Malaysia Money Matters

Am thinking of offering pro-bono financial advisory services to certain vulnerable segments of society here in Malaysia. Something along the lines of say, young LGBT Malaysians - especially the transgender community. I have a few transgender friends and a couple of them are doing well financially but the rest seem to struggle somewhat. Perhaps I can help but it's a sensitive subject to broach. Anyway, if any of you youngsters out there need someone to give some advice on how to get ahead financially - maybe Uncle here can help you or at least listen to you. Just drop a comment below and we'll take it from there. :)

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...

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...