My younger sister wanted to buy a gold bar. To be specific, my 5gm mini gold bar. I offered to order another one for her and wait for her parcel but she wanted it like – ASAP. So I sold it to her based on the market price and got minimal ‘untung’ from the selling-buying agreement between siblings.

I also sold her one of those cute 1gm sim-card-sized gold bars for RM350. I gave her the least favourable design per her standards so that she wouldn’t feel ‘sayang’ to sell it one day. My late mum loved gold but more towards jewellery. Back then, gold was like RM60/g and now, nearly 20 years later it is roughly RM334/g. My sister sold one of mum’s necklaces for our younger brother’s wedding last year and the amount they received was so many times more than how much mom initially bought back then. So, gold is definitely something you want to sit on long term.

My sister has a diverse savings portfolio. Her main aim is to save up enough for her children’s education fund. Nowadays there’s a lot of talk going around education quota in secondary school. There is plenty of government assistance for those in the B40 group as opposed to those earning an income qualifying them for the M40 and T20 groups. So much so that some people from the latter groups, including myself are expressing disdain over the discrimination one faces when they manage to climb up the social ladder.

Kadang2 macam – what is the point of getting an education and a good job with a decent income – only to find that you are not worthy of the same chances in life. Eventhough I am a T20, unlike the T20s in the tiers of individuals like CTDK, Dato Aliff Syukri and all – we don’t send our children to private schools. I still send my kids to public schools. Even so, I would still want an opportunity for my kids to thrive in their studies in centres of educational excellence like SBP and MRSM. Simply because we know these are affordable yet competitive places to study. But society is somehow making suggestions that all M40 and T20s should send their children to private schools of which all of them – cost like a bomb. Some have teaching curriculums that we parents are just not affiliated with. I suppose what the M40 and T20 want is also the chance for their kids to study in places like SBP and MRSM which can assist them to greater heights.

I am not saying that we should revoke the B40 privileges because they do need this extra assistance. After all, quotas helped me back then as a Bumiputera child raised in an M40 threshold.

It’s just that shouldn’t the educational ministry think of a plan to improve the system – so much so that even non-MRSM or SBP schools are equally top-tiered to produce quality students in preparation for life. We want public high schools to be prestigious and free from social problems like delinquency, bullying and substance abuse so that parents do not have concerns when their kids are funnelled to these feeder schools. We want an education system akin to Finland where every child could thrive despite their social background.