One of the Challenging Scenes in my life | What I have learned | Personal Finance
The Scene of the Challenging Experience :
Starting with sharing with you — the financial mess that I been through and how this turnaround that I had experience in my life. This is a brutally honest chapter in my life. I am grateful for this financial mess that has shaped me to become someone who is able to share my personal finance knowledge to my peers around.
When I was 22 years old, I had committed myself to a brand new cool car — Honda Civic that cost me about RM120,000 that time while I was still pursuing my degree. This is the biggest risk I have taken and taught me a huge lesson about personal financial management.
Due to my lack of personal financial knowledge and I was not aware of making informed financial decision. Merely just pure my lack of discipline in personal finance and I am a high risk taker. I have even accumulated a total amount of debt, near to a hundred over thousands Malaysia Ringgit. With credit card debt and some personal debtors, I was almost being blacklisted by the bank when I was 25 years old. I was feeling very disappointed and helpless at that point but I didn’t want to let anyone know. That stressful moment is my awakening moment.
God is great and has mercy on me. Just about that time, my training company has kick started a financial literacy project and I am very grateful that I am able to learn a lot from my previous boss in the book he has written. While training a lot of university students, I think I have connected my dots in the sense that I am able to share from my personal experience with the university students the importance of understanding personal financial management while delivering the training.
How did I handle the situation :
1. Being honest, be aware and learn from my situation and emotion.
I remembered being brutally honest to myself. I journaled everyday and made a plan of what I have learned from my boss and the financial literacy programme. I studied a lot about the concept of money, debt management and financial budgeting and tracking. I am taking one step at a time to turnaround the mess.
2. Be brave and courageous to face the mess I have made.
I did not ignore the collection department calls. I picked up the call and arrange a meet up with the collections department of the bank to work out a repayment plan that works for both. End of the day, it wasn’t that scary at all. And I managed to pay off RM35,000 credit card debt in a term loan within 12 months.
3. Tracking and Monitoring My Finances
I realised that to be able to take control from within is the most powerful strength that we have. I have built the habit of tracking my finances since then. And it has worked well for me so far that I am even able to invest regularly.
What did I learn from it and how did I grow personally after this experience:
1. To not fear things I don’t know — and to not ignore but to understand where it went wrong.
2. Life is happening for me but not to me — trust the process and timing and connect all the dots from the past.
3. To make informed decisions : Sometimes, we are being blinded by our own fears and self-judgement. To overcome this, I have learned that in every situation, we can always gather more information first before making a hard conclusion for ourselves.
4. To ask for help : to be vulnerable to share about my mess and turn my mess into a message to share to my peers, friends and community. I am happy that I have transformed this experience into a simple eBook about personal finance which I will share more of what I have been through and what I learned later on.
Let me know if this has helped you in some way.
Personal finance is definitely a lifelong journey to keep learning, to keep reviewing and to keep updating.
Penny L.
