I am Ai Ching Goh, I am...

A wife, a mom and an entrepreneur. I currently run 2 startups - Piktochart and Piktostory. Piktochart is soon going to be a visual storytelling tool for professionals, which makes it easy to condense meaning in as little time as possible through visuals. Piktostory is a video repurposing tool to convert long form videos into short clips within minutes. The company is all remote with Malaysian roots and we run on unconventional values. We are a SAAS company, bootstrapped and have 99% of our customers outside of Malaysia.

1. What is your best investment and worst investment?
I don't have a best and worst investment in terms of monetary value.

I do not just invest money but my time/effort/energy and I consider these to be of more value than money because they cannot be substituted with a dollar value.

Best investment - my daughter, my relationships with family and husband, products like Piktochart and Piktostory, health (working out).

Worst investment - time spent on social media.

2. What was your first-ever investment? (and how did that go)
With the first full-time pay check I got, I bought a designer bag from Anna Hindmarch (don't ask me why as I'm not a fashionista, it was symbolic of my independence I guess). I didn't regret it as I loved my bag, but in retrospect, I would have chosen something that would perpetually grow in its value.

3. Your investment no-nos (why not and what happened)
I am embarrassed to say I used to put all my money in FD at 4+% pa, because I didn't really need to think or evaluate and it guaranteed some fixed returns while saving me time haha. Now that FD is yielding terrible value, I have been playing the "armchair" investor at Stashaway.

With Stashaway, I actually lost money (but it's a miniscule amount). I'm in tech so I felt like I needed to understand how bot investing worked. I have since moved most of my capital to guaranteed rates at 2.4% pa.

I was looking at eToro, but I haven't yet deposited a huge sum into it because I wanted to understand how stocks worked. I have a virtual portfolio that I have been nurturing over 6 months and either this month or next, due to the instability of the US elections.

However, I discovered that eToro is not licensed or registered by the Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) to carry out any regulated activities in Malaysia. Hence, I'm also checking out other platforms as the intent is to invest from Malaysia in US stocks.

4. What are you investing for?
I am a mother, daughter, entrepreneur. I have worked out how much my household spends on a yearly basis, added a compounding 4% inflation rate and basically tried to see how much I need in order to survive X number of years without working. I also invest into non-profit causes, i.e. my church and its ministries so I account for that - I want to be able to support the causes that I care about. My husband and I are also trying to convince his parents to take an early retirement and support them through it.

5. Your investment philosophy and approach

• I do not invest in anything I do not understand. I still do not understand cryptocurrency's incredible ups and downs so I stay out of it.
• I feel the need to read a lot about the companies that I invest in and that's also the reason why I stick with tech stocks and not healthcare or commodities like silver/aluminium etc.
• I also read from a few investors on how they evaluate and look at companies' performance.
• I never invest more than 50% of my net savings into something volatile like stocks.
• I am not looking for quick gains but "safe" long term gains.

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About “This is How I Invest” - As Fi Life’s motto is “Buy Term (Term Life Insurance) & Invest the Rest”, this series features how different personalities “Invest the Rest.”

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