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From time to time, we may heard news that more and more people are unable to pay their credit card debts. As a result, credit card companies must be earning a lot of money in return. On the contrary, credit card companies have been facing quite some challenges. More and more people are settling their due payment in full monthly. This results the card company unable to earn money from this group of people. Some users even maximize the interest free period to 2 months and pay nothing to enjoy such great facility. Due to the stiff competition among the card issuers, every time an annual fee is charged, the card users will simply stop the account. When late fee and interests are charged, more and more users know how to get them waived. Generally people are getting better in managing their credit card usages. More and more people are more personal finance savvy now. Credit card used to be able to get their profit back from the people who owe them money. But now they can keep charging

It was mentioned before that EPF in Malaysia is one of the best things that happens to ones personal finance, because it saves automatically even before you can lay a hand on your money - the main principal of Automated Saving System - ASS . But not everyone works for someone. Or if your employer does not contribute his part, it makes EPF so much less interesting. So a government's mutual fund is born - Amanah Saham Nasional. If you are not eligible for EPF, you can still save in Amanah Saham. Despite many disputes and diverse understanding on what Amanah Saham is or should be, one cannot deny that our poverty rate has indeed improved. The gap between rich and poor did narrow down since 50 years ago. That's the power of mutual fund, despite how wrong or how right the reason is when one save in mutual fund, all will be sharing the same return. A government supported fund is even better for those who don't know what it is. As long as the 'government' is there,

Faber Group was one of the worst run businesses of all time. They wanted to do 'everything' and ended up achieved almost 'nothing'. Its one of those stories who involved in property development and didn't quite make it. The whole restructuring exercise took more than 5 years before they finally turned it around. What is interesting however is its consistent up trend in their EPS earning, despite that it started from a negative (84.2) in 1998. Looking forward, if the person who is managing finance in Faber continues to stay in power, this is worth looking into more. It could become one of the best long term keeper. Key to success is if they can repeat 2005-2006 growth now. This can be determined by reading their latest annual report. Challenges are varies of their continuous law suits. SAPCRES , Oil and Gas, looks pretty good now. It seems like anything under RM 2.49 is a good buy ( and keep for the next 10 years). The problem is technically it is at its

Like inflation , Living Standard can be a big number where GDP, poverty rate, income growth inequality, life expectancy are involved. But as far as personal finance is concern, what you should really care is your very own personal living standard. Simply put, living standard is your ability to sustain how you live your life. At one hand this can be calculated very much similar to Living Cost and the increase of living cost over time is inflation. So is living standard the same as inflation ? But it should be the opposite instead. One would want lower inflation but higher living standard. So what has gone wrong in the formula ? The keyword is " ability ". If you are NO longer ABLE to sustain how you live your life when inflation kicks in, you are facing the risk of lower living standard. Inflation is an external factor. Your ability to fight the inflation will determine your living standard. When your ability increases faster than inflation, your living standard is

Just came back from Jupuiter Online seminar, some of their stock picks for the year of 2010 are: Zhulian Faber WellCall Holdings Sapura Crest Atrium REIT TSM Global Paramount Corp Kurnia Talk given by: Pong Teng Siew. Actually he mentioned these are short to medium terms recommendation only ie. next month to next quarter or so. Overall there are many uncertainties ahead that the bullish trend is really questionable. Hence generally there will be a correction in the market soon, followed by a mainly side trends for the next 2 years. A few points that I manage to digest are: Governments backup funds are ending in mid or end of the year, banks are not likely to recover fully and able to stand on their own yet. USA employment rate is actually higher than reported figures because the number of people claiming un-employment insurance are still rocket high. A lot of part time workers are actually un-willingly working part time but forced to. China rising inflation may result them pulling b

In 2009 , about 10 mutual funds thats worth looked into were selected out of 530 choices in Malaysia. Today lets take a look at how they performed in the past 6 months. Below chart shows their respective return in percentage. From past 1 day, past 1 week, past 1 month etc. The actual percentage return is NOT important here. We are comparing fund performances across different fund managers. What we are looking for is a graph that consistently stay above the others. That would give an indication of "consistently outperform the others". The most apparent winner is OSK Equity Fund and the worst is Public Ittikal. However, this does not imply anyone of them is better than another. The market has been trending up generally. OSK is well verse in stock market and therefore able to catch most of the up trend. Public Ittikal on the other hand only deals with halal and safe instruments. You can be assured that both of these funds are very strong in their fundamentals. However

I have stopped stock market talks for a while based on comments received in the past. But about 20% of the old readers unsubscribed following that. So I am guessing there may still be some silence readers who love stock market talks. And I feel very itchy not to share my view seeing that no one else publishes my opinions. So pardon my incidental randoms. As some may have known by now that KLSE is damn HOT now! Axiata, PBBank, KYM, RCECAP, LIONDIV, LIONIND, MBSB, AFG etc. all shoot up 8-12% in a day. This has happened since 2 days ago KLSE finally broke its 1300 ceiling after 10 months of 'recovery'. Things are indeed great. But you may want to know a few things; Despite higher closing price, MORE number of stocks are dropping THAN rising, 2 days in a roll. This may imply that only a few stocks are being speculated. Investors may even withdraw from other stocks in order to join the hot stocks growth. This also shows that there is NOT ENOUGH investment money flowing with

Very often the terms mortgage and home loan are used interchangeably . Although it might not cause big harms but understanding the difference may bring positive impact to your personal finance ie. in Property Investment. In fact, mortgage is the opposite of loan. When you need extra money, someone can lend you some and in return they gain profit when you repay them. The lender may ask for collateral like your house so that if you don't repay them, they can take possession of your house, sell it and still earn a profit by doing so. They give you a loan . If you have something valuable and you want to exchange it temporary for some money, you can prove to people how valuable your possession is and why should they give you money for it. You get your money if the lenders are satisfied their interests will be taken care of . You have just mortgaged your belongings. Loan is a lender's contract, mortgage is a borrower's contract. At one instance, it may seems the same. It

Hong Leong Assurance offers a plan that guarantees 12.5% return. Basically you only need to save $3,932 for 6 years and you are guaranteed to receive $500 every year starting from the 1st year for 35 years. So 500 out of 3,932 is more than 12.5% $500 x 35 years would give a guarantee amount of $17,500 . If you do not withdraw this money, it will accumulate more interest. On the 35th year, you will get $50,126 instead of just the $17,500. In addition, there is a dividend payout where the minimum is expected to be $200. Not guarantee but pretty guaranteed as in insurance layman terms. With the most conservative assumptions etc. you will get more than $105,000+ at the end of 35 years. Most of the older readers should know this trick by now. There is no such thing as insurance saving that gives guarantee and higher than Fix Deposit return in normal circumstances. If you save the same $3,932 in a bank account that gives you 1.72% , it will give you a total $41,082 on the 35th year

The way credit card companies forward calculate interest has sicken many users. Together with the 5 cents round up mechanism , there are cases where its not even the users fault not to totally pay off their last month balance. Some are still in shock how consumers can be abused in such a way. Well, this is how ... Credit card companies used to charge 18% interest on the amount you underpay and owe to them. Seeing that this high interest has caused many people in debt and even bankruptcy, banks are urged to reduce that rate. So the project of multi-tier interest rate was born. If the amount you owe is not that much, banks may reduce that rate to 13.5% for example. Like wise, if you continue not to pay, banks will have the rights to charge 18% interest again. So lower interest rate is imposed on lower loan amount. So far so good isn't it ? Well, banks are going to give you more. In addition ... We will give you 22 days interest free on all transactions, if last month outstan

Most of the Malaysians are already used to the 5 cents round up despite how silly some of the transactions could become. BNM has already clearly stated that this only apply to cash transactions where we are trying to get rid of 1 cent coins. But it is obvious that even if you are paying with credit card, check and online transfer, most of the retailers will still round the 5 cents up. When you go to bank and make a payment of $9.98 over the counter. You may write down $9.98 in the bank in slip. Upon making payment, the cashier will have to get $10.00 from you. Which is fine since now the rule is to round it up. When the transaction is done and you get back your proof of payment, what do you think your paper work will say you paid ? Correct, $9.98 ! So be smart, round it up and write down $10.00 because that is the actual amount you pay. What if the amount is $9.96, you would definitely have to pay $9.95 but should you write on the slip $9.95 or $9.96 ? If you did write down $9.95

If you have a remaining unpaid balance of $0.01 in your credit card from last month, and then you use $1,000 this month ... You may think the interest 18% should be imposed to your 1 cent balance which is ignorable but in actual fact, the interest is calculated based on your future expense as well. So ... $1,000.01 x 18% -> pro rate to 1 month => $15 See the magic of finance ? You could get charged $15 from your $0.01 remaining balance . Despite your $1,000 usage is not even due yet ! A handful of local banks are already exercising this interest forward calculation method. Most of the international banks on the other hand agree this is ridiculous and didn't enforce this calculation on small remaining amount. But recently banks lose many credit card accounts so they are quietly imposing this again to upbeat some profits. Many good card users are caught only after some time because they just couldn't believe such a ridiculous abusing technique can exist around us for m

There are many ways to retire. Some are easier than others. And some still think there is no way they can retire at all :) There are 2 main factors in retirement; 1. IN : how much do you have and 2. OUT : how much will you use during your retirement So naturally if you have more IN than OUT then you can retire. One of the ways is to calculate how much your OUT would be and then accumulate IN as fast as possible. You may have read that its rather simple for a single woman to retire at young age . There are 2 main influence on the figure OUT; 1. if you live a luxury life, it may take longer to retire ... if ever ... 2. if you live frugally, you may retire sooner. Some may think they live frugally but actually they may have been spending more than they should. A good way to quantify your OUT is to look at how you have been expensing for the past 10 years. It would most likely be how you will spend in future. The way we use our money is deeply embed in our subconscious. Its easie

First of all, Malaysia property is one of the cheapest in the region ... so smaller foreign property investors ( less than 10 millions) who are interested in this region may be interested in us. Our rent is also low ... so its rather easy to rent a place and start business here. So this means its rather easy to rent out your property ... especially if you explore with foreign business men. The interesting part is our rental yield is quite high at 8.86%. This is actually common in developing countries. This ... however ... will go down in years to come. This one is similar to rental yield but just shown in a reverse manner. This means you will get back your total investment rather fast in Malaysia. The cost of both buying and selling is low too. But this usually subject to other terms and conditions like different fee imposed on different sale period. In the past 5 years, Malaysia property has risen more than 14% But the whole of last year is almost stagnant. source

Famous Feng Shui sifu said that new sabah property is going to continue to be HOT for the next 20 years. As a matter of fact, he refers to both Sabah and Sarawak. Some may have already seen that properties development have been on the rise in East Malaysia for some time now especially in Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah. Although there have been critics that such a trend has no sustainable growth and therefore they considered it a bubble rather than a living standard up scale. However it doesn't really matter how right they may be or how noble you are, the market doesn't really care. If it continues to have more buyers than sellers then the price will continue to trend up, despite anything else i.e. no one actually utilize those properties. It shouldn't be too hard to understand the rise. First of all, Borneo is an island. Island has limited land. So 'eventually' the price of land will rise. Its been proven in Japan, Hong Kong Island, Singapore and even Aust

Is it best retire young ? Have you ever heard some people retire early at their 30s ? Do you think they got lucky or they must have own some businesses to become rich before they can retire ? Here are the stories of 2 persons who retired at their mid 30s and they only have worked for other people before. ( due to consent issues, the figures are generalized just to illustrate the concept ) They started working at their early 20s with starting salaries of $1,800 to $2,000. After more than 8 years of working, their monthly income were more than $6,000 and then it didn't increase any much further after that. Usually the salary big jump occurred during career move and they have changed career once or twice. Together with bonuses, they have earned a total of $800,000 in total after 12-15 years of working. Through out those time, they have saved aside a total of $175,000 . Initially they save their money in fix deposit getting about 2-3% return but very soon they move on the mutu