Malaysia Best Rates 2011 Feb 13 update

July 2011 Update is here

Fix Deposit

Honestly, after tracking the rates for years. Affin bank is the bank to go with if you want the highest FD rate. Be it 1 month or 12 months, just go with Affin bank.

Check this site often, I shall let you know when this trend changes.

Base Lending Rate

ALL local banks stand at 6.3% now with Bank of Tokyo and Royal Bank of Scotland offers the lowest at 6.0%.

Saving Accounts

Bangkok Bank offers 1.85%

Bank of Tokyo, Bank of Nova Scotia offers 1.75%

Don't forget you can get a simple widget

like above to show on your blog / web site.

Just visit here to see how.

Car Loan : NEW Car

Maybank continues to offer the lowest car loan rate starting from 2.7%. However, this is NOT a standard rate apply to all applicants. The actual rate can range up to 4.3%.

Bank Muamalat offers 2.85% for both New and Used cars but it requires an admin charges of RM600.

Car Loan : Used Car

Bank Muamalat offers 2.85% but requires admin charges of RM600.

CIMB offers 3.25% used car loan rate.

Don't forget Car Loan rate is Fix Term Rate

which is effectively a MUCH HIGHER

than variable term rate

like House Loan and Fix Deposit.

House Loan

There are too many factors in considering a good house loan, so we don't think its fair to simply summarize them here.

Our advice is to source for at least 3 offers, preferably a mix of local and foreign banks.

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

Personal Finance Portfolio should be dynamic

We often hear experts said

if you are young, you can take more risk, hence put your investment in equity.

then

if you are old, you should keep your capital in safer vehicle like bond etc.

But one important strategy they miss out is ... the dynamic of personal finance portfolio.

value for money - linear or exponential ?

Value for Money ( short for V4M ) is basically how much values you get from the money you paid. It is often irrelevant how much is the price of an item or service. Whether or not a person pay for something is simply because of how he perceives the values he is getting.

If a person perceive values more than its price, he would paid for it !

If a person perceive values less than the price, he would NOT paid for it.

There are 3 types of V4M perceptions. This article will cover 2.

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

Easy Retirement

This is an extract of what I read in today's newspaper. More and more people start to carry this type of alternative concepts about retirement especially in this 21st century. You can't say its wrong. As a matter of fact, its a rather SMART way to go. But lie within is a huge hidden risk.

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,

21st century Economy Politic Quadrant

The Economy-Political Quadrant may seems like telling where to keep or invest your money despite good or bad time.

It indeed works very well during 20th century. Unfortunately comes to 21st century, not only has the year changed, personal finance arena has changed drastically as well.

Gold has been speculated so much that it MAY no longer be the standard of money.

There used to be only 'property' in the city. Now there are satellite towns, suburbs ... agriculture lands and even dust bins ( recycle ) have become valuable estates too. While property remains the right category to invest into whenever economy is booming, but predict the right future seems like tougher than buying lottery.

Government bonds used to be de-Facto action when a country is stable. But in today's world, a country is as smart as a taicon's finance. One day they are the LARGEST, the next day they are GONE.

Stock market used to be the back bone of a country's economy. However, the market of derivatives has become so HUGE that the REAL and PHYSICAL is NO LONGER more real than VIRTUAL

So in 21st century, the element of Stock-Property-Funds-Gold is really questionable. However, one fundamental that doesn't change is that

you will have to identify what to do at what time that is BEST for YOU !

Hope you will find your own very best Economy-Political Quadrant soon !

East will take over West in ... 2020 ?

G7 are the 7 countries who have been dominating world finance since 20th century. Most of them are from Europe and North America, plus Japan.

However, most would have known by now that some of them are no longer as great as they used to be in this 21st century.

So E7 comes about where generally people think a new economical forces will emerge out taking over G7, they are (China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey).

According to chart below, E7 will take over G7 in 2020.

There are also stories that says this will happen in 2050. Either way, generally people expect E7 to take over G7 in due time.

However, the fact is that will NEVER happen.

What will happen instead is that 1-2 G7 members may drop out from the list because they fail to make a come back despite how hard they try. Like wise 2-3 E7 members never make it to the bar, hence E7 will NEVER be formed.

At the end, there may be a G11 formed, which has nothing to do with G7, G8 and G10.

G11 is seamlessly integrated among themselves with latest technology. Forex and logistic are no longer issues a small business owner need to worry about among these G11 member countries.