Financial Planning Malaysia: August 2005

Happy Birthday Malaysia!

Happy Birthday Malaysia.

Financial Planning Malaysia Dot Com wishes the community of our beloved nation a prosperous year ahead.

Merdeka, for the well being and prosperity of the nation.

Cut your insurance premiums

What your insurance agents will not tell you and hope you will never find out.

With proper understanding of risks management and ability to differentiate NEED and WANT, I cut down my life insurance premium by more than 80% without compromising my protection NEED. Read how you can do it too.

It is applicable to any insurance company and any life insurance.

Update! Scholarship available for study of LIFA

The International Research Association, the administrator of the Licensed International Financial Analyst (LIFA) Exam Program for finance and investment professionals, is offering a "http://www.the-ira.org/scholarship/malaysia-52ur.php" full scholarship for the Level III LIFA exam. Free resgistration before deadline.

Edited on 27 July 2006: a visitor was kind enough to inform me about the creditability of LIFA and the web site. I remove the link but keep the exact address just for a record. I should be more careful in publishing such post. Here is a post questioning the validity of LIFA.

What makes a great investing blog?

OK, this is not from me, it is from Seeking Alpha, a finance blog written by David Jackson. He listed down the criteria of a good investing blog.

And here is the original article on the 10 worth visiting financial blogs by Karyn McCormack and Amey Stone from Business Week.

OK OK I was trying to find that article that says the above 10 worth visiting blogs are not that worth for a visit. I will be back to update this post.

Financial Planning Malaysia: About Us

The Web Site
FinancialPlanningMalaysia.COM aspires to be the leading personal financial planning blog and portal in Malaysia providing useful, sensible and unconventional personal finance ideas.

At times the ideas and concepts seem quirky, but they are and will always be sensible and logical. If there is anything we want to be, it is to be able to provide ideas and concepts that cannot usually be found in the community.

If you are looking for common views propagated by financial institutions, you will not like this blog.

The Blog (Weblog) Concept
Financial Planning Malaysia is actually a combination of blog, directory and tools, organized in such a way that the blog provides financial guides and the directory provide links. For certain discussions or guides, the posts in the blog will lead the readers to the relevant part of the directory for further resources or links.

Therefore it is different from the conventional blog, where the post itself contains short comments and links. Off course, when it is practical to do so we will stick to theconventional wisdom. :-)

The Author, Chen Tong
An accountant by profession with more than 10 years experience in stockbroking and investment banking. He loves computer, writing, economics and finance passionately (in the exact order...actually there are more, like history, mathematics, NLP, psychology, etc.) and the combination of this four led to this weblog, Financial Planning Malaysia Dot Com.

To say his English is "not very good" is simply a compliment. But he claims his ideas are good enough to compensate it. :-)

Disclaimer
We don't pretend to be "Know-It-All". We don't advice and we can make mistakes in our opinion. We don't provide financial services or sell financial products. We produce the web site mainly for the thrill of having a convenient outlet for writing, sharing of knowledge and to build a virtual assets(i). The content of the web site is merely for educational purposes.

The advertisements were feed by Google Adsense. We are not related to the advertisers.

First thing we must learn in handling our money is that we are responsible for our own financial decisions. Should you think our opinion is useful, consult your advisors, lawyers, planners, books, etc. before making decisions.

Affiliate programs

You will find several affiliate programs (FPM earns referral fees) in this weblog, notably

SiteSell.com
Providing internet services, i.e. process in setting up a web business, web hosting, etc.

iPower.com
Cheap web hosting alternative. You can buy a domain name in less than $3.00 per annum.

and,

Google Adsense

Contact us
You can leave your comments or just write to
contact@financialplanningmalaysia.com

Interested in link exchange?
Submit your link to our financial directory. If you have a personal finance or financial web site or blog we will publish your link as soon as possible. If you have a spam site/blog OR non financial site/blog, please don't waste your time. We will not publish the submitted link. Not that we are arrogant, but it will hurt our search engine ranking by linking to a non related topic web site or a spam web site. Reciprocal link is not required though appreciated. If you are keen to exchange links with other quality web sites, a free and decent links exchange service is available.

Domains from $2.95 per annum at iPower.com.

Benefits of managed float

I read this on 23 July 2005, the Star newspaper.

Foreign-denominated debts commitments reduced
Cheaper to raise funds abroad (risks remain the same)
Expectations of an appreciation in Ringgit may lead to higher foreign fund inflow
Lowers imported price pressure; eases inflationary pressure
More control over monetary policy
Companies with costs in US dollar will see the cost reduced
A flexible currency regime is good for economic management. Create a clearer investment atmosphere (I have my reservation on this.)
Exporters may be worse off in short to medium term but will regain price competitiveness through lower price of imports
Positive wealth effect and stronger purchasing power. Private consumption biggest winner"

What translated into personal financial planning are:

Keep ringgit assets, reduce assets in foreign currency
Weight more in good stock that will grow with economy, particularly those that would benefited from consumer spending

New section on life insurance

We have a new section on life insurance. We attempt to provide a basic and proper understanding on risks management. It is critical to understand the purpose and usage of insurance correctly so that we will not be swayed away and paid more than fair price for financial protection.

The concept of managing risks through insurance is simple and straight forward. It is only made to be complicated and confusing. We attempt to cut through the nonsense and give a clear and simple guide on life insurance.

Personal Financial Planning: An Overview

Personal Finance A plan for life Young, free & single Married couple Happily single Retiring	Issues in life Buying a home Buying a car Getting married Chilren's education
Assets Building Human assets Paper assets Real estates Businesses Assets strategies Savings & expenses	Financing Credit card Home loans Getting a loan Getting out of debts
Assets Protection Life insurance Trust Special vehicles	Leaving a Financial Legacy Trust Will Assets arrangement Giving