Personal finance courses on your terms

In Personal Finance Basics, learn how to tailor your financial plan to your individual preferences and goals. Whether your goal is to buy a house or save more money, there are essential steps in financial planning that will set you up to take control of your personal finances.

By the end of the seminar, you’ll be equipped to do the following:

• Determine your current financial standing
• Set up a budget that reflects your current and future priorities
• Specify and prioritise your life goals and assess how much they will cost to achieve
• Develop a strategic action plan to reach your goals
• Set up cost-effective safety nets for you and your loved ones
• Review and revise your financial plan along the way
• Understand basic investing terms (to be continued in Investing Basics)

There’s plenty of investment advice and types of investments out there, so how should you decide how to start investing? Whether you’re a beginner in investing, or you want solidify your understanding of investing, this seminar will equip you with the information you need to feel comfortable making the best investment decisions for yourself.

What we’ll cover:

• The differences between various asset classes
• What a balanced portfolio should look like
• What you should consider before making an investment
• Understanding your personal risk preferences
• Why your investment timeline is important
• Do-it-yourself investing versus having a portfolio manager
• Dollar-cost Averaging versus Timing the market

If you’ve ever spent any time looking into investment options, you’ve probably come across Exchange-traded Funds (ETFs). A quick search online will tell you that an ETF is an investment tool that tracks an index, and is traded like a stock. In the last decade, ETFs have become increasingly popular because they provide such diversified exposure. But, not all ETFs are created equally, and portfolio managers approach investing with ETFs in different ways.

What we’ll cover:

• What are ETFs?
• The wide range of ETFs
• ETFs vs Unit Trusts
• How to evaluate ETFs to decide which ETFs to invest in
• How ETFs fit into a passive investment strategy

It's never too soon to start planning and saving for your retirement. What do you want your retirement to look like? Do you want to travel a lot? Stay home and help raise the grandkids? Here, we'll teach you how to confidently prepare for you retirement. We'll take you through the various retirement vehicles in Malaysia, such as EPF, and guide you to create an effective retirement plan that brings peace of mind.

We will cover the following:

1. How to maximise your EPF
2. Putting a timeline on investments to help make your money last
3. Why it’s important to know your personal risk appetite based on your profile

Robo-advisors have become popular around the world largely due to their low fees, accessibility, and convenience. We've has taken these value propositions up a notch: Our proprietary risk-management investment strategy, ERAA® (Economic Regime-based Asset Allocation) sets it apart from other financial advisors and robo-advisors in that it systematically maximises returns while minimising risk. The technology that powers the framework uniquely makes strategic asset allocation decisions based on thousands of macro-economic data points instead of securities selection.

Join us as we explain what sets our framework apart from other investment managers, and what that means for your portfolios.

What we’ll cover:

• The differences between securities selection (also known as ‘stock picking’) and asset allocation
• The economic data that StashAway uses to make unbiased, informed,and long-term investment decisions
• The StashAway Risk Index and our emphasis on risk-management 
• Expected returns

Having effective safety nets in place is key component in any financial plan, and here, we’ll walk you through how you can take a proactive role in your financial risk management strategy.

What we’ll cover:

• Will and estate planning
• Setting up a trust
• Emergency funding

With all of the different investment options available, it can be difficult to determine which portfolio manager should invest your hard-earned money. Here, we’ll give you an inside look into StashAway and explain how our technology and investment strategy set our offering apart from other traditional financial advisors and robo-advisors. More specifically, we’ll discuss how our technology personalises your portfolios, and how it intelligently manages your investments.

You can use this as an opportunity to ask answer any questions you have about how we manage your money, about the team, or whatever else is on your mind.

What we’ll cover:

• Introduction to the company, the co-founders, the advisory team
• How our investment strategy seeks returns taking only a fraction of the risk
• A walk-through of the app, from sign-up to how to make the most out of the app
• Our fee structure and what it includes

Using examples from both early-stage companies and billion-dollar corporations, we’ll look at how to turn an idea into a business. We’ll also cover how build the right team for your business. Then, we’ll dive into the various stages of fundraising and what investors look for. After all, you can have the best idea in the world, but if you don’t have the money to hire the right people and to develop a product or service, the idea will remain an idea.

Other topics we’ll cover include:

• What is a Minimum Viable Product, and why do you need one?
• How to foster a culture in your work place that breeds successful talent and results