Talking

If you are a credit card holder,I don’t think you will feel so strange on 0% interest.Actually a lot of banks take 0% interest as a big title for their promotions to encourage the existing customers to spend.Recently I got a similar ‘great’ deal from local H Bank introducing in the latest brochure.

In the brochure,it says I’m eligible to make cash advance within the available credit limit of the credit card with 0% interest.Read until this point,I had already raised up my questions:if 0% of interest,what will the bank earn?So I read carefully word for word and found this note:5% cash advance fee will be charged and the 0% interest rate is just for 6 months.

To some simple calculations,we just transfer 5% cash advance fee into annual interest rate,which will be 10%.Please don’t forget that 0% interest is only valid for the half year and after that period,the normal interest rate for credit balance will be charged.Thus,if people take this advantage to get some money,but unable to pay it up within 6 months,he will be charged more than 10% at the end.In fact,a few personal loan interest rates that banks offering are better than this.

Banks always play such tricks to bluff us,so we have to be smart enough to not let it work.

TO BE A SMART CONSUMER!

The source from Bank Negara,the central bank of Malaysia says that the banking license to Industrial & Commercial Bank of China is processing currently and it could be done before November 10,2009.Why is that date?Chinese Chairman Hu Jintao will have his official visit to Malaysia from November 10-11,2009.

Many observers think that Malaysian government will offer the license for banking service to the related parties,however,they want to get more strategic investments and financial supports from China to push the local economical growth from the recent recession.

Simplified it,China has money and is always looking for some opportunities to make investments.On the other hands,Malaysia is lack of money and is always looking for some chance to attract more foreign investments.That’s why they are going to make a deal.I can see that more and more business and cultural activities is going to hold between two countries.But I can’t see that Malaysian government gives any extra benefits to the Chinese.For example,I’m going to have marriage with my fiancée who is Malaysian Chinese and after the marriage,we decide to stay in Malaysia for some years.Thus,we need to buy a property to stay.

According to the law,foreigners are only able to buy a property valued more than RM250,000 in KL and Selangor and there’s no exemption to a foreign spouse of a Malaysian.I understand this clause protects the low-mid income citizens as foreign investors may push up the property prices if no restrictions here.But in my case,the property could be only under my fiancée’s name if the preferable property is under RM250,000 and nothing protects me.

Malaysian government still needs to be a bit smarter to welcome more foreign investments.

From now on,Malaysian PayPal users can add Ringgit Malaysia to be your primary currency instead of those international currencies we normally use and withdraw your PayPal balance to your local banks.

Are you willing to get that?Actually it’s quite simple.After several clicks,you can get what you see here.

1.Click ‘Manage Currency’ and it will be switched into the following page.

2.Go to ‘Select new currency’ and tick the one you want to add and press ‘Add Currency’.

3.After that,you can see your newly added currency is in the list.

If you want to withdraw funds to your local bank account,you have to add the bank information in your profile.I don’t teach you here because it should be the basic of PayPal users.The fees for transactions and withdrawals are listed below:

I think the charges are quite fair.I’m thinking this maybe is a signal from Bank Negara(the Central Bank of Malaysia) for slacking some currency policy so as to attract more foreign direct investment.I love the move!

The topic of Budget 2010 is ‘One Malaysia, Together We Prosper’.The main concept is to develop the country towards a united,peaceful and wonderful land.

Three strategies:

- driving the country towards a high-income economy,

- ensuring holistic and sustainable development,

- focusing on the well-being of the rakyat.

The rest reported by TheStar are:

(The sentences in bold are which may benefit for low and middle income people,inclusive of students)

(more…)

Today ministry of Finance in Malaysia will submit the budget for the coming 2010.The Prime Minister Dato’ Najib is also the minister of Finance.I think he had to pay attention to this budget because Malaysia was just suffered by the economic downturn seriously and now difficultly walking out of it.The government ran some mini budgets during the past several month to support country’s economic by adding deficit.So the forthcoming budget is at the crossroad that may push the economic up or pull it down to the jungle.

In front of the new budget,Najib must give out the ways for two main points at the same time:

• To keep supporting on business activities and relieving financial pressures of citizens by issuing policies that benefit both companies and consumers
• To cut the deficit into a proper range

I will post the hot points tonight when the budget released to the public.