Departing 2010.....Welcome 2011

GOOD BYE.....2010

Build the Belief That Moves Mountains

Napoleon Hill, writing in the classic Think and Grow Rich, said that belief and desire are the beginning of all achievement. If one of those key ingredients is missing, success is almost impossible.

That might explain why a lot of people get excited about an idea (desire) but fail to follow through with it (belief). It's rare that we will attempt to do something that we don't believe in, and we will never give 100% of our effort to something without a strong belief that we can do it. It's our human defense mechanism. In As A Man Thinketh, James Allen tells us, "The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do." In Above Life's Turmoil he tells us, "Belief always precedes action."

That certainly helped me understand why I'd find myself with some great ideas that I thought would be successful, and then six months would pass by and I hadn't done anything about them. I didn't have the deep down belief they'd be successful, so I simply didn't take any action on them. And that's the same experience that most people have that steals the great dreams they have for their lives.

  • Do you have a strong desire but lack belief in your ability or the future?
  • Are you working harder but can’t seem to make any progress?
  • Are you frustrated because you just can’t breakthrough the barriers in your life
  • Do you have a “settle for” attitude (ie., “it’s not what I want but it’s better than a lot of people have.”)?
  • Are you tired of watching others zoom by on the super-success highway while you seem stuck on the side of the road?
What do think?

Kid College fund

Got a kid? Securing a good education for them is our responsibility. Their job is to go to school for education.

Parent job is to ensure their education is not witheld due to no means of providing that education. History show that good education realy pays. Look around is there a story of whole family life changed from misery due to educated children? Sure there is. Governments, banks helps to extend the means but education provided with helps of loans just tying the kids with obligations right from their begining. The right to freedom and easier life is delayed.

The fact is, we all have 17 years from their arrival before college start. So do it right now even if few years passed. Time value of money sure at work as soon as you start.

What do I begin with?

In the beginning, yes it is tough to decide what you want? I want all! But to most of us, that is not possible.

I begin with assessing what I have. Over few weekends, I put aside all documents. Saving accounts, loan accounts, epf account, all sort of accounts... Then totaled it up, there you go, that is what you have. 


My gosh, after nearly a decade of working I only save penny? Then, the sense of I must change this rushing in. Change need strong reason for it and courage to do it.

Budget and save

It only takes spending $27.40 a day to fritter away $10,000 per year.

How? Cigarette $10/day, coffee $7/day, thats more than half way already...

Look hard at your daily spending and you shall find the answer!

Yes you can do it!!! 

THE BIG PICTURE continues

Simply being able to realise what happens really puts me into next stage. I set my target.

How? I decided what I want and when I want it. The Journey on how to get it is the challenging parts.

Once your target is set, WRITING it down is a MUST! Putting it down is a powerful visual tool to guide you years to come.

Excerpt from my experience. I really do know what is my target!

I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and mean to keep doing so until the end.  If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything.  --Abraham Lincoln

THE BIG PICTURE

Completing the retirement fund exercise gave me the greatest feeling of self empowerment. I didn't really aware that I'm aware of such thing while wasting 10 years of my working life. What I do then is work, work and work. Trading my entire life for someone else. That why they say, employment, while providing opportunity for earning, is actually trading your life for money and someone is profiting it!

Bet you are not aware of it. Most of us do that unconsciously on day to day. Why? To me, it is simply  because of no knowledge. Hands up those who know that you can control your own life. What we been told is, get good education and go to work for good corporation for whole of your life. While doing that constantly we are bombarded with spend, spend, spend, that is the lifestyle!

You just follow those suggestion subconsciously for years and suddenly realised that what am I doing.

"I earn 3,000 monthly, work for 5 years and yet have almost zero in my saving. Where all the 180,000 gone?"
Don't be sad, you are not alone. Thousand more employee out there in your same situation. If I ever save just 10%, that is 18,000 with me now. How I wish.

Next we'll shall move on to planning and targets.

There are two primary choices in life: To accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.  --Denis Waitley  

I'll die in debt, say one in three in UK

Nine out of 10 people have run up unsecured debt and many fear they will never be able to pay back what they owe, a survey has claimed.

Around 89pc of people aged between 18 and 35 said they owed money on a credit card, loan or overdraft, the research showed.

A third of people admitted they did not think they would ever be debt-free, 54pc of whom said they would always need to borrow money in order to fund the lifestyle they wanted.

One in five of these people also claimed they were not worried about the possibility of their debts being passed on to their next of kin if they died before they were repaid.

Just over half who owed money said they did not feel in control of their debt, with 8pc admitting they had needed to ask for help with repayments from a friend or family member. Eight out of 10 people also told the research for discount website MyVoucherCodes.co.uk that they thought it was too easy to borrow money through their bank or on credit cards.

Farhad Farhadi, MyVoucherCodes.co.uk's personal finance expert, said: "The majority of British adults owe money in some way, shape or form, but to see that almost a third think they'll never be free from debt is quite alarming.

"When borrowing money from any source, how you are going to repay it should always be in the back of your mind.

"A lot of people don't really think about the consequences of borrowing money and it can be easy to get complacent, but keeping it all under control should be a priority from the off. Only borrow what you really think you can afford to pay back."

From: www.telegraph.co.uk 


My say: Gosh this is scary...Don't play with credit card!. I wonder card is still a prefered choice of many despite what is happening???

Retirement Fund

From my experience. I really do know what is my position, then decide the target! Plan to succeed.


There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.  -- Norman Vincent Peale

Freeloaders or Leeches, Are you?

1. Pay off your credit cards in full on time each month.
2. Never go beyond the interest-free grace period.

By doing this, I get to use their money without paying them anything for the privilege.
And they hate me for doing that and calling me names....

Still on Retirement Fund

The more you know your current position, the clearer it gets!

Now with information you have, do the following estimation:-

1. Compounded at certain percentage the amount you have now
2. Estimate your future income (now until retirement) and how much could you further save in coming years, add it up
3. Add up 1 & 2 above minus how much do I need upon retirement (see Then the Retirement Fund)
4. If your answer is positive, congratulation. Ensure your plan and your retirement fund is secured
5. Else, a negative means you need to plan to make up the setback

Is this a definite target, the answer is NO. Everything move in relative towards one another. Inflation may set in, unexpected company bonus, financial crisis and rising investment returns can happens along the way. These plus and minus will definitely happens but knowing your own situation and what are the targets year on year surely helps a lot in your journey.

Nothing beats the peace of mind!

If your position is everywhere, your momentum is Zero. --Michael Korda

Same old thing day by day

As my awareness has grown, I can't help but notice the overwhelming number of people I encounter every day who are doing the very same things I did year after year.  The fact is, "97% of people are born, live and die without ever learning how to earn money". They only work for money.

Bob Proctor said that and I couldn't agree more.  But the real sad fact is that most people will never know that “they can learn how to earn money, all the money they could ever want, and it's no more difficult than learning how to drive an automobile.”

What’s difficult is giving up our old way of thinking about money…the paradigms that we’ve grown up with.

Give yourself a good favour. Change your paradigms!

Retirement Fund continues....

1.3 million still haunting you. Don't worry. You actually have more than you think!

To find out, we need to do a 'Where am I now" exercise. This exercise is to determine how much do I actually have right now. Most people who did this soul searching, came out to their surprise finding out that they actually had some money, actually.
By doing this exercise, you are on your first step of planning without realising it. To know how much you have, this weekend sit down, pull out all your records and list down you assets in the category of cash, saving,current and fixed deposit accounts, shares, unit trust, property, business and others. Your liabilities list, i.e. LOAN: property, car, personal, credit cards and any others.

While you are at it doing the consolidation, take your time to reflect that how you may have complicated your life by listening too much to the noise of advertisements and doing what they say. Spend, spend and spend without thinking. 

When I do this, I also discover that I keep too many bank accounts which I'm not sure what is it for. Credit cards..., why 5 hah! Mutual fund, unit trust accounts, etc.

Finally, I decided to simplify. Life was meant to be EASY.

...Then the Retirement Fund

You should only start this fund upon successfully achieving your Emergency fund target.

In my story this was one of my regret of not doing it as early as possible. Otherwise, I would be free even earlier.

The first question here is how much do I require? What is the amount? Again, you decide.

How? Say that you are no longer working:

1. What is be the monthly expenses that you must have to support your expenses?
2. Estimate how long would you live? Q?: How would I know this? Just take your gender
lifetime average. E.g., 72 years for male and add about 5 more years if you are female.

Adding those amount above will generally provide some rough idea on how much you need.

Say you are a female and intend to retire at the age of 50. After retirement, you need about 4,000 as monthly expenses. Therefore, upon retirement you will need roughly about 1.3 million (non adjusted basis) in your saving to cater to your daily needs. What? That is more than a MILLION!


If you will spend an extra hour each day of study in your chosen field, you will be a national expert in that field in five years or less. -- Earl Nightingale

Saving for what?

1. Emergency fund
2. Retirement fund
3. Kids college fund
4. Gotta-have fund

Just started working? Create the emergency fund. The simplest fund of all.

How much for this fund? It depends on your lifestyle really but it should be enough to cover about SIX months of your expenses. Calculate the amount all you need to live monthly, food, rent, installments, etc.

Why six? If you are out of job, that is the 'allowable' time for you to live out of your emergency fund while looking for another job.

So when you lose your job, you are able to stay calm before moving on to next pasture.

I'm back!

Its been a long time since my last post. I'm back....