MONEY MASTER

Today top story in yahoo finance..... source World market falls as Japan's recession deepens LONDON (AP) -- World markets fell Monday, after new figures showed Japan's economy contracted at its quickest pace in 35 years and a weekend summit of Group of Seven finance ministers provided few concrete proposals to counter the economic crisis. In European afternoon trading, Britain's FTSE 100 fell 0.6 percent to 4,165.31, Germany's DAX sank 0.3 percent to 4,400.23, and France's CAC 40 dropped 0.5 percent to 2,982.16. Trading was subdued as U.S. markets will remain closed for Presidents Day. Japan's worse-than-expected fourth quarter GDP numbers were a sobering reminder of the toll the worst economic downturn in decades is having on Asia's export-driven economies. The world's second-biggest economy shrank 3.3 percent from the previous quarter, or at an annual pace of 12.7 percent. In Europe, financial stocks dragged down markets. In London, shares in Lloyds B...

I plan to write out a bit on the automobile or usually called car maintenance cost planning. This has come into my mind as recently I need to renew my car's road tax, which means that I need to purchase insurance for automobile as well. Well, I believe this is not something new, especially to car owners. But how many of us really know how much to insure our car or how to get the insurance for automobile quote? Most of us will take the easy way out to let our sales agent or friends to settle everything for us. I am one of the as well. Although my sister sort of like settle everything for me, but I, myself also go through the process as well. First, I need to get the auto insurance quote from her colleague based on my car's value in the market. One thing I realize is that the bankers have different valuation system, thus the auto insurance quote that I have is beyond my expectation. I did calculate the auto insurance using auto insurance calculator on some websites but based on ...

I'm continuing from where I left last year regarding this topic ..... links. No doubt, EPF is the safest bet for our retirement besides FD, which is why it is necessary for us to save some money in EPF. So this means that EPF is necessary.....only as retirement fund in which I would assume it will not be sufficient as well. The debate on EPF and KLCI is actually started when our DPM announced that EPF contribution by employee can be reduced to 8% where the extra 3% can be use to spur the economy ....as if the 3% would make a different. Unless your annual income is more than RM75k, reducing to 8% only benefits the government. You only pay more income tax by reducing it to 8%. Take the following scenario:- Annual income = RM55 000 a) EPF contribution (11%) = RM6 050 (max income tax deductable capped at 6k) b) EPF contribution (8%) = RM4 400 (RM1 600 extra is taxable) From the above scenario, by just changing the EPF contribution 3% less, you will have RM1600 extra, which is taxable,...