The Honda CBR600 that taught me independence

ONE of the great gifts of being young is believing you have endless potential, and all the time in the world to fulfil it.

That sense of possibility becomes even stronger when you meet someone you think is your kindred spirit.

My husband and I had grown up watching the same films like ET, TV series like Little House on the Prairie, etc.

We liked similar books and seemed equally ambitious. We both enjoyed Barbarians at the Gate and were fans of what Wall Street signalled.

We were children of the 1980s, when Gordon Gekko’s declaration that “greed is good” did not yet appear to come with consequences.

Having met my husband through my parents, I assumed our values, including our attitudes towards money, would naturally be aligned.

That was one of many assumptions I would reconsider after saying, “I do”.

Like a good Malay girl of my generation, I married soon after completing my Bar finals in the United Kingdom. I was 24 and qualified to begin practising law.

Instead, immediately after my honeymoon, I joined a local stockbroking company as a legal officer.

I had wanted to practise shipping law, but few firms specialised in it. Even fewer appeared interested in taking on a newly married female chambering student.

There was also the question of money. Chambering would have paid around RM500 a month for nine months, while the stockbroking firm offered RM1,500 and a five-day working week.

To me, it was a no-brainer. Never mind that I knew almost nothing about stockbroking.

It was the closest thing I could find to Wall Street.

Money as motivation

Growing up in a family where pocket money had to be earned meant that money became a powerful motivator for me.

While some classmates received daily allowances, I was lucky to get 20 sen for the entire week.

Even in the 1980s, that was not much. You still needed 50 sen to get a proper meal at the school canteen.

My lunchbox usually contained leftovers from the previous night’s dinner and a bottle of Ribena. I had so much Ribena that some classmates called me “Rejina Ribena”.

Because both my parents worked, I took the school bus. Whenever I received that precious 20 sen, I saved it for days when Uncle Bus would stop to buy drinks.

As the last child to be dropped off, I could finally enjoy a cold air sirap ikat tepi. Anything left went towards my collection of pencils and erasers.

By secondary school, there was a little more money available, but the instinct to save remained strong.

It is a shame nobody taught me about investing then.

A baby and no budget

I did not stay long in my first job.

As a fresh graduate, I had no real supervisor and was eventually transferred to back-office operations, where the manager seemed unsure what to do with a law graduate.

I tried to create a legal role for myself, but let’s be honest, there wasn’t even a requirement for a compliance officer until 1999.

Then I became pregnant.

I convinced my parents and husband that the Amanah Saham savings my mother had accumulated for me could support me while I focused on the pregnancy.

We had not planned to have a baby within our first year of marriage. I had no salary, no proper budget and not enough savings.

The year was 1997. The idea of becoming a parent was exciting but also terrifying.

I did not fully understand how financially exposed I felt until the day the motorbike came home.

The motorbike

I remember the moment clearly, although not the exact date. It was probably October or November 1997.

My daughter would arrive in April 1998, in the middle of the Asian financial crisis and the great haze.

I was pregnant, unemployed and financially dependent.

Then my husband came home with a Honda CBR600 superbike.

It was a motorbike I knew we could not comfortably afford, bought while I was worrying about how we would prepare for the child who was coming.

It was not the most dramatic moment of my marriage, but it was one of the most clarifying.

My bubble burst.

I was furious. I gathered every motorbike magazine I could find in the apartment and threw them from the balcony of our 11th-floor apartment.

Unfortunately, they did not belong to my husband. They belonged to his friend, R, who amazingly remains a good friend despite that fiery beginning.

That motorbike marked the moment my money mindset began to mature.

Not because my husband stopped paying the bills. He did not.

It was because I realised I could not place my entire financial future, or that of my unborn child, in someone else’s hands.

I needed to take greater control of my own life.

When our baby arrived, she brought enormous joy and an equally enormous amount of anxiety.

I began looking for work. Five months later, I joined an investment management company.

That decision began a career that would eventually span more than two and a half decades in the capital markets.

The real lesson

Financial confidence does not always begin with an investment portfolio, a retirement plan or a perfectly balanced household budget.

Sometimes it begins with discomfort.

It may be a partner making a major financial decision without consulting you. It may be a job loss, illness, pregnancy or the sudden realisation that your savings are not enough.

For me, it began with a Honda CBR600.

Financial independence does not mean rejecting partnership or refusing to share responsibilities. It means remaining informed, involved and capable of protecting yourself when circumstances change.

Women should understand what their households own, what they owe, how much they spend and what resources are available in an emergency.

Most importantly, we must retain the ability to earn, save and make informed decisions of our own.

Fairy tales may promise that someone else will take care of us forever. A nice thought but not feasible in this day and age.

Financial confidence begins when we understand that we must also be able to take care of ourselves.