Wow, more than 2 years have passed (2 yrs and 4 mths to be exact) since the last blog post! So many achievements unlocked in my fangirl adulting journey! Let’s cover those now.

Covid happened

We cannot ignore the elephant in the room that changed my fangirl experience these past 2 years. There were no more physical concerts, only online untact concerts, which were kinda a godsend because it allowed us to tune into the concert no matter where we lived, and we didn’t have to spend thousands on concert tix+airplane tickets! I think the most I spent on an online concert was MYR 280 or something like that for Mino and Yoon’s solo concerts.

Anyway, I digress. What did I achieve during this covid period as an adult?

1. Banks offered moratoriums on loans in 2020 to help the nation cope with covid so I was able to:
2. Pay off my credit card debts (!!)
3. Pay off my student loan (!!)
4. Property prices fell so I bought a house (sort of)
5. Invested my retirement savings (EPF) in mutual funds
6. Invested my cash savings in mutual funds to save more for home renovation
7. Bought a heck of a lot of household appliances and computer & IT related stuff for home schooling (!)
8. Treated my eldest daughter & four friends to a shopping spree type birthday party
9. Hired an interior decorator to redecorate my eldest daughter’s bedroom (!)

I don’t remember what came first in that list, but in general, those were the adulting milestones achieved in 2020 – 2021.

We’ll break this up into 2 general sections: the financially related stuff, and the more family related stuff.

Financially related Adulting milestones

First of all, covid affected my company adversely. Demand for oil fell causing oil prices to fall, causing my company to revamp their entire strategy and we are now known as an Integrated Energy Company instead of an International Oil and Gas Company. They cut 10,000 jobs, had a massive reorg, and announced employees would not get a bonus for 1 or 2 years. I was lucky enough to keep my job, but it meant losing 6 team members and increasing my workload. We also worked from home (WFH) from March of 2020 and have not gone back into the office since then (it’s now Jan 2022).

(1) & (2) Loan moaratorium & paying off credit card debts

I was lucky in that my country offerred loan moratoriums for 6 months starting Apr 2020 (which was extended to Dec 2020 for some banks), which meant you didn’t have to pay your monthly loan installments up til Dec 2020. I immediately took that opportunity to use the funds that I would normally set aside for my car and student loan to pay my credit card debt instead. But the way I actually did it was thru my bank’s own “interest free” cash loan. So here’s the gist of it:

1. My bank’s credit card offers a 0% interest-free 6 month cash loan (that has an upfront fee you pay instead of interest, but it is affordable)
2. I took up this cash loan to pay the entirety of my credit card debt, so that my credit card balance is zero, save for the monthly repayments of the cash loan
3. I used the funds that I would’ve used to pay my car and student loan to pay off the cash loan repayment

It was a win-win situation. For the first time in a long time, I now have a manageable credit card debt balance. The loan moratorium is over but my debt repayment is not a nightmare anymore, and all those fangirl expenses that I amortized back in Chapter Four are now fully paid off. Woohoo! I achieved it some time in Aug/Sep 2020. It felt so good to finally achieve that! I no longer feel any fangirl related guilt of having spent too much on concerts cos I paid it all off! And since physical concerts were out of the question during covid, there is no more guilt to be felt all around!

(3) & (4) Buying a house and paying off my student loan

During covid, property prices also fell. Property developers were throwing all sorts of promotions and the govt was giving out all sorts of incentives to encourage people to buy property in 2020. And while I was paying off my credit card debts, my credit rating improved and I was able to buy a house! Well, technically it is a rent-to-own scheme offered by my bank, but whatever, it is my own home. I will be able to “purchase” it from the bank after a year of leasing it from them. The property itself is not completed yet, but it felt really grown-up to go to the property showroom and view all the units with my kids and actually sit down and decide with them which unit we liked best and which one I should buy.

My tip to you if you are a single parent, get your kids involved in this decision making process. Talk to them about what price you can afford to pay. So back in June 2020, on a Saturday afternoon, I took my kids to view this new property development a few kilometers away from our current apartment. I didn’t know what to expect actually going in there. Even though it wasn’t the first time visiting a property showroom, it was the first time I went there as a single parent (without a spouse) and as an adult with an intent to purchase. At first I thought I’d test the waters, so to speak, and see how my kids reacted to the property. What we wanted was an apartment unit that was more than 1000 sq ft with at least 3-4 bedrooms. We got there and was just blown away by what the developer offerred. We found a unit that we liked with the square footage that I wanted. There were so many facilities that would be nice to have with that new property (it’s a condo). It’s just a few kilometers away so the kids would be able to attend the same school, but technically this condo is situated in a different city.

Then we sat down with the salesperson and he told us that I can own this property without making a downpayment and without having to pay any SPA/legal fees by signing up for this rent-to-own scheme offerred by my own bank! Also, to make a long story short, I found out that my credit rating was so good that I didn’t even need a guarantor for this scheme! (I practially wasted my time calling up various family members to ask them to be my guarantor — not required! Hooray for paying off credit card debts). I sat my kids down and told them how much I’m paying monthly now to rent our home and how much more I’m willing to pay monthly to own one, and we decided to go for it because the monthly payment for the new unit was within my new budget, after having paid off my credit card debts (and student loan, but more on that in a bit). I also found out that my eldest daughter is like the boss of the family. I only feel comfortable making the final decision on big family stuff if she was okay with it, and she was the one who chose which type of unit to buy and which floor to live on. So yeah.

So in the process of applying for this rent-to-own scheme, I found out that I had arrears in my student loan. It was due to be paid off that year in 2020 anyway, but what I didn’tknow was that I had about 20k in arrears. And in order to get the housing thing approved, I needed to pay off the arrears first. Good news was that because of all the govt incentives for covid, the govt also allowed people to withdraw a portion of their EPF (retirement fund) to pay off their student loan. And since 20k was not that huge of an amount, I decided to withdraw from my EPF and pay that amount off. So in buying my house, I managed to pay off my student loan too! Win-win.

(5) & (6) Investing EPF and savings in mutual funds

Right, so the reason why I wasn’t too worried about withdrawing 20k from my EPF to pay off my student loan was because I just started investing some of my EPF in mutual funds back in 2020. And my fund manager already projected earnings for the next 10 years and I know I’ll be able to make up for that 20k and then some. I don’t know why I didn’t start investing sooner. I mean really. If you haven’t done so already, go and read up on the funds you’re allowed to invest in and just invest. It’s for your future. The fees you pay is smaller compared to what you can earn in divendend profits. In Chapter Four, I also talked about how I have an account in a second bank that I use as a savings account. I took 80% of the savings from that account and invested it in a mutual fund. So far so good, and I’ve already made 18% gain. I decided to invest all the extra cash to fund my future home renovation. I hope I can make enough to pay for at least 60% of the renovation. Not sure how much it will actually cost, and might be a topic for a future blog post!