Make Money Easy ! Scam or Trap ?

Ever seen easy money making offer ?  They are always very convincing - - -

It even challenge you to leave, this is reverse psychology making us to feel that he really has something here . . .

calls for action again, this is the most important step to close a sale.

Reassure you it is EASY.  You earn money Right away even if you are dump.

 Finally the number is out.  This is what they want from you.

Quickly follow by wordings like "FREE" make sure you feel good again

this should caught your eye, what to reinvest? is it a must?  I can't be all out?

 Reassure you again its ok if you are dump

The payment page is not a secure page, even the error message is wrong implying this page is modified from some other template related to phone!?

 You are in !  Happy ?  You must be thrilled because you will be a millionaire soon !

So what are the catches ?  Well, don't curse them nor say they are cheating you.  Because they have already lay down the answers to you as well, in the fine print.

In this case, this is actually forex trading which they use binary option.  They make it easy so that you don't need to know anything but just "bet" on up or down.  Very much like betting Big or Small on a roulette table.

Is this a scam ?  Well, no one will sell you a piece of cake by telling you what addictive they added to keep them puffy.  They always tell how healthy and tasty it is.  It is a part of sale process.  No matter how simple I could make it, if I sit down and explain forex properly most would doze off or walk away in less than minutes.

This is a carefully crafted piece of art, the best sales messages ever.  Even if I have written many of such sales pitch myself in other occasions but when I read this, the urge to join them is still there and strong.  It adheres to all the NLP selling techniques, each word is used precisely to bring out the human nature in us to trust him.

In this case, this site was setup in 2015 and regulated by USA law.  Some people actually makes good money from this scheme.  People who continuously use this method however, is less happy.

What do you think?  Would you call this a scam ?  Or a good sales pitch ? Or it doesn't matter as long as you earn money then its a good thing ?

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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

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Money And Love Personal Finance

MaLPF.com = Money And Love Personal Finance

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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 ?

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Tenaga Power Factor Surcharge

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

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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

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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 ?

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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.

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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 ?

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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 ?

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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.

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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 ....

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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 ...

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