MONEY MASTER

I was reading about an article and come across this quote....how many of you agree with this statement? I agreed with it to a certain extend.... "WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I THOUGHT THAT MONEY WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE. NOW THAT I AM OLDER, I KNOW THAT IT IS"   A lot of people may tell you this is not true....while it might not be the entire truth, it holds a great deal of truth....without money, it is difficult to obtain good health. Without money, it is impossible to go for travel. Without money, it is hard to bless others. Without money, one will struggle to feed for the family, to provide the most basic necessity. So while money might not hold the key to happiness, it is one of the most fundamental part of our lives....

We all know the importance of money in life, which is why we look at ways to increase our earnings, income and also to make use of our money. However, let us not be deceived, because at the end of the day, "MONEY IS ONLY A TOOL. IT WILL TAKE YOU WHEREVER YOU WISH BUT IT WILL NOT REPLACE YOU AS THE DRIVER"

I just get an email from my US trading account stating that my W-8BEN form is not going to be valid after end of Dec 2013 and asked me to resend them a new copy of the W-8BEN form. While I was filling up the form, I found that it is quite troublesome, if you do not know how to fill it up, so I guess it is best for me to blog about it, as a reference for myself in the future, as well as for reference for other Malaysians. What is W-8BEN form? You need to fill up this form if you have a trading/brokerage account in the US. If you don't fill this up, the super efficient IRS (Internal Revenue Services) will hunt you down, just like there is a saying "There are 2 things that are certain; death and tax". Anyway, just kidding, basically, if you don't fill this up, the IRS can hold up to 30% of your dividend, interest, royalty, etc. Basically , this rate is what the IRS can withhold for a foreign person. If you filled this up, you are excluded from this withholding provi...

We all know the essential of using money to generate more income but how many of us could really said that? The other day I was reading an article about this man who retired at the age of 30. According to this man, retirement means you no longer have to work for money . No doubt bout that...easier said than done. Recently a good friend of mine actually bought a new car....Toyota Vios....while it is nothing too big to shout about changing a car that is more reliable, I felt that my friend should practice a bit of proper planning. Since we were very close, I happened to know that his debts are quite a large sum to handle....not forgetting about the expenses on a monthly basis. Well, I guess this is what is happening to this generation, me included...that so often, we spend on an impulse, and in the long run, we become a generation of workers, because there are so many unnecessary commitments. Maybe it is really time to consider about our culture of "spending madness"......

I've read an interesting article on The Star regarding some tips on how to spot a millionaire, though I truly believe this kind of millionaire is the millionaire next door, which means, they are very frugal in their spending and they most likely try to buy something to reflect their millionaire status or lead an extravagant lifestyle. While I did some rough calculation before and I understand that having RM1 million is not tough, but surely it is not easy, not to mentioned accumulating up to USD1 million in Malaysia - the number itself is already three times more.  It took roughly a savings of RM2.8K per month for the next 30 years to reach RM1 million milestone, and requires three times the effort to become a millionaire in US dollar. Anyway, the purpose of this post is not to talk about how to get there, but merely on how we can spot millionaire among our friends. You never know, your neighbour might be a millionaire, yet, he looks even poorer than you. According to the ar...