing this while I still have 2 pieces of work that are in the background begging for my attention. I. am. burnt. out.

As you can probably tell from the way that I’m writing it hasn’t been the best, but it also hasn’t been the worst, but then again I guess you could say that about 99% of your life. The single thing that made the past four months bearable was her, and i’m glad things worked out the way it did, and i don’t know what the coming months will be like and as you can see I haven’t had this adult shit figured out yet and I’m just as confused as your average young adult but I’m glad i have her, I really am.

It wouldn’t be a January post without talking about New Year Resolutions, so here’s mine:

1. Eat better
2. Sleep better
3. Hit the gym consistently (without skipping leg day of course)
4. Find a hobby that doesn’t involve games or electronics for that matter
5. spend less time on the internet and more time with actual people
6. Pick up something new
7. Spend more time going out (not malls and movie theaters but parks and hikes and places)
8. Travel
9. Save and invest more
10. Read more

I’ll come back to this a year later and see how it pans out, I’m gonna need a long break, until next time people.

 

Ken.

 

Well the original plan was to write an update or something of sorts every month but that idea clearly went down the drain quickly. Nevertheless here’s what’s been going on.

Really starting to get used to working, also starting to get used to paying for my own shit. So far my working hours have been okay, but I know I’ll get busier going into the new year, so hopefully I’m mentally prepared when peak period hits.

I went on my first, quote unquote, “business trip” to Miri just last week. It was a short but fruitful trip. I’m really starting to like audit, and when I explain what I do to other people they seem to think the same, perhaps it’s the way i describe it, or the spark in my eyes when i talk about it, I don’t know, but I can tell you that I expected it to be way more boring.

September marked the end of summer break for many of my friends who are studying in the UK, I’m glad I got to hang out with them rather often despite having to work. It’ll take some getting used to again, but until next time my friends.

Well my schedule has been full since I  last wrote, I got to leave early from work today, so what better to do than to spend some time blogging.

June was a busy but fulfilling month, a lot of my friends came back from the UK & Australia, it was great going on trips and hanging out with them. I went to Kuala Terengganu and Pulau Perhentian for a short getaway last week, and in many ways the trip was special because it marked the end of a part of my life and the beginning of a new one. I wished i had more time to rest after that, but the world  doesn’t always revolve around you now does it.

I officially started work in Ernst & Young (EY) on Monday, I thought I would have trouble sleeping the night before, but I K.O-ed like a baby. I also thought the fact I had to start working would hit me, but it didn’t, and honestly it still hasn’t. I had a conversation with a close friend about transitioning from being a university student to an “adult” with a full time job. He was telling me how he doesn’t want that day to come, and that the idea of working until you retire and having responsibilities and obligations is terrifying.  I don’t know if the majority of graduates or to-be graduates think that way,  but I don’t see it as such.

Yes it’s terrifying and yes if I could not work for the rest of my life I would, but i feel so much more empowered than I was before. I felt the same way about graduating high school and starting college too. I hear people left and right to me saying that they wish they could go back and  how those were the best times of their lives, and i agree, high school was the best time of my life, the people I’ve met there, the memories we created together, I hold them dear to my heart.

But I felt powerless. There were so many things we couldn’t do, we were so restricted, at least I felt I was. As i progress in life and transition into an adult, i feel more and more in control in my life, I feel powerful because now i can live however I want to, i could backpack around the world, I can wake up and decide that i want to drive to Singapore for breakfast, I can buy 10 pairs of shoes and not wear them, I can just sit at home and play computer games all day if i wanted to. Now lets be clear, it’s not that I’ll actually do those things, and I know they are extreme examples, but they demonstrate my point, and it’s that when I’m in control of my own finances and actions, when my options are open and there are unlimited choices for me to make, I feel so much more alive.

The first 3 days in EY were somewhat an orientation, I start my training tomorrow, and I think I’ll be assigned to my team in the coming week. I learnt from my seniors in NRG that the department may require me to travel a lot depending on where the client is located. I’m conflicted about what to feel, on one hand I’m looking forward to it as I enjoy travelling a lot, and i feel that I’ll make closer colleagues as travelling and staying together pulls people closer, but on the other hand this irregular schedule means that my gym plans are probably fucked up, but we’ll see.

I wish i could talk more but I have to go out in about 20 minutes and i need to get ready. Until next time. xx

 

Love,

Ken.

 

I usually roll my eyes at people who call their birthday month their “favourite” month, it makes the insides of me cringe, which is ironic because in the next paragraph i’m going to be writing about why June is the best month so far.

On the first day of the month I received a call from EY telling me that I have been offered a position in the company, and later that day, completely unbeknownst to me, my friends and family threw a big early surprise birthday party for me, celebrating my 21st birthday, and I can safely say that that was one of the best days of my life. A few days later a friend informed me that I came in 3rd place as the top affiliate in ACCA Malaysia, which at first I thought was ludicrous because that prize is awarded to the people with the highest average across all 5 professional papers, and I didn’t think I would be anywhere close. So I called ACCA the next working day and they confirmed that it was in fact me, and I was still in disbelief. Perhaps it was a combination of good luck and the right timing. On top of that a lot of my friends are on summer break and they’ll be back in Malaysia for a few months, so I’m glad that I get a chance to hang out with them before I start work in July. I’m going on 2 separate trips with my friends next week and I’m really looking forward to those as well. So there you have it, it’s the 8th day of the month and I’ve already concluded that June is my favourite month of this year.

I turned 21 yesterday, and I know that 21 is just an arbitrary number that society assigned to adulthood, but even with that in mind it still does something to you, I have a hard time articulating what exactly, but it does something. Obviously people don’t wake up one day and say to themselves, “oh it’s time to be an adult now” and then proceed to “be” and adult. Like everything in life, it’s gradual, you don’t sleep a child and wake up an adult, but it starts occupying more and more of your thoughts each day, and eventually you act like one without even realising it.

I remember thinking in my teen years that I’d be fine without a partner, that I’d just go about minding my own business and doing the things I like and achieving my so called goals. That thought has evolved throughout the years, but now more than ever I wish I had someone to share my life with, my very own partner in crime, maybe because a lot of my friends have found someone for themselves, I’m starting to feel a teensy tiny bit lonely. I know, very much like a companion you share your life with friends too, you tell some of them your innermost feelings, and they’re there when you need them. But a partner is someone who is exclusively for you and you for them, maybe that’s the difference between girlfriend and girl friend.

13 Reasons Why. Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past month, you’ve probably heard people talking about this, it’s a Netflix original based on a book of the same name that revolves around Hannah Baker, a high school teenager who committed suicide, and Clay Jensen, a friend of Hannah’s, who finds a box full of cassette tapes detailing why she did what she did. at his front door after the incident. If you’ve watched it, great! I have someone to share my thoughts with. If you have not watched it, i highly recommended you do, and i would suggest that you stop reading at this point, as this post will contain spoilers. Lots and lots of them. However if you do not plan to watch it, you may proceed, but I’m telling you, you will regret not experiencing it yourself, and also most of the things here probably won’t make much sense to you. So from here on out i’m just assuming that you’ve watched everything I won’t waste time explaining who the characters are and what not.

 

There are a bunch of things that make 13rw a great series, one of which is the character development. In the span of 13 episodes, we see Clay go from  “I didn’t really know Hannah” to “fuck everybody they’re gonna pay for what they did” to “all of us killed Hannah”, and alas finding his resolve, it’s pretty intense stuff and i think the directors and actor really nailed it. We see this even in minor characters: Alex owning up to his mistakes, Justin confronting Bryce for what he did, Tony opening up to his boyfriend. You don’t really expect that from a short series, so props to the writers for doing such a great job.

I cannot say enough about the characters. There were alot of great characters(Clay, Clay’s parents, Zach, Jeff, Alex, etc). They made you feel involved, they made you feel as if you were them, they trigger your emotions. Clay has to be one of my favorite main characters, maybe because I see some of myself in him, maybe we all do. Throughout all 13 episodes it feels as if you were in his feet, you don’t for one second fail to understand his struggles, why he does what he does, you emphatize with him. The same can be said about Alex, i liked him from the start, he was very clever, he stood up for himself when he was pushed around, just a really likable guy. With that said, all of them are flawed, the story doesn’t try to deify anyone, not even Hannah. You become very aware very early on that there’s no “good guy” in this story, the closest you can get to that Clay, and even then.

Normally if the writer wanted a character to die in order to make some sort of impact to the reader, they set you up, they make you feel attached to the character, then they kill him/her off somewhere along the line, and you’re left with the thoughts of what could have been. The best example i could think of was Looking For Alaska, John Green made you fall in love with Alaska, her wit, her sarcasm, her intelligence. He then metaphorically fucked you in the ass by taking Alaska away from you, by taking Alaska away from Pudge, and you follow Pudge as he desperately searches for his resolve, and that journey is truly heart-breaking. But 13rw is different, Hannah was dead from the start, we all knew that, but the flashbacks every time Clay listens to a tape, they get to you, you see how Clay develops feelings for her, how she slowly develops feelings for him too, you listen to the little things they talk about, you see what they go through, and you can’t help but hope they’ll end up together, but at the end of every flashback you are constantly reminded of one cold hard truth: Hannah is dead. That’s what really fucked me up, the way they told the story.

There are a bunch of other things i really liked, i liked how they made Clay fall from the bike so he would get band-aids on his forehead, and that would be how we knew if we were at the past or present, how they showed certain inconsistencies between Hannah’s tapes and the truth, such as Zach’s note, so we’re reminded that Hannah isn’t a perfect narrator, and that what we’re hearing is Hannah’s truth, and there might have been some things that happened differently. The suicide scene was really explicit and intense, I didn’t see that coming, even though from the very start we already knew how she killed herself.

There are still a ton of questions i have. Did Alex die? What did Mr Porter do with the tapes? What happens to the court case? What about Tyler, why did he get a gun? Does Bryce go to jail? Do any of the kids face legal consequences? With so many unanswered questions it kinda feels like they’re planning to milk this series with a season 2, even though the original book ended with the last episode, i honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix decided to extend the story themselves given the huge success.

There’s just so much more i want to say about this, but it’s getting late and I need sleep more than anything else. I needed to write about this, felt like it needed to get off my chest, and it’s too good to not tell anybody, but would I watch it again? No, i wouldn’t want to go through that shit again. Oh and, fuck Courtney.

Hello

“Just testing to see what it looks like”

Crazy