Strategic Thinking is Important

I bought my first house when I was 26. And I bought my 2nd house and live in it when I was 29. At the age of 45, I moved in to a more comfortable house which is gated guarded. The housing area also have a club house with a swimming pool and gym. I hope I can retire in the next 15 years and live in the present house.

I am not from a rich family. But, I always like to think strategically due to my hobby to play chess. A lot of people would like to think tactically. This means they would like to work hard, and accumulate a lot of money in order to buy their dream home. Some people hope that they stumble upon a project with a huge profit so that they have enough money to buy their dream home. Little do they know that without strategic thinking, these tactical mindsets are easily refuted by the property market.

When I was working as an engineer, I rode a Kawasaki KIPS to go to work. Everyday, I have to stop by a traffic light at Perling junction which is no longer there today. When the traffic stopped. I always calculated my expenses, and how much and fast I can accumulate my capital.  My salary was RM2,000. While a two storey house of 22' X 70' was about RM140,000. Based on my expenses and contribution to parents, I can only accumulate about RM600 every month. I will need about two years to accumulate the deposit or down payment to buy a house. However, the interest rate at that time was very high. Hence, the monthly payment was very high. Thus, an excess of RM600 per month is not enough to pay the mortgage. In addition, house price kept increasing. So, I would need a longer time to buy a house.

My second goal at the time was to buy a shop lot so that I can retire conveniently. This tactical calculation is a lot harder to achieve than buying a house. My conclusion, I cannot buy a shop lot with my present job, and by using tactical thinking only. So, I decided to further study while refining my strategic thinking for real world applications.