Loans

Do we need loans in our life? Is it important in our life? Some says, it's not recommended to have loan or many loans. I believe most of us have heard or seen about good debts and bad debts right? So, how to know whether the loan we are acquiring is good or bad? Simple concept on this good and bad debts is on the impacts from these two (2) debts/loans; good debts/loans is something can make us richer and richer, whereby bad debts is something can make us poorer and poorer.

As discussed earlier, there are so many products in banking world and to be more specific; they are so many loan types based on needs and requirement. Sometime due to our knowledge level, we may acquire bad debts. This may happen accidentally or unfortunately. Another rule of thumbs is that it is very to get good debts and it is very easy to get bad debts. Sounds good so far? Let us discuss further in upcoming articles.

Levels of Financial Freedom – Part 1

How can we gauge our financial freedom level in life? Are we healthy enough financially? How to optimize it? What are the supplements can be taken to improve our healthiness? All these are important because we can only improve if we are able to detect our own loopholes. It’s not sufficient only by knowing the loopholes but must know how to rectify it so that our goal for financial freedom can materialized as we planned.

I personally segregate level of financial freedom into six (6) different levels by referring to our active income, passive income, expenses, and savings. How all these four (4) items are very important? These are the tools can gauge our attitude and reflect it into our financially healthiness which can be rectified if we have certain “diseases” which may be harming our goal to achieve our financial freedom.

The worst level ever in financial freedom is where our expenses is more than our active income. What? Where is our passive income? My friend, if there deficit in our balance sheet, it shows that there is no other income except our active income. In this situation, the most probable causes are due to bad debts and money spent to unnecessary items, i.e. updating gadgets based on latest available models which ultimately reflect our bad habit in finance subject matter. So, how to rectify it to be at the best level or at least one level higher than this worst level? You may go on How To Start Saving - Part 1 and How To Start Saving - Part 2 as a starter to rectify your "illness" and comment if have some specific area to be discussed.

We will discuss more on the remaining five (5) levels in the next coming article Levels of Financial Freedom – Part 2. List down all our passive income, active income, and expenses so that we can gauge our level if we are lucky enough not to be in this level. Again! Remember that money could be the Cash King but knowledge is the QUEEN to manage our wealth wisely.

Credit Card - Part 2 (Balance Transfer)

It is almost half a year I wrote about credit card whether benefiting or harming the owner. Again as explained previously in earlier post about how a knife acts upon it's functionality, we must fully aware of the impacts.

Any of you heard of BT? Never heard this acronym? Hmmmm, how about "Balance Transfer"? Never heard but thinking have read somewhere in newspaper? Great! At least have sensed about it. Now worries for newbies about this jargon because this is not really high linguistic jargon. This is very simple terminology by it's definition where the remaining or full balance from somewhere will be transferred to somewhere else. Where exactly this somewhere? Any idea? Back to the title of this post, from credit card A to credit card B. Why exactly do they have this package in banking business? Do I care? Not really, I'm not even bother why they introduce because this is part of their products and they are free to do so. So, as a consumer or customer we must able to benefit whatever products they introduce into the market.

So, when can we use this BT? There are some criteria normally imposed by bank via this BT program where we may only can transfer certain amount as a minimum amount. First, we may utilize this BT program if we're stuck with cash of any amount to be paid to original bank of credit card A and to reduce the compounding interest. If this is the case, we may not really worry about the rate will be imposed by bank issuing credit card B because the rate will be much much lower than compounding interest from paying only minimum amount. Most of the banks normally have number of choices to choose on the BT plan; 3-months, 6-months, 9-months, 12-months, etc. The rate also may differ among the plan. Hence, choose wisely so that we can benefit at maximum level.

Other than previous scenario, we may have amount to be paid to bank of credit card A but we may want to invest that amount in some alternatives. In this case, any rate imposed by banks are not recommended because we'll be losing our money, unless our investment can give much higher return than rate being imposed by the bank. Let us assume for the worst case where our return not much and lower than any rate offered by bank and what would be the scenario we can consider? In this case try to get whichever plan gives 0% rate and this plan usually very limited and very occasional basis. 

So, we as a consumer or customer always right and try to utilize the maximum possible so that we benefit whatever products being promoted by banks. Banks may have hundreds of strategies to create profit, similarly we create hundreds of strategies to benefit from their own products.

Credit Cards - Part 1

How many of us experienced where we got credit card application been approved and activated even without our notice? How many of us got credit cards application approved even we purposely forgot to sign the application form? How many of us not sure why we apply credit cards? How many of us really sure about the benefits of having credit cards? Who are normally easy to get credit card application get approved?

I believe everybody have experience applying credit card(s) because this is very common for those fresh graduates with new payslip and no commitment in the list yet. Why this is very common? You may give small laugh to yourself. Hehe! This is mainly because of the approval will be very easy and fast. Furthermore, normally all these fresh graduates are baited during some promotion in shopping mall or during exhibition. Why this group are normally baited? Be frank, we'll feel extra luxurious by having credit cards and this feeling was my personal experience when started my career life. Luckily, I have experienced indirectly of using credit cards from my late father where he pays before due date. Similarly, I have experience indirectly from my friends on the bad side where they pay only the minimum amount.

Let us discuss first on the benefits that is very clearly can be seen by using credit cards. What you can get by using credit cards? Obviously we'll collect points to redeem gifts in future. Gotcha! Other than that? By using credit cards, all our expenses will be recorded in details about the dates and merchandises that we spent. All these records are printed for you free of charge. Not even a single cent is charged to you. By having this statement for your credit cards usage, we can monitor our expenses on monthly basis to improve our budget in order to achieve or at least to come closer of financial freedom. There are lot more that we can discuss on the benefits by using credit cards but I will write separate article on it very soon.

Benefits are being discussed so far and lot more to cover in future but what are the bad things of having credit cards? As briefly described on bad thing due to bad habit mainly on paying minimum amount which end-up with compounding interest with the maximum rate will be imposed on us. This scenario could happen due to lack of understanding on credit cards usage or purposely without knowing the bad impacts of pretending to be very luxurious. In very recent years, there are very huge numbers of fresh graduates are declared bankrupt due to compounded interest of huge amount spent that cannot be settled by all these youngsters. The other case, happened to one of my close friend where he bought a laptop for his sibling and paying only minimum amount by assuming that minimum payment is reflecting easy-payment with no end point.

Using credit cards exactly like using knives where different knives having different applications; to cut meat, fruits, etc. If we use different type of knife for different application, the result will be very poor. If we wrongly use the knives to scratch our back due to itchiness then big disaster is waiting for us. Hence, choice is in our hand and choose wisely before act. How to do so? Invest on knowledge first before take action.

Shopping

Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. In some contexts it may be considered a leisure activity as well as an economic one (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping)

Shopping is very synonym with us and it is very popular during festive seasons due to our culture to buy new items during this season. Most of us been thinking that shopping is something ended-up with buying. This is especially those never had experience window shopping. For those who had experienced window shopping might be more confident when telling that shopping not necessarily ended with buying goods. Even window shopping sometime not really a good practice because ended-up with buying the interested items sooner or later.

I define shopping for my own use as evaluation process before purchasing any interested items so that we are getting the best of the best in the market. It could not be the real best of the best but at least the best of the best among we evaluated. Hence, we'll have some confident when making judgement to purchase it whether in term of price or quality. So far I'm been writing about shopping normally done by us as human being.

Come into real picture about shopping for me actually is about getting the best deal which lead us to achieve our goal financial freedom slowly but consistently. I've been writing about increase our financial knowledge by reading books, attending courses, attending seminars, etc. So, how we can apply the concept of shopping in this field? You may go shopping for books available in the market about financial education to educate us about how to succeed or at least to prevent for losing our hard-earned monies. When you start reading, you may know later how to go shopping on money related courses and seminars. Knowledge is actually preparing us shopping for better choices mainly related to good shopping; namely shopping for credit cards, shopping for lawyers, shopping for loans/mortgage, shopping for real estates, etc.