Malaysia Money Matters

Ok, I don't profess to be a mega property investor (yet) but I do like shopping around either through iProperty , the newspaper or at launches and roadshows... and gawd, the amount of marketing crap out there can be mind numbing at times. (just a short rant now) WTF does e-home mean? An electronic home? A virtual home? Come on lah, just because there is email, e-commerce, e-banking and e-going-to-toilet, must have e-home also la? I wonder who were the suckers who bought into this nonsense. (ok, rant over) Coming back to the topic: I want to say something about this 'cos of the 'headless chicken'-like behaviour of a close friend of mind who couldn't make a rational decision on a property purchase to save his life. Why? 'Cos he gets so easily taken in with: 1. The snazzy, lovely and rather impractical interior design of the show unit. It's a Show Unit! That's why it's nice! Dumbass. 2. No legal costs. Oh yeah, right. Work it out - the legal cost has be...

I have a friend. Let's call him Kyle. He is obsessed with money. I mean really. Anyway, while talking to him the other day, the topic turned to net worth. So for a laugh, I told him that he's probably a millionaire already; he just didn't know it! Boy, you should have seen him, I swear his ears almost waggled as his (already bulgy) eyes bulged out of their sockets! So I says, look - you've got 3 properties right? And he says, yeah but I still owe the banks for the mortgage. Well, says I, what about your MRTA? Ha! He gets it. Despite his many shortcomings, one thing I do like about him is that he gets things very quickly. There's a lot to be said about that. So so so, if added all together, they come up to about half million already at market value, he stuttered. Uh huh. And now, how about your EPF? There's about 150K in there or so. Oooo... now I'm up to 650K. Still nowhere near a million, what?! Insurance leh? I ask. Not a lot lah, he says. No, what about y...