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Until now, when teaching in Personal Finance, a lot of gurus still emphasize the very first thing is to identify a Goal.  While that is true but there are a few disadvantages with that approach; You may or may not have a clear definite goal to start with It may take a venture itself to find your goal It may require a lot of discipline to keep to a goal Your goal may change over time This method is too academic oriented By the time you clearly define a goal, the time has passed and in personal finance, time should be your best friend, not foe. Hence a more practical approach in this century is to just to go ahead and SAVE FIRST It doesn't matter who you are, what you do, where you are, which belief you have and how you live;  Just go ahead and put aside a sum of money and save them aside, to anywhere. Not only you should just Save First, if possible, think of a way to make it an ASS - Automatic Saving System . Read more understand more why this approach is better for all one me...

Half of year 2011 has already passed. Have you ever thought of your next tax filing yet ? If you only take a look by next year, then it may be too late for you to optimize anything anymore. Try below widget and see how much the impact may be for you ! Just enter your total annual income and see how much tax you can save simply by planning early !! This is a FREE widget provided at http://howMuchTaxCanIsave.co.cc/

Fix Deposit Affin Bank still offers the highest 3.6% for 12 months. 3.1% to 3.35% is common with all other banks. 1 month FD is mostly at 3% to 3.05%. Most of the foreign banks continue to offer lower FD rates. Base Lending Rate Most banks offers 6.6% now except JP Morgan Chase offers the lowest at 6.2%. Saving Accounts The Bank of Nova Scotia offers 2.05% while Bangkok Bank and Bank of Tokyo offers 2% CIMB Air Asia Saver Account offers 1.6% Don't forget you can get a simple widget like above to show on your blog / web site. Just visit here to see how. Car Loan Maybank continues to offer the lowest car loan rate starting from 2.7%. However, this is NOT a standard rate apply to all applicants. The actual rate can range up to 4.3%. Alliance bank on the other hand offers 2.8% to 3% which may be a better deal in general sense. Bank Muamalat offers 2.85% for both New and Used cars but it requires an admin charges of RM600. CIMB offers 3.25% for used cars. Don't forget Car Loa...

This is an extract of what I read in today's newspaper. More and more people start to carry this type of alternative concepts about retirement especially in this 21st century. You can't say its wrong. As a matter of fact, its a rather SMART way to go. But lie within is a huge hidden risk. The titles in above newspaper read: you don't need much during retirement, coz your liability has reduced living frugal is not hard, mentality is the key you don't need to prepare to retire ? By the time you retire, you probably don't have any more house loan or car loan to serve. Your body does not allow you to earn that much anymore. Chicks don't get attracted even if you sit in a Porsche. The bigger house you live in the harder it is for you to take care of it. In short, many people plan to 'maintain' their CURRENT lifestyle when they play for their retirement. The fact is you WILL NOT live the SAME lifestyle even if you are financially able to. Basically ...

21st century personal finance is moving away from saving and focus into the income arena. In short, the gurus are now educating public that saving is NOT good enough , hence sourcing for passive incomes on the another hand is a BETTER solution, than just saving alone. While the concept is definitely true and correct but unfortunately as the hypes go bigger and bigger, the idea of passive income has been abused and more scams started to appear in the market, as if they were the gurus as well. Except the 'passive income' they refer to is barely promoting their own original same old products. The personal finance market has become so competitive that even some real gurus have no choice but to go beyond the line in their marketing effort - Robert Kiyosaki is no exception in spreading " Saving is bad ". Although passive income is very well defined here using income ratio 1:100 but is there really such thing as Passive income ? When I looked up dictionary, these word...

You may think the $1 spent is the same $1 earned . Its really NOT ! One of the fundamental flaws human cannot control their own spending habits is because they DO NOT UNDERSTAND the value of money at the first place. The $1 spent could be equivalent to as much as $7-$10 earning !! For example if you earn $4,000 a month and you manage to save $400 every month. By year end you would have saved aside $4,800. This money is intended to be put aside earning interest as part of the MeM (Money earns Money) mechanism. So its not just $4,800. It will be more than that as time goes. The longer it is kept there the more powerful compounding factor is working for you. Says you take out $1,000 from this saving at year end for an unplanned luxury expense. Its not just $1,000 you have used. You have actually dug a hole in your saving - a 21% hole. If you saving return is 3%, it will take more than 7 years for this hole to be refilled back to its original amount. So you have practically us...

There are 2 BIG main external factors affecting our investment decisions Economy Politic When the time is really bad (economy downturn and politically unstable), its best to park your money under something that is really stable, ie Gold . Which is by definition usable anywhere you go in anytime. When its good time, invest direct to the stock market would yield very good return. When the economy is not so good in a strong country, the government bonds or related money market would be able to yield higher return than just gold. However, the most dispute solution in good economy unstable country is investment in property . This is mainly due to easier rental and higher chance of capital gain. By simply moving money around depends on the political and economy situation, one was able to achieve more than 12% compound return for the past 20 years. That is equivalent to a 10X return. But by no mean this is easily done. Some of the concerns include; how would one know exactly when econo...

1 month Fix Deposit Most banks offer 2.25% now except a few ones. Most of the ones who are still stuck at 2.0% are international banks like Bank of China, JP Morgan, Bank of Nova Scotia and Alliance banks. 1 year Fix Deposit Highest offered rates is 2.75% by Affin Bank, AmBank, Bangkok Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Deutsche Bank, Hong Leong Bank, Malayan Bank. Base Lending Rate Most local banks stand at 5.8% now with Affin offers the lowest at 5.75%. International banks offer lower rate starting from 5.50% by Royal Bank of Scotland. Saving Accounts Kuwait Finance House continues to offer highest saving interest rate in its KFH Savings Account-i at 1.5%. This account is also very simple and straight forward. Other than that, Standard Chartered's Al-Wadiah Savings Account-i offer 1.0% for up to RM 10,000 savings. CIMB's Air Asia Savers Account and Mudharabah Saving Account-i also offers 1.0%. Other accounts who seems like offering high interest rate but require high am...

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...

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...

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...

Although Fix Deposit rate stays at 2% for 1 month and 2.5% for 12 months but generally FD interests are 'starting' to rise. This is inline with the speculation that interest rates will be raised by Bank Negara ... and its just a matter of time. This trend will affect both FD rate and BLR. Three Banks have the lowest BLR since mid 2009 : 5.25% The Royal Bank of Scotland Berhad Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (Malaysia) Berhad J.P.Morgan Chase Bank Berhad But most loans come in terms like BLR + or - another numbers. Remember to compare your own true and effective loan rate including fee++ before deciding on a loan package. Usually these lowest BLR banks also offer less attractive effective final rates ie. BLR - a lower number. Some other deals that follow strictly on BLR on the other hand, would be great to deal with these banks. The highest saving account interest is 1.88% Mudharabah Basic Savings Account-i by CIMB Bank Berhad minimum deposit RM 20 interest calculated daily...

Budget 2010 has been around for a while now, but I wonder why many have not made a big deal about this yet. If you are a Self Employed in Malaysia, you can open an EPF account yourself and save MYR 100 into it every month. In return, Government will add MYR 5 into your saving too. This is expected to start next year and 5% top up will continue for the next 5 years. Although $60 a year is a small money but are you sure you want to pass on any FREE money ? Assuming EPF declare a dividend of 4%, you will get more than MYR 10,670 5 years down the road out of the MYR 6,000 you have been saving. MYR 100 x 12 months x 5 years. If you save the same MYR 100 monthly else where, it will need 22.01% interest rate to obtain the same return 5 years down the road. 22% passive return is not something available readily anywhere in the market. The only con side of this offer is its limit of MYR 300 contribution from the govertment in the next 5 years. Which is pathetically little. Then again, it a...