MONEY MASTER

We are just less than a week to 2013 and I guess it is time for us to reflect on our annual financial goal and how are we doing or whether we are still in on track to achieve our financial goal, or whether we are lagging behind. We should always check our financial goal quarterly, and I always check, just to ensure that the goal that I set earlier is achievable and on track to achieve it. If not, then what is the problem until we are side track or off target. Always reviewing this will ensure that we set a more realistic goal in the future, achieving financial goal will give us a feel of fulfillment. Anyway, back to my financial goal, I usually set a very basic and generic financial goals which is to grow the stocks portfolio by about certain percentage, tithing and to clear certain percentage of debt. This year, it will not be any different as well - the only different being that I forgotten to blog it out. The stocks portfolio growth by about 24%, with about 29% of the growth ...

As we all know, food is very important part in our budgeting. We cannot be too stingy on our food, allocating too few, we might end up starving end of the month while over allocation and we might ended up gaining few pounds end of the month - which is not something that we wanted. Anyway, we need to make sure we have sufficient allocation on food, and while for some of us who are renting room near to our working area and do not have the luxury to make our own food, there are some who are able to do so - which is good, as you can spend time doing something useful and at the same time reducing the food cost and finally bring down the monthly food allocation which can in turn make the savings or investment allocation higher. For the next few blog post, I will try to post the details of few of the ways to cut the food bills. The following are the brief summary of how you can cut the food bills whenever you are thinking to save for annual vacation, or just trying to cut the amount y...

IN recent years, the level of household debt among Malaysians has been a matter of growing concern, as the statistics show that the average person is way over his head in debt. Based on Bank Negara figures, the typical household borrowing is a shocking 140% of disposable income. That's something to think about, as it means that at least half of Malaysians are struggling desperately with their finances. So, they probably have very little idea of how they can become financially free, let alone wealthy. Incredible, isn't it? Most people we know would like to be free of financial worries and to enjoy a high standard of living, but so few seem to get it right. The journey towards financial success begins by first knowing where you are. Strangely, many people in the middle class find it difficult to answer this question: are you middle class, financially free or rich? In my latest book, Set Yourself Free: How To Optimise Money and Become Wealthy With Minimum Effort and Risk, I have t...

A very interesting article that I read last weekend regarding gold and the monetary system. It's quite long winded, but very informative and I think it's appropriate to share it here since we have been monitoring the gold price for quite some time already. It gives us the insight of gold and how gold are ties to the money value, even how often countries stray away from Gold Standard and then coming back to it, and then moving away from Gold Standard again and back and forth. The writer gives advice that if we do really want to hold physical gold, we should not do it in a rush, gold bug or not. The article is as follow:- KEYNES called it a “barbaric relic” in 1924. Scarce, attractive, malleable and immune to corrosion – gold used to be ideal money before the advent of modern paper money. Today, just like diamonds, gold is also a girl’s best friend. In Asia, it is the masses’ darling. Most Asians are showered with gold when they are born; gold is figuratively given away duri...

HALF of the 22 women on a list of self-made billionaires released last Friday by Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute are from China. According to the 2012 Global Self-Made Rich Women List, 48-year-old Longfor Properties Co Ltd chairman Wu Yajun is ranked No. 1 with a fortune of 38 billion yuan (RM18.2bil), followed by 71-year-old Chan Lai Wa of Fu Wah International Group (No. 2), Zhang Yin of Nine Dragons Paper Holdings (No. 4) and Zhang Xin of SOHO China (No. 5). These four billionaires maintained their top five ranking from last year. The other top 10 richest women are Spain’s Rosalia Mera of Zara (No. 3), US celebrity Oprah Winfrey (No. 6), American clothing giant The Gap co-founder Doris Fisher (No. 7), Huabao Group chairman Chu Lam Yiu (No. 7), mum-and-daughter pair of Lv Hui and Diana Chen Ningning (No. 9), China Orient Landscape chairman He Qiaonv and Specsavers founder Mary Perkins from Britain (both No. 10). The minimum wealth requirement for this year’s l...

A very interesting article that I read from the Star newspaper last Saturday on whether we can retire with RM1 million since it officially makes one a millionaire. But will one million enough for one to retire? A MILLION ringgit is a lot of money. In the past, it was always considered “the benchmark” in terms of a person's success. After all, having RM1mil officially makes you a millionaire. However, realistically, is RM1mil big enough to survive on today, especially once you retire? According to official statistics, the average Malaysian male has a life expectancy of up to 75 years, while for females its up to 77 years. This means that a retiree aged 55 has to support hinself or herself for another 20 years or more. But let's be a little bit conservative for the purpose of this article, let's put the average life expectancy at 80 years old. With RM1mil at 55 years old, you would need to divide that money to last you another 25 years, which comes to an aver...

I am probably not the right person to be blogging about this because spending is really one of my weaknesses. But here are some of the ways that I find effective in helping me to spend less. 1) Think it through and search for more information... With the growing infomercials that are designed to give simple information while promoting certain products, the brain could be pressured and tricked into buying. Thus, it is important to give it a thought and think through. It is also advisable to search for more information on the internet....most of the time, you might realize that you don't actually need it anyway.  2) Search for cheap and discount goods... One might probably find it difficult to search for cheap and discounted goods but if you start take note of the prices, it is not long before you could identify the goods that have a good discount. Buy during festive seasons are good but one must be careful not to fall into the trap of spending more from th...

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Today, I'm going to discuss about something practical about spending... Nowadays, almost everything revolve around money...and that includes your health and fitness. If you have money, you could easily pay for membership to join a gym, a yoga class etc. But here is the question that we must ask before we spend...should we pay for gym? Should you pay for gym? Should you pay for your fitness and health? I think that question depends on what is the purpose of joining a gym. A friend of mine who joined a gym membership was there to build muscles. That was the right move I believe as building muscles require the intensity in work out and it will be advisable to do it with a gym instructor. But if you are going to a gym for the purpose of health and fitness, I think it is not worth to pay for a gym. There are many people who went to the gym for running in the morning for the purpose of maitaining their health and fitness level, but this could be done for free in a lot of p...

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...

I watched Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and I found that one of the easily remembered quote by Gordon Gekko is "Greed is good" with the full context of "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good". It is not that I agree with Gordon Gekko that greed is really good, but without greed, I do feel like one will lose the competency to try strive for more and better quality life by earning more money. In the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Gordon Gekko was a "shark" as what we all call the fund managers and all the people with loads of money to control the stock price. Many terms are associated with these people as they have the capability to influence the global market movement. Anyway, back to the movie, as he was giving a talk on trading, he mentioned, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; gre...

We all have heard time and time again about the importance of investment but most of us could not grasp it...myself included... Anyway, here are a few basic categories of investment that one can consider: 1) Stocks When you own stocks or shares in a company, you own part of that company. As a shareholder in the company, you are entitled to any dividends that the company pays out. There are usually two reasons for investors to buy stocks: dividends and capital appreciation. There are many factors that determine the price of a stock, but in general, the company's earnings... From historically point of view, stocks have often done much better in comparison to bonds over the long term. In the short term, stocks are more volatile, where it can swing wildly compared to other types of investment. Stocks are the ones that will give the highest return as well but it comes with the highest risk. 2) Bonds For those of you who buy a bond, you must realize ...

I have blogged about Ways to Cut Budget: Pay Yourself First and Ways to Cut Budget: Buy Only What You Need . These two blog posts are related on the ways to cut budget and to reduce the expenses. By reducing the expenses to get more value out of a dollar. The next way to cut budget is to use coupons. This mean that before shopping, prior one going for shopping, he or she should plan first and accumulate coupons so that he or she can get bargain from shopping malls. It only takes some extra effort for one to find coupons online or from magazines but because of the time needed to find the coupons, it actually allowed one to really think whether he or she really needs to buy something, which bring us back to buy only what you need way. This will help one who have problem with impulse buying to stop buying unnecessary or extra things. Besides that, by using coupons, one can get the best out of a dollar that he or she has spent. Imagine, by using coupons, one can get branded go...

We all know the importance of enjoying ourselves while accumulating wealth. Most people fail to see that enjoying need not necessary means spending luxuriously. If you are a fans of music concerts, you may go for the music band One Direction tickets . There are other bands that are available at an affordable prices in Tickets America for rock band, Phish and the popular coldplay. The Phish tickets could easily be bought from here. There are plenty of offers for coldplay tickets as well to promote the concerts. Thus, if you spent at times such as this during the promotion or offer, you may still get to watch live concerts (for the music avid) at an affordable price. Life is not just about accumulating wealth, but about enjoying wealth. Here is a smart way to do so. Ticketamerica.,com has concert tickets for One Direction and Coldplay plus ticket options for the band called Phish.

I have posted on the Ways to Cut Budget: Buy Only What You Need two months back and promised to come back with more ways to cut budget. The second way to cut budget in which I am going to write about is to pay yourself first. When one mentioned about budgeting, what usually comes into mind is how much money is going to be allocated to personal expenses, loans and many other spending that one can really think off. In fact, what we usually forget in planning our budget is to plan how much we are going to save. One of the ways to actually cut budget is to pay yourself first, when you are planning the budget for the whole year or for the particular month. Savings in fact is supposedly to be one of the major component in our budget, but nevertheless we will never see that in most of the budget - this include personal budgeting, companies or even countries. Let us talk about the personal budgeting for individual. I remember previously I have written on the monthly spending guidelines , and ...

After a long wait, finally the EPF announced the dividend for the year 2011 and it comes to many surprises at 6% as global economy is too volatile throughout the whole year. Anyway, it is a good news to majority Malaysians as the payout is slightly 0.2% higher than the year before. PETALING JAYA: The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) Board has declared a dividend of 6% for 2011 the highest in the last 10 years. In a statement yesterday, EPF said the dividend, an increase of 20 basis points over the 5.8% paid out in 2010, translates to RM24.47bil being distributed to its members. “2011 marks another commendable achievement for the EPF. “Despite the challenging investment landscape, it was the strongest performance since 2001 that affirms our long term and prudent investment strategy combined with continuous efforts by our investment team,” said EPF chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman. The dividend payout of the RM24.47bil was derived after deducting net impairment allowance on financial assets...

Recently I have got a reader asking me on how to calculate PCB given the certain amount that he or she told me from my How To Calculate PCB or Schedular Tax Deduction (STD) for Salary and Bonus post that I have written in 2010. So, I guess it is time to refresh the blog post with the example that he or she gave me. Ok. Here we go. We are about to calculate the PCB given the salary is RM2,000 and with allowance of RM300 and the bonus given is 2 months. So we have the total bonus of RM4,000. Again, I will be using the PCB rate for single. The calculation is as follows:- Salary = RM2,000 EPF deduction = RM220 Salary for PCB calculation = Gross salary - EPF deduction = RM2,000 - RM220 = RM1,780 (this is also your net_salary when you want to calculate the PCB rate for bonus) (Again we need to take note: The maximum total EPF deduction allowed for PCB or STD calculation is RM500 (RM6,000 / 12 = RM500). If your salary is RM5,000 and above, just put RM500 under EPF deduction ) According to t...

Financial planning is probably the most important thing that we must be aware of. Most young adults find it difficult to plan for their financial condition because of the "yum cha" and cool cultures....most young adults are probably pampered way too much by their parents...their studies and everything are planned out so well....honestly, I am envied of those students who have their parents sponsored everything. Anyway, I appreciate what I have as well and I believe the first step to financial planning is protection.  Some of my friends told me that they are going to buy insurance but now is not the right time....as they are just starting out, they need more time. I am not an insurance agent but working in an insurance company, I come to realize that protection is probably the first thing that we get for ourselves. It is not about the profit from these insurance policies but the protection that comes with it. Of course, one should not buy too many insurance policies either.....

In financial management, in order to keep our financial in healthy condition, growing money via investment or increment is not always the best solution. Many times we need to spend below our means rather than spending within our means. But then again, of course everyone is asking to increase income because by increasing income, you do not need to sacrifice a lot of things. Well, I have been quite free the last few days that I managed to read Reader's Digest and find out one article which is very suitable for this. It also serves as a good reminder for myself as well, as I will be cash strapped throughout this year as big portion of the money will be used for house renovation as well as to pay the house down payment. The following are the ways to cut budget:- Buy only what you need This one sounds obvious, but how many of us really buy what is truly necessary? A lot of us often buy in bulk in order to reduce our costs but sometimes we ended up wasting what we might not be using it a...

As we are entering the Chinese New Year season, let's look into what the Feng Shui master said about the overall market sentiment for the Water Dragon Year. Last year CLSA Feng Shui chart was not that accurate especially towards the end of the year, so we'll see what will happen this year. The Water Dragon is supposedly to be good for the stock market, it seems, but we will see what will happen. Anyway, the chart is just for reference and it is not for one to follow blindly.

After about a month since my last post, this will be my first blog post in this blog for the year 2012. Well, it has been like a crazy and busy weekends for me to keep following up on my house renovation back in Ipoh. Anyway, while I was reading some articles from the Internet related stocks trading, there is one article that really open up my mind. I mean the article is not about easy way to get rich with stocks or something like that. And if one is to notice my blog post title, one would realized that it is not about making money with stocks, but losing money with it. While this blog is all about becoming the money master rather than to be the slave to the money, we need to know that earning money with money is not easy. In fact, it is easier to lose money if we are trying to earn money with money without some basic knowledge or skills. Even some of the most reputable fund managers in the world also lose big bucks in the stocks. Back to the blog post, do you realized that the likelih...