Currency around Malaysia

The following shows a list of a few currency compare to Malaysia Ringgit.  Basically the higher the graph the better it is for the Malaysian - "I can get more of their money with my money."

In short ... 

For those who earn Malaysia Ringgit, its good to go spend in USA and Indonesia.  On the other hand, those who are working in China and Singapore are laughing when spending their money back in Malaysia.

USA

Australia

China

Indonesia

Philippine

Singapore

Thailand

You can investigate more yourself by visiting to xe.com

Money And Love Personal Finance

MaLPF.com = Money And Love Personal Finance

earn Money with Money

Read this from Alan Tan's facebook, seems very meaningful to me.  So sharing here with you all ...

By Alan Tan

One day, an old man and his assistant arrived at a farming village. The old man gathered all the villagers and told them that he is in the business of buying and selling monkeys and that the reason why he has come to their village is becoz there is a forest next to that village which is infested with lots of monkeys. He told the villagers he would pay $10 for every monkey they bring him.



So some of the villagers started to stop work on their farms to go into the forest to catch monkeys. They brought their monkeys to the old man and true enough, he paid them $10 for every monkey. Words spread and not long after, more and more of the villagers stopped working on their farms to go into the forest to catch monkeys. And they were all paid $10 for every monkey they delivered to the old man.

Becoz more villagers were now monkey hunters, it became more and more difficult to catch monkeys as their numbers started to dwindle. The supply of monkeys started to come down. So the old man gathered all the villagers and told them he would pay $20 for every monkey they bring him. Wow! That sounds great and the villagers started to drum up the beat to look deeper into the forest and higher into the trees to look for more monkeys. And they were paid $20 for every monkey they caught and everyone was happy.

As more and more villagers turned monkey hunters, the monkey population in that forest started to dwindle very significantly and it became increasingly difficult to catch even one monkey a day. As such, the villagers started to return to their farms to work.

Once again, the old man gathered all the villagers and told them that as he is running out of time and he needed more monkeys, he would up the stakes and pay $50 for every monkey delivered to him. He also told the villagers that as he has to leave the village for a few days to attend to some business in town, they can deliver the monkeys to his assistant and his assistant has been instructed to pay $50 for every monkey caught.

The villagers got all excited and went deep into the forest to look for monkeys but by this time, there were no monkeys to be found. The villagers approached the assistant and told him the $50 offer is wonderful but the monkeys were simply not there.

That assistant then said to the villagers......"I know there are very few monkeys left in the forest. But here in my cages, I have thousands of monkeys. Tell you what...why not you buy these monkeys from me at $35 each. Then when the old man comes back, you can sell your monkeys to him for $50 and make $15 each."

Wow! That sounds like a great idea...the villagers thought. So they bought as many monkeys as they could from the assistant at $35 each.

After that day, the villagers never saw the old man or his assistant again

=====

What do you take away from this story ?

Tenaga Power Factor Surcharge

Tenaga Malaysia WILL charge you more if you have in-efficient electrical appliances, old wiring etc. at your home.

FREE lunches - the real one !

Dear Michael,

While many people still think there is no such thing as FREE lunch in this world.  I have been having FREE lunches for more than 5 years now.  Not only that, I actually get paid when I eat.  Sometimes they even force me to bring a friend with me for FREE too !


Unlike some who thought I may have been keeping it a secret, I didn't !  I actually told my friends about it.  And remember ?  Sometimes I have to bring my friends to have the FREE lunch.  So I had to explain to them what it is all about.

Most would guess that once people know it, people would go grab all these FREE lunches.  Normal people like you and I would have no chance of getting them at all !  But after years of having FREE lunches, I can tell you in confidence that on the contrary, I actually received calls begging me to go for some FREE lunches and I actually have to turn some of them down.

There is NO special contacts needed, I am not any Datuk's son, no special pre-qualify skills needed.  All I need a computer and internet connection.  They teach me all the things I needed and I am good to go.

Ok, no more suspense.  All you need to know can be found in gapbuster.com

The reason I am sharing with you is that I want to bet with you.  Even after your readers learn this secret of FREE lunches.  Most of them, may be ALL of them, will still NOT join me here.  You see, human are always limited by their own thoughts without realizing it.  For some who realize it, they refuse to make a change on it.  Well, I shall explain more later if needed but let's see ....

Love your Finance Tips,
Mathew

A Perfect World

In a perfect world, everyone produce something.

Farmers grow plants, feed chickens, fishermen catch fish, builder made homes etc. So we can sit together at night and enjoy a complete dinner in our nice homes. It was easy to know who is suppose to do what, who produces what.

When there are too many fish caught, it has to be sold out of town. The fisherman doesn't have time to travel that far. So a delivery boy is helping the fisherman. The fisherman save time, hence catch more fishes and therefore its worth him paying the delivery boy. It is a value added chain, so service has become a part of perfect world too where everyone produce something, everyone produce some values.

It gets a bit complicated cause service is not as easy to quantify as materials. But its still ok.

A $1 fish may cost $2 in out of town because there are delivery cost incurred.

Soon more delivery services are needed. It is not easy to decide which of the 100 delivery boys is most reliable. So a manager came and organize a delivery company. The fisherman no longer need to worry about delivery, the delivery company will handle and be 'responsible' for the delivery part. If any single delivery boy does not perform, the company will immediately replace with a better one. Fish still reach destination on time. The fisherman doesn't need to worry a thing. What the management provided is a service on a service, there is still value provided.

Now the fish is $3 in out of town. The manager needs to eat too.

The fisherman's business grow much larger thanks to the great leveraging techniques. One day, the fisherman's primary school friend drop by and have a nice chat with the fisherman, asking the fisherman to let him handle the delivery part. Because he is more trust worthy, that they have known each other for so long etc. The fisherman agreed, perhaps due to the drinks or due to the flowery talks.

The primary school friend simply take orders for the fisherman and pass to the delivery company. Jobs still get done as usual but while doing that, he has raised the fish price to $5 in out of town. He gets $1 just for the deal he made. The fisherman gets $1 extra simply by letting his primary school friend take over the delivery part. The delivery company has nothing to loose.

Now it gets really tricky.

What did the primary school friend produces ?

What value has he added ?

What service has he provided ?

You can't say he has done nothing. He is instead smart, creating something from nothing. Is creativity really worth nothing ? He capitalize his relationship into a real asset.

The fisherman gets more value ( money ), the primary school friend earn something, the delivery company didn't loose anything. So theoretically speaking, the primary school friend has added value to the fisherman and himself. So it doesn't really break the law of perfect world.

The smart you may have already spotted the difference.

But at whose price ? Out of town folks used to pay $3 for a fish. $1 for the fisherman, $1 for the manager to make sure fish reach them on time and $1 for the delivery boy. Now the fish is $5! What is the other $2 for ? Well, that has nothing to do with any value received by the people in out of town. That was just a deal made between a primary school friend and the fisherman. The fisherman and the friend gets the whole $2!

Smart yes, add value to one or two persons yes, nothing wrong was done yes .... but whatever the primary school friend did, should NOT be included in the formula of 'PERFECT WORLD'.

In a perfect world, everyone produce something

FOR EVERYBODY.

Sounds familiar yet ? If not, may be you haven't read about Malaysia's GST yet.

This article was suppose to be read in this sequence.

Malaysia's GST - a MAGIC !

Secrect of the MAGIC revealed !

a Perfect World !

What can we do ?

Budgeting and Financial Management

Budget is one of the very first topics in Personal Finance.

Many may think budget is about control expenses but the true meaning of budget is to PLAN AHEAD. Although they may mean the same thing but actually it will leave a very different psychological effect.

At one hand, one is focusing on 'expenses'. Controlling implicitly mean NOT to over spend it. This creates an internal conflict of "I want it but I can't have it". Whenever a control fails, its due to lack of discipline. The resolution is to control it better which is enforcing discipline. Enforcing discipline on a person who naturally does not have discipline is the internal conflict mentioned earlier.

On the other hand, PLAN AHEAD would simply imply "I want it and I will get it". This is more target oriented and positive minded. Whenever a plan didn't materialize, one would have to plan better; as in "how else can I get what I want". This may further enhance one's creativity.

To control or to plan ahead,

its your choice of words.

If budgeting is the beginning of personal finance, the other end would be Financial Management; as in fine tuning her very own portfolio.

At a personal finance level, financial management would typically focus on increasing cash flow and net worth. However, there are 1001 finance tools out there. So there is really no one single portfolio that suits all. Everyone will have his own skills and preferences.

The Right Truth behind Donation

From time to time we hear about how rich people donate their wealth away. Some donate whole of their wealth, some half and some donate just enough to optimize their tax planning.

Most people would think that the rich has too much, hence they want to give some away since they can't use it anyway. That ... would be 20th century mind set.

The fact is ... the rich who donates, is not only rich, but also smart rich. Whatever they have now, they can continuously have it at anytime. Hence it doesn't really matter if they give anything away tonight, they will have it again tomorrow morning.

That would be the ultimate power of passive income, or smart income.

Once you know how much you 'really' need, you 'find a way' to keep your needs fulfilled without doing anything much. Then whatever extra comes in is the one you can easily donate away without filling any pinch. Yet many will feel much appreciated because it means the whole world to them.

So in short, you can really see which rich man has smart income in him and which rich man is barely surviving with his active income, by seeing the way they donate.

Now, let me ask .... do you think USA rich men is smarter or China's rich men ?

There is NO such thing as Passive Income !?

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 words come up

PASSIVE : not participating, inactive, not reacting, inert or quiescent.

None of these words correctly describe a well implemented passive income. I use my best judgement to find a good location, a value property and a pay master tenant. I setup a profit take target and an exit strategy in my investments before I leave and let them auto pilot. All of these are very participating, actively applying my knowledge and experience, reacting appropriately when necessary etc.

The word "Passive" also gives people a psychology of No Need To Do Anything; As if an easy to get rich scheme with a better cover.

Hence this article wants to pursue all readers to stay away from the term Passive Income. Its negative, misleading and now abusive by the over-stress marketing effect. Instead, think of Smart Income !

There is no hard and fast rules for Smart Income. Any income can be earned the regular way or the Smart way !

An employee can use minimum of his time effectively to earn the highest salary or benefits. A self employ can easily leverage on Internet to earn income repeatedly. A business owner can employ a system to run his business. An investor can setup an autopilot mechanism.

So no matter which income quadrant you are in, it is possible for you to turn that income into a smart one. Its a matter of HOW you earn your income, NOT WHAT you do.

Are you pursuing smart income ?

EPF Interest Calculation - Pro Rated

EPF's interest calculation is one of the weird ones. Somehow they don't use the straight forward FV formula. Although it may seems like they are stupid and don't know math but the actual reasons are;

1) They don't really know how much to pay you until after financial closing at year end

2) your employer may submit your contribution to EPF LATE

3) legacy system left over from British colony time

In short, EPF interest calculation is pro rated. So

1) Whatever you have left last year will enjoy full interest payment this year.

ie. $100,000 x 4% = $4,000

2) Amount you save on 1st month will enjoy 11 month interest, 2nd month will enjoy 10 months interest etc.

ie. in January $100 x 4% x 11 / 12

ie. in February $100 x 4% x 10 / 12

The exact words from KWSP

»	How is the EPF dividend calculated?

In order to determine the dividend rate, factors that need to be taken into consideration include net income and total for 1% dividend at year-end.

For example:

Dividend Rate = Net income (a) x 1% Total for a 1% dividend (b)

• Investment income + Non-investment income - Expenses
• Total for a 1% dividend is based on:
• Opening balance of contribution (after withdrawal) that obtain dividend for a 12-month period, and
• Monthly contribution that obtain pro rated dividend i.e. dividend for the n-month will get (12-n) month dividend. For example, the September contribution (n=9) will obtain a 3 months dividend.

Under Section 27 of the EPF Act 1991, the guaranteed minimum dividend rate is 2.5% per

year on members' savings.

source

Example Calculation based on this article : MYR300 FREE Money

This document can be found here

There are many EPF calculation tools online. Unfortunately, none of them will show the same figures. So above calculation is actually different than what some of the banks web site will tell you. Even the EPF web site itself will show different figures than the banks and this article. However, this calculation method posted here, has been shown to KWSP HQ 2 years ago and the officers confirm correctness.

So treat this as one of the ways to calculate EPF interest, not the absolute correct and only way. I have seen 2 person EPF return calculated differently. After reporting to KWSP, they simply pick the lower payout methods without much justification. Since then, we do not report inconsistency in their calculation anymore unless it is LESS than what we should get.

Its NOT just a finance game ... unfortunately

A short while ago, I wrote that charging MYR50 to credit card users is an ineffective way to reduce credit card debt. I even predicted that government would soon realize this mistake and relax in execution later on. Quite a few large finance institutions thinks the same too. But of course they have their own agenda.

But I was wrong. Life is never monotonous. Personal Finance is NOT just about personal and finance. If you live on a land that has a country name, there are politics. And Politics matter, especially in this case.

This is my Right !

I can DO THIS and

I AM DOING IT !!

Perhaps we push too fast, too strong and making our finance ministry looks like a fool. Hence, our TOP decision maker has now publicly declared that HE is going to charge the MYR 50 NO MATTER WHAT !

Rumors or insider news, bankers are warn NOT to absorb the MYR 50 or else they will face indirect penalty withdrawing other facilities have been given to them. HE is very determined to collect this MYR 556 millions !!

You have a Problem ?

You Come Talk to me !

Ok, ok I will pay you MYR 50 ....

Malaysia Taxi Fares = developed nation

Nowadays taxi drivers in Malaysia love to use Meter to calculate the fares, in contrast to before where they would ask for a fix fee when passengers hop on their cab. This is because they would earn so much more simply by using the new taxi fare system.

The fee is MYR 3 for the first kilometer and then MYR 1.74 for every kilometer there after.

As many may have known, public transport in Malaysia is not exactly efficient. One of the problems is the location of varies train stations. Generally and averagely speaking, a person may need to travel 2-4 kilometers before reaching a station. That would be half an hour to one hour walking time. If one doesn't have that time or the stamina, she will have to take a taxi. That would be MYR 6.50 for one person one way excluding reservation or call surcharge. Return would be MYR 13. MYR 65 / week, MYR 260 a month and more than MYR 3,000 a year.

What is your distance to the nearest public transport station other than bus station ?

old taxi fare system

news at he star

comprehensive figures by LCCT

note: above calculation is based on my own experience where I paid RM 3 for the first 1km and then RM 0.20 for every 115 meter onwards. However, the new published rates are;

Klang Valley, KL, Johor Bahru, Melaka, KT

RM 3 ( first km or first 3 mins ) and

RM 0.10 every ( 115 meter or 21 seconds ) onwards

Penang

RM 4 ( first km or first 3 mins ) and

RM 0.10 every ( 115 meter or 21 seconds ) onwards

I am not sure if I was caught in between transition and being charged RM 0.20 or was I financially abused by the taxi driver specifically ...

Non Money Oriented Personal Finance Style

A few real life stories were told before;

Gabriel is the one who is NOT that RICH but financially quite independent and freedom he has.

Ahmad fights inflation by growing his own needs

Ah Dung is the RICH guy who didn't really get hurt by inflation

Mathew is the typical Average guy who is shocked by an effective inflation of 24% !!

In promotion of successful personal finance without money or at least without MUCH money, here is the story of Ah Yung.

Ah Yung is almost 70 years old now. At first glance, she has been earning her daily income from her morning market stall all her life. She made noddles when she was young and now she is only reselling whatever items she can carry ie. not so heavy. She never went to school. She has no idea what personal finance is. She doesn't have much insurance, no investment and only 1 or 2 saving accounts. She couldn't even tell if her business is earning profit. She just knows she has been surviving fine with what she does so far.

Her daily revenue ranges from $30 to $300. With a profit from $5 to $20, she is able to keep her stomach filled. Sometimes friends drop by and invite her to varies gathering which has a lot of fun and .... food. Sponsored by varies society clubs and semi-political parties, most of these events are FREE.

She lives in a house left by her belated husband, where the $40,000 loan has been fully paid off. The house is worth $160,000 now but she insists the house is the LAST thing the family has so it is there to stay "no matter what".

She traveled to work, the market, with her 30 years old bike. Almost everything she needs are obtained from the market too - cloth, food, drinks, fun stuff, blankets and business materials.

Despite living expenses day to day, she thinks she is quite alright. Although sometimes complain about politics and unfair treatment from the authorities etc. generally she thinks she has what she needs.

She has many friends. She is very generous to all her friends. Whenever friends need help, she is there. Even when money is needed, she lends as much as she could. Sometimes until she has to skip a meal or two. At her age, she has gone through quite a large number of weddings, birthday parties and funerals etc. She always shows up and she always bring present or whatever suits the occasion, by using up whatever money she has at that time. She has many friends, who call her friend as well.

Once she was in finance trouble. She lend all her money out and sales were slow. She had been eating plain buns for days. On the 4th day, her friends knew and they came to cheer her up. They had breakfast together right next to her stall. 2 weeks later, Ah Yung was backed on her feet. All friends were happy too as it was quite a good reunion for a couple of them actually.

Another time, she faced a robbery, fell down and her bike was broken. News spread so the local people and neighborhood found and captured the criminal in less than an hour. A mechanic helped her fix her bike with a very small fee. The Chinese practitioner in the market helped cure her health condition.

When her husband passed away, she didn't know what to do but about 200 good friends showed up and helped. 1000 to 2000 people showed up the funeral and helped her through the financial tough time.

Ah Yung doesn't earn much, doesn't save much, doesn't have a clue about finance planning. But through out her life, she made friends. Her human network is as big as a marketing company out there. When needed, friends will come buy from her stall even if the price is slightly higher than Carrefour. When needed, helping hands are just around the corner. There is no need to ask, people will just come to help. The same way as she has been helping so many others in her past.

Ah Yung is actually financially independent. She doesn't really go to her stall everyday. Now she and her friends always go out to parks to work out, then they go to new places to try out new food. When she is not working at her stall, someone will rent her place automatically paying her a net profit of $10-$20. A very strange passive income, no contract, no agreement, it just happen and it has been happening like that for more than 10 years. From time to time, her friends and her travel locally and overseas. Most of the trips are sponsored, either with some marketing purposes or simply privileges given to golden years people. She has friend who can get the linkage to get all these FREE stuff. Some other times when she feels bored, she visits her friends in another state or even country. She just need to get on a bus or a plane, her friends will settle the rest. Like wise, sometimes her friends come visit her from neighboring countries and she will take very good care of her friends too.

Ah Yung has ONE asset and no liability, a net worth of $160,000 and growing. She doesn't earn much but she doesn't spend any, resulting a long term positive cash flow. The only thing she has ever invested seriously is her time and dedication to the people she knows. And now she is receiving the return.

Ah Yung is a happy old lady. She has been having her financial freedom all this while.

BEST rates in Malaysia - update 2009 10 06

This is a comment update to FREE Info on Best Rates in Malaysia :

Car Loan

Maybank still tops the list after many months offering starting from 2.7%. The trick is that not everybody can get that rate and further more its mostly for national cars only. So the way they published their car loan rate has successfully made them the best choice over the past few months.

2nd runner up is Bank Muamalat whose car loan rate is only 2.85% but charges a RM 600 admin fee.

House Loan

Affin bank still top the list with BLR - 2.3%, the trick is that they don't approve many loans. They have this self image that they are the 'high quality' house loan processors ...

2nd runner up is Standard Chargered BLR - 2.25%, who is relatively more flexible and more marketing oriented. That means they may listen to what you need, try their best to request benefits on your behalf, with the hope of getting your business.

Fix Deposite

FD rates haven't changed since the recession staying at 2% which really puzzle me. If the recession is really over, why isn't the saving rate goes back up yet ?

BLR is generally staying at 5.55% with a few exception where foreign banks are offering slightly lower rate.

How does Best Rate make its choice

How to use this Best Rate on your own web site

How to Find all the latest rates yourself

Why does a Perfect Trading turn South ?

I was truly inspired by an article posted by Champdog that explain how trading can create values ie. 1 + 1 >= 3. The story goes like this;

At first the Farmer can make 4 meats in 4 hours and 16 potatoes in another 4 hours. The Rancher can make 24 meats and 48 potatoes like wise.

Then when they started trading, Farmer concentrates on making 32 potatoes in 8 hours while Rancher makes 18 meats in 6 hours and 12 potatoes in the rest of 2 hours. Farmer gives Rancher 15 potatoes, Rancher give Farmer 5 meats.

After trading, Farmer has 5 meats and 17 potatoes vs previously 4 and 16. Now Farmer has more ! Rancher has 13 meats and 27 potatoes, Rancher has even more than Farmer's more!

If this is confusing, please read the full article here.

Well, indeed it was how trading world could have started. It is indeed perfect for both parties as well. Then why do we have so much problem today ? What has happened since then ? Let's continue the story ...

Farmer uses 4 hours to make 4 meats, so Farmer is making 1 meat per hour. Like wise, Farmer's proficiency on making 1 potatoe is 1/4 hour

Rancher on the other hand use 1/3 hour to make 1 meat and 1/6 hour to make 1 potato.

So when Farmer gives 15 potatoes to the Rancher, the Farmer is giving away 4 1/4 ... 3 3/4 hours of his work away. Rancher on the other hand is exchanging it with 1 2/3 hours = 5 meats.

Things are still ok up to this point. Rancher out performs Farmer in all angles, Rancher makes more items relatively and due to his talent, he can use less time to make more things. Farmer gets more anyway during the trade, Farmer shouldn't complain neither. As long as they are mutually respective, this is still an honor deal.

Now, what happen when we assign value into effort ? As in salary paying as per hours worked, as per over time payment etc. Lets say 1 hour is equivalent to $1. And to be fair, both of Farmer and the Rancher are valued the same.

During the exchange, Farmer is giving away $4.25 ... $3.75 of his potatoes while Rancher is giving away $1.33 of meats. Rancher is buying $4.25 ... $3.75 with $1.33

Remember Farmer takes 1 hour to make 1 meat ? So Farmer's meat is $1. Rancher's meat is $0.33. Since both of them are working together, they will determine the market price of meat should be the average between the 2 ie. (1 + 0.33) / 2 = $0.665 = meat's market price.

Like wise potatoe's average market price is $0.21

What does the Farmer have after the trades ? 5 meats and 17 potatoes, equivalent to $6.87

Rancher has 13 meats and 27 potatoes or a market value of $14.315

Farmer started with $8 and ends with a market value less than $8.

Rancher also started with $8 but ends with a market value more than $8.

This Capitalism. This is why the Rich gets Richer and the Poor gest Poorer.

Remember what the Rancher said? "Its Magic!" ( in the original post )

FREE info on BEST Rates in Malaysia

Its been a while since I start sharing the latest BEST rates in Malaysia including Saving Accounts, Fix Deposit, Car and House Loan, BLR etc. The orange color bar start with wordings "Best Rates..." at the top right angle on this page is an example. Or you can see one below here too ...

Since then it has been made into a widget and anyone can include this info at their own blog / web site by following some simple instruction here.

It is NOT easy to simply pick a number out of the long list of available choices and call it Best rate. Furthermore, there are so many considerations and factors that it is almost imposible for other people to 'decide' which rate is the BEST rate for you. Hence, lets review why and how malpf makes its list.

Fix Deposit is a finance tool you use when you have a sum of money that you will NOT be using for a while and you can gain Higher saving interest than normal saving account. So the higher the rate the better it is. Hence the interest rate is mark in blue color.

One of the greatest pit fall in FD is that if you withdraw before its maturity date, you may lose your interest or even have to pay penalty to it - liquidity problem. On another aspect, its best to increase the frequency of 'taking' the interest and put in back into the FD itself to enjoy the power of compounding interest. Hence keeping these 2 in mind (liquidity and compound interest), 1 month FD is the better choice compare to other longer term FD even if longer term FD may give higher return. Choosing compound more frequent with lower rate is better than locking the fund with a rate that seems high today.

Hence when comparing FD rate, 1 month FD is used and the higher the rate is the better.

BLR or Base Lending Rate is another important number where most of the variable loan will use as the reference loan rate. The lower this number is, the better it is. Hence the rate is marked with RED color. Just to add a note that business loan can benefit more from lower BLR than housing loan.

Saving account is one of the hardest ones to compare due to its large variation in future. There are junior and senior accounts, ordinary and islamic accounts etc. However, if we focus on the fundamental of saving account, it is a finance tool to 'temporary' keep our money to maintain our cash flow, ie. day to day liquidity. So the ease of interest calculation is important and we shall focus mainly on working adults ( Not Junior Nor Senior accounts ). For ease of calculation, multi-tier rates are less welcome. Certain accounts who impose minimum amount before paying interest is also less welcome. After considering these factors, we can pick the highest interest rate as the Best Rate (in blue).

Car Loan is usually fix loan rate. Car loan for used car and new car is very different. However, use car's selling price is very largely different as well. So when used car loan rate is too high, simply shop around more looking for a cheaper car will do. Hence back to the Best rates consideration, it is more reliable to consider NEW car loan rate where the car price is pretty much standard. In this case, the lower the number the better it is. ( red )

Lastly is House Loan, which is also a very tough call for Best Rate. However, borrowing principals from saving accounts, multi-tier rates are less favorable here. Getting 1-2 years of Zero interest by committing to potentially high rate in future is NOT exactly a great way to go. Therefore malpf only concentrates on the simplest BLR-X% where the Higher the X is the Better it is, ( blue )

Among all other best rates, house loan best rate may be the least influencing one because all other considerations like Zero Moving Cost and the most recent flexi all in one account, overdraft without the overdraft rate feature makes it really tough to generalize their good and bad.

Alright, thats the start of why and how these rates are choosen.

Check out below on some of the new Best Rates too, some of them may be useful to some people too ... ie.

FD12mth : 12 months Fix Deposit for those who are really sure will not touch those money for a year

Save1mil : Saving account that has MORE than 1 million in it

Save15k : Saving account thas has MORE than RM 15,000 in it

iSave : Islamic Saving account

UsedCarL : Car Loan rate for used cars

China shows some brains ...

By now most should have at least heard that USA is to be blame when they define their own USD currency as "value" and not gold anymore, just in case you still don't know yet, you may read here.

Whatever it was, the fact is USD is the definition of value in today's world simply because everyone agree to use USD as the standard currency in international tradings. When you travel oversea to a less popular country, you are most likely not able to get the currency of that country from the exchange shop in your own country. Instead, you will have exchange to USD and then when you arrive at the destination country, you may exchange your USD to the currency of that country.

During this world recession, everyone is thinking to break away from this association with USD. However, most of the continentals have made their comments that they wouldn't be able to do it. The most disappointing one is from Europe, "It is not easy to use a new currency standard.", they said.

However, today I over heard a TV news saying that China is now starting to quote all international trades in RMB especially with near by regions like Taiwan and South East Asia.

I always have doubts on China's capability to take over USA's responsibility on world finance simply because no brains were shown from China ... well, history starts to change. The transition may happen earlier than I previously predicted after all.

Wiki : Usury

Usury (pronounced /ˈjuːʒəri/, comes from the Medieval Latin usuria, "interest" or "excessive interest", from the Latin usura "interest") originally meant the charging of interest onloans. This would have included charging a fee for the use of money, such as at a bureau de change. After countries legislated to limit the rate of interest on loans, usury came to mean the interest above the lawful rate. In common usage today, the word means the charging of unreasonable or relatively high rates of interest. As such, the term is largely derived from Abrahamic religious principles; Riba is the corresponding Islamic term.

I have posted many storiesabout how money turns evil ...

many people may says that capitalism is not good because the rich gets richer ... actually its not the capitalism, its just the way the money is defined.

Again ... its all about a large population of under educated public being abused by a small group of smarter people.

This problem has been known LONG ago and well documented almost in ALL kind of religions ...

Another version of Money Crisis theory

OMG, after I posted up how Money Turns Evil ( Part 1 Part 2Part 3 ) , more and more people mentioned it too.  Below video is another version of it - speaking in Chinese.

Famous Successful Business man talk about Finance Crisis using his own theories.

The way he talks may be a bit bore but he actually suggested how to solve today's crisis !!

by having a modern day barter system !! One of the post I drafted but haven't posted up yet.

Money As Debt Video

I have told a long story how Money Turns Evil in the past.  ( Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 )  The last part was actually more like a basic tutorial to forex trading as a matter of fact.

Anyway, I read from Meshio blog about an interesting video - Money As Debt.  The story line may have some similarity to my story but this video is 10 times better !!

A 47-minute animated short by Paul Grignon (via BB) explaining how the monetary system used to be, and how the existing mo

netary system works

 

Have FUN watching !!