One day when I’m driving and i heard this advertisement in the radio that sounds like this.

“There is one a fish that lives in an aquarium, and it had been living comfortably. Life goes on day by day, month by month and year by year. Until one day, the fish was taken out from the aquarium and it realized the importance of the existence of water for it to survive. The fish also notice that the water in the aquarium had been slowly dissipated and its not at much as it used to be..."

Well the story reflect one very important element in our life that we often neglected i.e. TIME. Have you ever wonder how much time do we really have? Now let me illustrates as below:

I believe on our day to day routine, it can be categorize as following

1/3 x 24hours = 8hours = Work
1/3 x 24hours = 8hours = Sleep
1/3 x 24hours = 8hours = “Free Time”

I use“Free Time” as a term where by this is the time that we can use for our personal advantages.

Now imagine if you start working by the age of 20 and retired at 60. You actually have 1/3 x 40 years = 13.3 years of “Free Time”. Well this haven't minus off the extra working hours (OT) you work for your company, the time you stuck at traffic jam, your dinner time, your TV/Movies break, afternoon nape and so on. So let’s translates all these in time perhaps 3.3 years and you left 10years of “Free Time”. Now don't forget we are assuming that we start the calculation by the age of 20 years old. What if you are currently 25years old now? Or...30years old now? Your probably finished up all your “Free Time”. Scary? Still in “Relax” mode? Still procrastinating?

“Life is a Journey... Travel it Well”

Cheers!!!

What is the first thing that crosses your mind when someone told you about Credit Card? I’m not sure about you but I hear a lot of painful experiences

“I’m in deep debt because of it”
“I’m so stress up on figuring out how to repay my debts”
“I need to sell my car just to pay my debts!!!”
“I can’t control my expenses when using it”
“I already “cut” all credit cards”

Now if you notice, majority people can’t resist the temptation of having extra credit spending when they have credit cards. Sadly, this often leads them to become a “slave” to credit card whereby they need to work very hard each month just to payback their debts.

When we talk about debts, not necessarily all debts are bad. There are good and bad debts. For e.g. an Education Loan is a good debt, as you are spending money that cant afford presently for a better future. In contrast, if you abuse credit card, you’re actually spending your future money that you can’t afford presently. Now that’s really a bad debt!

So much of the dark side, let’s move on how we can turn the situation around and make credit card as your “slave” :D. I believe not many of us are taught on how to use credit card the right way. If fact if you used it properly, it’s a very powerful wealth tool.

Before I moved forward, there are few things that you must take note when you plan to max out the benefits from the “slave”. There are as follows:

You should not have more than 2 credit cards
Why 2 credit cards only not more than that? The idea here is for you to focus on one single card and an additional as a backup for the case of emergency. You know emergency do happen and you don’t got stuck in a situation when your main card has insufficient credit.

Look for “Free for Life" or "Annual Fees waived" cards
Why need to pay when you can get it for free? If you really can’t find any “Free for Life” cards, just make sure you set a least 2 months reminder in your mobile phone before the credit card expired (Annual fees will be imposed for renewal) so that you can cancel it and re-apply again.

The credit cards company offer online facilities and you can access your accounts anytime, anywhere.
This is to ensure that you have easy access to your account so that you can have a rough estimation of your expenditure.

Now, here is the most crucial part. You need to study your monthly expenses. Look for re-occurring expenses or bills that you can pay by auto deduction from you credit cards. Here are some e.g.

Utilities bills
Cable TV bills
Phone bills
Internet Broadband bills
Insurance
Petrol

The purpose of doing this is to make sure that your monthly fixed expenditure is handled automatically by your “slave”. This also ensures that you didn’t overspend your future money!

Now the beauty part of this after doing all the ground work, each month you will receive your credit card statement that will track down and consolidates all your fixed expenses. You no longer need to hire an accountant to work out those tedious accounting figures which really drive us mad sometime. It’s all done F.O.C for you by your “slave”.

Adding on, most credit card companies offer royalty programs that encourage you to spend. Each dollar you spent you will entitle royalty points and you can redeem for freebies. Now I’m gonna reveal you a secret about these royalty program ;). Most of these programs are design for individual and these individual must be an all time big spender to eligible to redeem those freebies. To counter this, the fixed expenditure of the GF and I are combined in a single “slave”. So by doing this it will definitely boost up the expenses and reduce the time required to redeem the freebies: D. One of the GF’s favorite freebies is to redeem hypermarket’s voucher. She can use those voucher to buy groceries. Isn’t that fantastic!!! :D

Other than that, if you know the trick, you can actually have free interest loan! Often credit card companies will have a cut off date for each individual account. For e.g. your credit card statement will have a cut of date of 15^th on each month and any transaction incurred after the 15^th will only be transacted the next month. After that you are given 2 weeks to clear the outstanding amount. So if you have any unplanned expenses do it after the cut off date ;). This allows you to have at least 1.5 months interest free loan to prepare the necessary cash for the expenses.

So we got a F.O.C "slave" working for you, freebies, free interest loan and most importantly it saves time! I still remembered when the month ends and its time to pay your bills, so much time was wasted to queue at the counters and sometime even worse..."System is down!” I hate that! Now with all your bills automated you just need to focus on the “slave”. The best part is, now days I can pay my credit card bill online and I just took me less than 5min!

CAUTION: Do ensure that the very first thing that you receive your monthly income is to clear your debts. Don’t procrastinate and always pay the full amount that you owned. The problem will people are when they have excessive cash on hand, they will tend to spent it.

Lastly, isn’t this “slave” wonderful if you know how it works! I hope you can max out the advantages offered by the “slave”.

Cheers!!!

Well have you ever wondered when you are driving and your dream car pass by... and what are first thing cross your mind? Well answer yourself honestly before reading ahead ;)

Majority will think that the owner of the car must be an outstanding person, they must be very hardworking, they must be great in what they are doing, they must be very smart, they must be the “lucky” ones and so on….

Or even worst… some might think, this crazy b*stard must be out of his mind, “I rather buy a house instead of that car”, “the petrol $ must be killing them”, “won’t they scared being robbed driving such a nice car” and so on…

Notice these 2 groups of people behave very differently. The first will have an aspect of “envy/respect” and another as “criticism/discourage”. But these groups of people shared a common thing i.e. they have “limiting believes”.

Well we can’t blame them, especially those who are pretty “season” in employment, corporate world, their so call dream (if they have one) that once “I’m possible” had become “Impossible”. These 2 words look the same but have very different meaning! Also these people are in an environment that is “Subject to Negative Influences”. Often you will heard them complaining, blaming, cursing, backstabbing, you name it, they got it. They just love being the role of “victim”.

Moving forward, I’m sure that you do cross someone that you know who was once label “lazy” in school and have poor grades but now they seems to be more successful financially. Have you ever wonder WHY? The only reason that I found out is because they understand how the game of money is played. Each game has its sets of rules so does money!

Now, looking to our education system, do we have a subject on money? I’m not sure about you, as far as I recall there were none in mine. Since young we’re are taught to study hard, score as much flying colors as you can and this will secure you a “high pay” job or even better start your own business. “Stay away from investment as they are risky”, “You will get burned in stocks” and many more. Well anything wrong with this? From my perspective, we are train to be a perfectionist to serve the “Master” whom is good in playing the money game.

In reality, we are merely human, and human do make mistakes but the problem is we are trained to hates mistake/failure. Guess what most people will do? They will stop making mistake by do “nothing”. Reason is simple, they have this phobia of making mistakes. It feels goods not to make mistake right? :p. Let me give you a metaphor, look at an infant when he/she on the stage learning to walk. Have you ever wondered why an infant will learn to walk? Why not just crawl for the rest of their lives? It’s already in our natural instinct, from each fall/mistake/failure we grew stronger and stronger. But sadly, most people are still crawling financially when they can actually walk and even run!

You see none of us are ever taught how to make money, how to invest money or how to manage our financial and yet money is the most important subject in our lives especially when your “FAMO” scholarship ends. (FAther and MOther :p). I know some “stubborn” will say “Not everything is about money”, but don’t you agree that you can do lots of thing IF you had the money ;). Some might take years to figure it out, or maybe some will never figure it out. My best advice is to go out and network with the “right” people. Your Networth = Your Network. These people often have a different way of thinking and have totally different strategies. They could be your drop out ex-classmate, financial adviser, your rich neighbor and etc.

Cheers!!!

For some reason… a lot of people came to me for financial advise although I’m not a financial adviser or something…. haha I’m getting lazy to repeat, repeat n repeat again… so let’s blog it.

The very first thing that I will ask them, “Do you understand how you value money?” Most of the time, its all about money and this lead to your Financial Quotient. Trust me when I mention that, there are some “stubborn” who disagree with me saying not everything is about money, that’s why I say “Most of the time” so let’s not argue with that k ;)

Next I’m sure you met a lot of people that tell you about their big dreams, they want to retired young, they want to be millionaires etc, etc n etc. This leads to my second questions to them, “Is $100K a lot?” Majority of them replied me “What I can do with $100K? Given in the current economic situation you barely can do anything with $100K.” Now the best part… Do you have $100K now? NOPE they answered. Well I’ve been whispering to myself, isn’t their dreams contradicting with what they are saying? If I get the equation right, With $100k = barely can do anything with it, Without $100K = don’t even think about it :p.

Now back to my initial question i.e “Do you understand how you value money?” Let’s put it this way, if you strike a $100K lottery, what are the first few “Most Wanted” in your wish list? Guess what, most of them give me the “eeerrr” sound. The problem with people now is they are unsure what they want even if they have the money! If you are one of them, I have a simple advice to offer you. All you need to do is to be more “sensitive/alert” to yourself. Whenever you crossover a particular thing that caught your interest or attention, notice if you will start thinking it twice, for the third time and so on, notice if you will start fantasize about it, notice how long does your fantasy lasted? If your fantasy keep growing and growing or in other words you will not get bored of it… this might be your “Most Wanted”.

Let me give you real life example: Whenever the GF and I was driving and this cute yet cool little car pass by, the GF definitely will shout “Mini Copper!!!” then follow by “Vroom Vroom” as if she was driving it. Then we will start to discuss about the various colors that we saw and as always, the discussion ended with a Mini Cooper S, red in color and 2 white strips in front of the bonnet. The desire goes stronger each time and the GF doesn’t get bored about it.

Isn't that a hotty!

Now, what’s the whole point here? If you understand your desires, your “Most Wanted”, your dreams, call it whatever you want…you need to translate these into figures (money). Now bring back the $100K again, you may plan to yourself a house ($50K), upgrade yourself a more comfortable car ($30K), OR for those are single, upgrade to married ($30K) ;) and maybe have a spare cash ($20K) in case for emergency. I believe this is quite a common path in the journey of our life. So understanding your desires actually leads you to understanding how money is value for you!

Moving forward, let me intro you my “Rules of Three”. The “RO3” is accidentally created when I’m setting up my medium term goals. Assuming that I’m planning to get a house ($50K) for my future wife, a wedding ($30K) and some spare cash ($20K), let’s translates it into Three years financial goals.

First Year ($20K)
------------------------
$20K = $2K x 10 months.

Notice I just use 10 months for a full year as I’m giving myself extra 2 months buffer for unforeseen expenses (Doodads), E.g. car broke down, insurance renewal, anniversary presents and etc.

Now in order for us to saved $2K each month, our income should be at least Three times of the amount saved. Some of you might think why must it be Three times? If you ever buy a car or a house, your monthly income must be at least Three times of the monthly installment. Reason is simple, 1/3 is for your fixed debts, 1/3 for you living expenses, 1/3 is for your free cash on hand.

Hence your Income
$2K x Three = $6K

Second Year ($30K)
----------------------------
Well we definitely need some improve compared to previous year. So lets raise it to $30K

$30K = $3K x 10 months

Hence your Income
$3K x Three = $9K

Third Year ($50K)
--------------------------
$50K = $5K x 10 months

Hence your Income
$5K x Three = $15K

So that’s my “RO3”. It’s just based on a simple calculation model. Now the income required to achieve $100K in 3 years is it measurable? If you answer is YES, I’m glad for you and your millions will be on the way. For those that is NO, don’t be discourage, lower down the figure to suits your current situation. As time goes by improvise and change your strategy.

Lastly, I would like to emphasize, that the art of financial quotient is no "Rocket Science" but a habit. If you can’t squeeze 1 cent out of a dollar, forget about hundred, thousands, even millions.

“Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Cheers!!!

This reminds me the "One" of the many showroom houses that me and the GF have been searching for the past years.

On the left is the 2.5 storey and the right is the standard double storey terrace namely Ametis Terrance. It's situated at Bukit Puchong 2 and on the right hand side just before the LDP-Cyberjaya toll. Poket not deep enuf YET so have to go with the 2 storey

For some reason i'm extremely "particular" with the car porch. It must at least able to accommodate 2 cars side by side. And so far this is the "One" that suits my requirement. Most of the showrooms that i've visited... definitely got 1 ugly pillar that surely doesn't allow you to park 2 cars.

The living room is kinda spacious but is not the most spacious among those i had seen. But overall squarish and suits the GF's taste.

Yea..isn't it obvious... thats the kitchen... and after transformation (show room)....

So at least i see what's the potential the kitchen would be and the GF is happy about it... as for myself no feel ... hahaha i'm not the 'chef' :p

Well time flies, these pics are taken March 2007, the "One" is 85% completed as of April 2008 and expected to be delivered by August, but i'm bit conservative... hopefully can be completed as our Christmas present. :D... Worst.... as 2009's Angpow.

As for now.. i wrap up the chapter for the "One".

Cheers!

Well... finally i decide to allocate some of my time to BLOG :D. Guess its a good way to seize some memories.. getting older now... memory not "power" already. I bet few years down the road... this will remind me some good memories i had.

For bros n frens out there, occasionally visit my blog... just to update ourselves ya (i'm definitely will visit yours) ;)

Cheers!!!