MONEY MASTER

Two weeks ago, I posted an article on the survey that reveals many Malaysians do not settle their debt in full every month, so, I guess I need to keep the momentum in posting articles that will create the awareness on the importance of financial management in the adult life. This is even more important to many Malaysians as the purchasing power in Malaysia is not so high compare to even our neighboring countries like Singapore, so, every penny counts and important. From the article, I found that there are a lot of the given examples are quite true and I can even find those among my circle of friends - mainly splurge to have holiday outside of Malaysia and using a big portion of the retirement fund to fund their children's education oversea. The article is as follows:- Avoiding Personal Financial Crisis ANECDOTAL evidence seems to suggest that there are still many Malaysians, especially the young adults, who do not really practise sound financial management. Consider the cas...

It's been like a while since I last update this blog, but finally I intended to update this blog with an article that I found which suits the blog very very much. It is about how the richest 400 people in the United States of America got so rich, and basically the summary of the article is stocks will outperform any form of other investment. The article is as follows:-   In 1992, the 400th richest person in America made $24 million. In 2007, the 400th richest person in America made $138 million (or $87 million, inflation-adjusted). Now, that almost certainly wasn't the same guy. There's a lot of churn at the top of the money pyramid. In all of the 1990s, only 25% of the Fortunate 400 made more than one appearance. But the overall message is the same. The rich keeping getting richer. According to the IRS, which recently released 2009 data from the 400 richest individual income tax returns, the real runaway growth in wealth has come from capital gains. In the la...

I just started to blog about the cons of using credit card in Credit Card - Friend or Foe (Part 3) and to my surprise, I read news that a survey done reveals many Malaysians do not settle their debts in full every month - the debt here meaning the credit card debt. The news is as follow:- PETALING JAYA: A global survey has revealed that Malaysians are among the worst credit card repayers in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the survey, less than half of the local respondents polled online say they repay their credit card debts in full every month. Given this, Malaysia has one of the lowest repayment rates among the developing markets that were surveyed. About 15% repay more than the minimum requirement while 18% of Malaysians repay only the minimum amount required. This is although two out of five Malaysians polled claimed to use credit cards for shopping, dining and entertainment. In contrast, the highest repayment rate was in Taiwan, where 89% of respondents service ...

My first two posts, Credit Card - Friend or Foe (Part 1) and Credit Card - Friend or Foe (Part 2) on credit card were slightly bias towards the pros of using credit card rather than the cons of doing so. While I can think of the many pros of using credit card, not every one can fully utilized the benefit of swiping this plastic without ever getting deeper into the pit of debt. Credit card debt is one of the most feared debt as the interest charged by the financial institution is high, I'm not sure other countries, but in Malaysia the interest charged on credit card normal retail usage are range from 15% (up from previous 13%) to 18% per annum and the amount is accumulated until you fully paid off. Aside from the high interest rate, there are quite a lot of hidden charges or so call penalty for not paying the credit card on time, or in full amount. There is a grace period of 20 days interest free after the statement closed for the previous month, but still there are a num...