What Participants Say

Honest accounts from people who have attended our programmes.

These are accounts from actual participants — what they came looking for, and what they found. We have not selected for the most effusive; we have selected for the most representative.

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4 yrs

Studio open in Cyberjaya

200+

Sessions completed

97%

Rated sessions useful or very useful

8 max

Participants per group cohort

Participant Reviews

From the people who attended.

Nurul Izzati

Marketing Executive · Cyberjaya

The Walk-Through session was not what I expected. I thought it would be someone telling me to cut my coffee budget. Instead, it was a conversation that helped me see where a few hundred ringgit a month was going without me noticing. Small adjustments — but ones I actually understood and felt ready to try.

Monthly Walk-Through · March 2025

Tan Wei-Liang

Software Engineer · Putrajaya

I joined the Young Professionals group mostly because I had never properly understood my EPF statement. By week three, I had a clear picture of what the account actually represents over a thirty-year horizon. The reading material sent ahead of each session was well written — not condescending, which I appreciated.

Young Professionals Group · Feb–Mar 2025

Farah Aziz

Operations Manager · Shah Alam

My husband and I did the Five-Year Plan engagement together. The listening session felt a bit unusual at first — we had never had a structured conversation about money with a third party before. But it helped us arrive at a plan that we both actually agreed on, which had been difficult on our own. The printed document sits on our bookshelf and we have looked at it twice since.

Five-Year Plan Engagement · Nov 2024–Feb 2025

Rajesh Kumar

Finance Analyst · Petaling Jaya

I work in finance, which made me a bit hesitant to attend something labelled 'financial education'. But the group programme was clearly not designed for people who already work in the industry — it was designed for people who earn a salary and want to understand it better. The content on personal insurance was genuinely useful to me, even with my background.

Young Professionals Group · Jan–Feb 2025

Siew Ling

Project Coordinator · Cyberjaya

I had been putting off doing something about my finances for about two years. The Walk-Through was a way of finally making a start without a large commitment. The facilitator was patient and did not make me feel judged for the state of my accounts. I would have liked a follow-up session a few months later, which I have since enquired about.

Monthly Walk-Through · March 2025

Ahmad Mukhlis

HR Manager · Putrajaya

The Five-Year Plan produced something I had not expected: a document that my wife and I could both point to as a shared record of what we agreed on. The process of arriving at it — four meetings over four months — did as much work as the document itself. We had conversations during those sessions that we had been avoiding for years.

Five-Year Plan Engagement · Oct 2024–Jan 2025

Participant Journeys

Three detailed accounts.

Names and identifying details have been changed. Programmes and timelines are as described to us by participants.

Zarina, 28 — Fresh into her second job

Young Professionals Group Programme

Challenge

Zarina had been working for three years but still felt uncertain about her EPF contributions, did not understand the difference between her gross and net pay, and had not started any separate saving habit. She came to the group session because a colleague had attended the previous cohort.

What the programme covered

Over five weeks, the group walked through pay slip structure, EPF as a retirement account, insurance basics relevant to a single person in her late twenties, and how to set up a straightforward saving arrangement on her income level.

Where she ended up

By week five, she had set up a second account for saving and understood clearly what her EPF balance represented. She told us she felt, for the first time, that her financial life had a shape she could describe to someone else.

"I did not expect to feel calm about money at the end of five weeks. Not sorted — just calm about it."

David and Yvonne — A couple with different approaches to money

Five-Year Written Plan Engagement

Challenge

David and Yvonne were in their mid-thirties and had been managing separate finances since they married four years earlier. They had never sat down to work through a combined picture and kept postponing the conversation because it felt too large to start.

How the engagement ran

Four meetings over four months. The first session was a listening session — no documents, just conversation about what each of them valued and what they were trying to work toward. The second and third sessions worked through their combined position in detail. The fourth produced the printed plan.

The outcome

A twelve-page written plan that described their current position, four priorities they both agreed on, and a checkpoint for each of the next five years. They described the plan as the first written record they had of a shared financial decision.

"The conversation in session one took longer than scheduled. The facilitator was not in a hurry. That set the tone for everything that followed."

Hana, 35 — Self-employed with irregular income

Monthly Walk-Through, followed later by Five-Year Plan

Challenge

Hana ran a small design studio. Her income varied month to month and she had never found a simple way to track whether a good month was genuinely good or just an anomaly. She booked a Walk-Through as a first step.

First step, then more

The Walk-Through helped her map a single month in a way that made sense for variable income. She found it useful enough that eight months later she returned for the Five-Year Plan engagement, this time with the additional context of running a business.

What she built

A household plan that accounted for income variability and described a realistic set of priorities for the next five years — including when she might feel ready to employ a second person in her studio. She described the plan as the first time she had written down what she was actually building toward.

"I came back because the Walk-Through was useful and I wanted more depth. The plan is not a perfect document — but it is mine."

Find Us

Studio hours and contact details.

Phone

+60 3-8319 7524

[email protected]

Studio

Lorong Bayu, No. 22 Bayu Residences,
63000 Cyberjaya, Selangor

Studio Hours

Tuesday – Saturday, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

Closed Sunday & Monday

Our credentials

A few relevant details about Alder House.

PDPA 2010 compliant — participant data handled under Malaysian data protection law
No Capital Markets Services Licence — no product sales, no commission-based advice
Group cohorts capped at eight — a standard we hold regardless of demand
Programme content reviewed before each cohort — current EPF rates and Malaysian tax context

Take the first step

See whether a programme is right for you.

If what you have read here feels relevant to your situation, write to us. We will answer your questions without any sales pressure, and help you understand which programme, if any, makes sense to try.

Write to Alder House