Malaysia Money Matters

It started with what seemed to be a fairly innocent news piece about an announcement on a large development in Pahang, specifically in Gambang that would cover 250 acres. The purpose was to build a huge multi-faith complex ( excluding Islam of course, because... err .. well.. lets not go there ) that would house retail, function halls, a resort and most importantly, a final resting place ( ashes only, I think! ) for your dearly beloved and/or yourself of course. Going through their website , the stated intention is noble enough. Creating jobs, attracting tourists and so on. No doubt, it will help the local economy there which is about 30km away from Kuantan or a 3 hour drive from KL. However, look a bit further into their business model and it starts to look very much like an MLM where the product being sold are the columbarium niches at about USD700 a pop. Which is cheap now and what they are promising would be that each niche will triple in value or more in time - so it's e...

My colleague recently got into a minor accident while crossing the road, a motorcycle knocked her over. The scary part was that she was carrying her infant son at the time, fortunately they were alright apart from scrapes and bruises. Now, the background to this was that a few years ago, she mentioned that she doesn't have a will despite having 2 kids and I was like, "Girlfriend!? Really? I'm all alone and I already have my will done up, what's wrong witchu??" ( ok, I didn't actually say that.. ) And she was so surprised that I had my estate plans all done up and I said, it doesn't matter how much or how little you think you have, what's important is that you make sure that your survivors are taken care of and there is as little hassle as possible.  An uncle of mine died intestate and my aunt went through a long and tedious process to unfreeze his assets; not to mention fending off his greedy sisters who wanted his property, who cares about his...