Motivate Children To Save Money
Saving money and spend wisely is very important skill that you must teach your children. Starting young is the best. Here’s a way you can help motivate children in saving their money.
You can encourage your children to save their money is by matching their savings.
For example, tell your children that if they start saving their money at the beginning of the year. Then by the end of the year, no matter how much money they saved, you will either match it or give them twice as much or half as much and save it up for them, the amount is up to you. This will encourage children to save their money and learn to make smarter decisions when it comes to spending that will help them later in life.
Using Credit Cards When Overseas
If you are going to travel out of the country, credit cards is a necessity for most travellers because you can’t bring too much money out of the country and you don’t want to bring all those cash with you which is very dangerous.
Before you go overseas, you must make sure you call your credit card companies to notify them that you will be going overseas and for how long. This is to ensure that you are able to
1) Reduce the risk that your credit card will be denied when purchases are coming from a foreign country.
2) If in case your credit card is stolen/lost, you can alert your credit card company and speed up the response time to your stolen/lost card.
Save More Money With Your Installment Payment
We’ve been blogging about ways to save money and here’s another way that you should consider.
I’m sure many of you don’t buy car with cash. You opt for installment. Every month you would use this amount to pay for your car. After you are done with your car installment, since you are so used of putting this amount of money aside for it, you should now save this amount of money to your bank account. This will indirectly make you save money for the rainy days.
With the living expenses increase, well… Maybe you take some of this amount to spend and save up the rest.
Be Sure To Get Your Health Insured
There are many types of insurances available. Have you ever consider buying health insurance for yourself and your family? There are many Affordable Health Insurance out there that are waiting for you to sign up. It’s quite a hassle to go around town to find Health Insurance Quotes.
With the availability of the Internet now, it’s easy to find the best health insurance quote. You don’t have to feel pressured to sing up on the policy. You can take your time to do your research online before commiting to it. You will save a lot of money if you do this.
You can visit blindcntr.org and get the best health insurance quote. They offer you useful tips on how to get the best health insurance and make sure you know what are you signing up. Various articles are also provided. I found some interesting articles in there such as Seniors - Beware of Insurance Scams!, Choose Health Insurance to Fit Your Individual Needs, Some pertinent health insurance questions and answers and more. Just go over and browse around. You’ll be surprise with what you can get in there.
The website is simple and straight forward to use. I hope this site will help you a lot in deciding which health insurance you should go for and find your nearest agent.
Desperate For Help? Bank Negara Malaysia Is The Answer
I’ve been having problem with Mobile Money few months back. I was so angry and at the end I had to get help from Bank Negara Malaysia to settle the problem.
Here’s the story:
I like to experiment with new services especially those that related to local financial institutions. When Mobile Money is introduced, I quickly sign up for it. I’ve been paying my bill for 1 year plus and it worked wonderfully saving me lots of time and energy. However, few months back, it started to give me problem.
On 10th February 2008, I used Mobile Money to pay my bills again. This time I added RM561 into the fund however the maximum amount to add should be RM500 only. Therefore I’m thinking that Mobile Money shouldn’t be accepting this transaction. Then I went into my Hong Leong Bank Internet Banking and found out that Mobile Money had deducted RM561 from my account!! I quickly checked Mobile Money Wallet to see whether there was such amount in there and to my horror, there’s no such money went in! OMG! Where is my RM561!?! I quickly called up Mobile Money to make a complain but they insisted me to use SMS to file a complain. I just followed suit and they promised me that they would solve the problem A.S.A.P. I waited for weeks and they still hadn’t solve my problem. My money wass still no where to be found.
Then on 4th March 2008, I prepared a complain letter to be faxed to Mobile Money. They informed me that they had received it. I waited and waited unti 13th March, there was nothing done. I called Hong Leong Bank to help me make a dispute(Charge Back) and asked them to fax Dispute Form to me. After I filled the form, I faxed it over to them. They informed me they got my fax and will fix the problem in 45 working days.
I waited again. Two months later, I couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s 11th May 2008, Hong Leong Bank called me up telling me that the dispute is not effective because it’s not their problem, Mobile Money should be the one responsible for it. DAMN IT!!! Ask me to wait for so long and two months later told me it couldn’t be done! You should have tell me earlier! I was so pissed and prepared another complain letter to Mobile Money and this time I carbon copy to Bank Negara Malaysia. I faxed them.
In the letter I told Bank Negara Malaysia about my problem for the passed months about Mobile Money and Hong Lenng Bank. I also added a question asking, “What is the maximum top up for Mobile Money? I saw the website stating that it’s RM500, how come RM561 was deducted from my account?”
Later in the afternoon, the higher level management of Mobile Money called me up saying that they would give me back my money in few days time because Bank Negara Malaysia had inform them about it. Thank you Bank Negara Malaysia, now then I know you are very helpful and ensure that our rights are taken care of.
Few days later, they really gave my money back! WOW! That’s fast! I’ve been complaining for months and no news at all from them but now why so fast?!!?
Next, I got a phone call from Hong Leong Bank about the dispute because Bank Negara Malaysia wanted them to answer my question I stated in the fax. They also told me the money was returned to me on 15th May.
There you go. Case closed. I should have approach Bank Negara Malaysia for help earlier else I won’t be RM561 poorer for months! This amount of money is enough for me to settle some of my loans and bills for one month!
Save Consistently Every Month
Oil price increases, rice price increases. Eventually everything will increase! It’s time to spend wisely and carefully. You should also start saving, in fact you should safe ever since long time ago. It’s possible to save, you have to spend less and don’t spend unnecessarily. All these while, many people just whenever they like, it’s bad.
Generally, most people spend money and consider whatever is left at the end of the month as savings. This should not be it. If you practice this, you will never get to save anything.
You must first set aside your savings quota for the month, and then consider the rest as the money in hand for expenditures.
This way will ensure that your savings for the month is guaranteed at the start of the month.
Sounds hard? It’s in fact achievable, you just have to change your habit of spending. Discipline is very important.
Rule of 72
Here’s one useful tip that you can apply whenever you want to guesstimate your long-term investment returns, apply the Rule of 72.
How to apply this rule?
1. Divide the rate of return by 72 to figure out how many years before your investment doubles.
2. Divide your years to invest by that number.
If you get an 8% return (72/8=9), you double your money every 9 years.
If you invest for 27 years, your investment doubles 3 times (27/9=3).
Very simple math but it’s really powerful.
Try it out!
Rare Coins Collection
I know many people actually collecting coins. Be it old or new, from local or abroad, they will make sure they have at least one of those in their collection. Some can be very rare coins.
These coins can actually make you some or even a lot of money if you know how. If you are a coin collector, then you might want to approach Monaco Rare Coin. They have the finest rare coins available. They also have a wide range of investment-grade coins that valued in excess of $10,000,000! WOW! That’s a lot! What’s more? They are expert in all aspects of the rare coin trade such as the wholesale market, the collector market, the international market and auctions.
I’m sure if you are looking for some rare coins and couldn’t find you, you can get Monaco to help you with you. They have access to the most intriguing rare coins available. Monaco believes that “Full Service Coin Trading” offers the best prices and best service. This will definitely making it an easy decision for rare coin collectors or investors.
Air Asia vs MAS
Hahaha… I’m sure many Malaysians are now very happy and grining from ear to ear because they can now get cheap air tickets! It’s pretty amusing don’t you think.
Air Asia even shoot out various newsletters almost everyday to tell people to be a smart consumer and teach you how to count and see which one is really low cost. *LOL*
Well, I’ve done my homework even before Air Asia sent the newsletters. My conclusion is that, Air Asia can be cheap when you manage to get their low fare offer especially offers below RM10 else it would be few Ringgits more expensive than MAS if you are using the MAS zero fare offer.
However, if you are coming from overseas to KLIA with lots of luggage, I would recommend MAS zero fare to you to fly to Kuching from KL if you are coming from overseas, travelling long hours with heavy luggage.
I had booked the zero fare tickets for my sister. It might be a difference of about RM100 or less(depends on the offer you manage to get from Air Asia), still it’s so much more cheaper than the normal fare. You could save the luggage handling fee and also the transport from KLIA to LCCT. You might have problem catching the flight summore in case you are delayed at KLIA or Air Asia suddenly wants to change the flight schedule. In addition to the heavy luggage, Air Asia will charge you a lot if you happen to go overweight with your luggage as Air Asia provide less baggage allowance.
At the end, you have to weigh the pros and cons. Be a smart consumer.
Google Adwords
Believe it or not hahaha… This is my first time trying out Google Adwords. I got this as one of the package from the new server I had move this blog. They gave me USD25 to use it for AdWords. This is one way to bring in traffic and make money.
After the activation, USD5 was deducted. It’s still not that bad. You will defintely get return more than this if you do it right. Don’t forget that traffic can make money.
You can pay Google Adwords using Postpay or Prepay. I choosed Prepay Billing because if too many people click on it, then my credit card will be deducted until I’m broke. It seems more secure to me also, summore I just started to use it.They accept American Express, JCB, MasterCard, Visa or any debit card with Visa or MasterCard logo.
You have to key in your credit card details so that next time you can add fund when you need. The minimum fund to be added is USD10. Since I only started using it, I only added USD10.
Whne you click into Billing Summary, you can check your statement. As you can see, USD5 is deducted.
You can now find Sarawakian.net in Google search result on the right hand corner because I’m using Google Adwords to promote this site now. I’ve found some useful and popular keywords in the process and I will be utilising Google Adwords as much as I can from now on.
