Hi, I’m K.

I’m not a financial advisor. I don’t have a certification. I don’t have a spreadsheet empire or a six-figure investment portfolio.

What I do have is a corporate 9-to-6, a late-twenties existential crisis about my EPF balance, and a long, slightly embarrassing list of money mistakes I made while assuming I’d “figure it out eventually.”

This blog is me figuring it out. In real time. In public. Mistakes included.

The Girl Who Thought She Was Doing Fine

For most of my twenties, I thought I was financially responsible because I wasn’t in debt and I had a savings account that technically existed.

That was the bar. It was a very low bar.

I didn’t have an emergency fund. I didn’t really understand what my EPF statement meant beyond “number that goes up sometimes.” I definitely didn’t have a budget — I had vibes, a Touch ‘n Go balance I refused to check, and a Shopee cart that somehow always needed “just one more thing” for free shipping.

I was earning a normal corporate salary, technically an adult, and still had absolutely no idea where my money actually went every month.

Sound familiar? Yeah. That’s kind of the point of this blog.

What Changed

Nothing dramatic. No single rock-bottom moment, no dramatic wake-up call.

Just a slow, quiet realisation that I was in my late twenties, earning decent money, and still felt financially clueless every time an unexpected expense showed up. That gap — between “should know this by now” and “actually has no idea” — got uncomfortable enough that I finally started paying attention.

So I started reading. Tracking. Asking annoying questions. Making a budget, breaking the budget, making a slightly more realistic budget. Building an emergency fund one embarrassingly small transfer at a time. Learning what my payslip deductions actually mean. Un-learning some genuinely bad advice I’d absorbed from social media along the way.

I’m still doing all of this, by the way. This isn’t a “before and after” story. It’s an “in progress” one.

Why My Duit Journey Exists

Most personal finance content online falls into one of two categories: either it’s written by people who were already good with money and are now explaining it from a place of “just do this, it’s easy,” or it’s aggressively motivational in a way that makes you feel worse about your Shopee cart, not better.

I wanted something in between. Something written by someone still in it — still occasionally impulse-buying things she doesn’t need, still learning what half her payslip line items mean, still figuring out how to budget on a real Malaysian salary instead of a US-based template that assumes rent is optional.

My Duit Journey is that space. Real numbers where I can share them. Real mistakes, not sanitised ones. Real Malaysian context — EPF, PTPTN, ASB, the actual cost of living here — instead of generic advice that doesn’t quite fit.

What You’ll Find Here

A Small Disclaimer

I’m not a licensed financial advisor, and nothing on this blog is professional financial advice — just one person’s documented journey, research, and lessons learned (often the hard way). Always do your own research or speak to a qualified professional before making major financial decisions.

Why “My Duit Journey”?

Because duit is just money, and this was never meant to be a finished, polished destination. It’s a journey — messy, ongoing, occasionally humbling, and hopefully useful to someone else who’s exactly where I was: earning enough, understanding little, and finally ready to change that.

If that’s you too — welcome. Let’s figure this out together.