Malaysia Money Matters

The 2013 Budget has been tabled. A lot of funding in bits and pieces to a diverse range of stuff ranging from legal aid, insurance for hawkers & fishermen, residents associations, smartphone rebate for youths (like they deserve it? wth!) and so on. Being the typical cynical Malaysian (it's almost a default setting, seriously, given the stories on corruption one hears so often), I went through the budget speech to look for any big projects that are possible cash cows (pun intended) and I guess there are a few - especially the TRX (Tun Razak Exchange) which even pro-establishment blogs are questioning. Do we need another financial district, purely for Islamic banking? Well, pity most of the local banks who will be arm twisted into setting up office there. This country is not rich enough to need so many banks AND running on 2 platforms - conventional and Islamic. Anyway, topic for another day. Back to the Budget - I would rate it as pump priming via direct handouts and disco...

So Avenue K is being refurbished... again. I actually quite like the place but somehow, I think it suffers from *something* but I don't know what. Location is good, right next to KLCC and connected to the LRT but it just cannot seem to make it big. I reckon it has something to do with the management - I used to have season parking there and if the car park management is any indication of the total mall management.. well.. hmm! Not a good experience. One of my fantasies is to take over that place, turn it into a Services & Senses Mall.. yeah baby, it's all about sight, smell, sound, taste and feel. Meaning, focus on F&B, services like spa, massage, beauty and so on. Don't bother fighting for retail because that's what Suria KLCC is all about, you can't win. Anyway, looks like they are positioning themselves as a fashion retail space. *shakes head* Pavilion has just opened its Fashion Avenue - don't think Avenue K can compete. Anyway, walking along J...

I purchased a unit of interest in this venture sometime last year. So far, they've made good their promise of the 1st year return which is in the form of their products (retail value of RM800). Well, you know, bird nest has a high perceived value (even to me, especially on the health & beauty aspect! Yes, I'm vain). Now that the issue with exporting bird nest products to China is more or less sorted out, it should bode well. I think I kinda like buying more 'exotic' investments e.g. bullion, bird nest (oh yeah, the return on my fave shopping mall REIT was unexpected and not bad, think it works out to be around a 6% return pa). Why the birds nest investment? Culturally significant luxury food item to the Chinese (Japanese & Koreans too, I think. And if not, it's not a stretch of the imagination for them to latch onto it too.) Only available from South East Asia - the swiftlets that produce this do not live anywhere else - don't even think it can...

I actually didn't see this until a week after it was published in the Star. I got the photo off Facebook! hee Firstly, there's something weird about how they have classified "Upper Middle" as having an income of RM10k a month now in 2012 - reason being, if you see that back in the 80's, the ratio of  UM income to Lower income is about 8 times. It can't be that now in 2012, the ratio is only 3.3 times? I believe the ratio should be the same - so Upper Middle class household income now SHOULD be around RM26,000 a month. That makes more sense. Apart from that, the rest of the numbers make sense and shows that the middle class is being squeezed. Taking the ratio of annual income to house price, back in the 80's a middle class household only needs 4 times annual income for a double storey house. Now it is 7 times. Actually, the upper middle is also squeezed even if we took 26k as the benchmark, because back then, an upper middle class household als...