Talking

IBMM(Institute of Bankers Malaysia) announces that from March 31 2009,annual interest rate of credit card will decrease up to 1.5% and late payment penalty/rate will be charged from RM5 up to RM75.

The detail of interest rate will be:

I think this is a policy to reduce the burden of people in this bad financial position.At the same time,it could be treated as one of reflationary policies though it may encourage evil trends like over-consumption.

Currently there are RM23 billion credit card debts in Malaysia and if banks cannot well-control and collect those debts,they will face some serious problems such as a huge number of bad debts occurred.Thus,less cost on using credit cards doesn’t mean that we can use credit card freely.When we enjoy this benefit,we also need to know the importance of having a good consumption custom.We have to remember ‘SMART SPENDING’.

I applied to withdraw funds from PayPal to my credit card account last week.Just now I checked the balance of my credit card and recognized that the transfer has been successful.

Compared with the pound funds which was transferred.

So the exchange rate would be 443.29/66.59=RM6.657/pound(today is 6.74).I think it is quite ok,right?It almost takes 5 days and is strictly within the policy.Actually once the transaction is done,”Recent Activity” record in PayPal will be updated with “Completed” status”.

By the way,because all those money is earned by blogging,therefore it should be treated as a milestone.

I wanted to withdraw funds from PayPal to my debit card account.But unfortunately that all my debit card applications were declined by the banks.And the last chance is Tune Card,which is finally to be told that can’t be used on transactions from PayPal.

So I decided to transfer those funds to my credit card account so that to be against with my balance in order to leave more available balances to deal with the upcoming expenses in Shanghai.

The procedures are quite simple.Firstly,just login into my own account and you can easily find the ‘withdraw’ button on the top raw there to click it.

The next page is telling you the processing days and fees.

Choose the method which you want to withdraw to:”US bank account” OR “Card“(inclusive with credit card and debit card).At last,you will turn to a page which need fill up the withdrawal amount.By the way,there are also providing some notes that may be related with you so that you’d better to take some time to have a look at it.

After completing to write that amount,”continue” and there will be a final information for your transaction.Till here,you’ve done all and what you need to do is to wait for 5-7 days to process your transaction.

This is my transaction history for the latest withdrawal.

You can see the status(pending) of that withdrawal.I hope it can be finished processing before I’m be back to Shanghai.

Nowadays debts have been a major problem of people.As we are facing all markets competitively,more and more businessmen are using heavy marketing and advertising campaigns to attract consumers.Sometimes a few of consumers just buy products first with credit card,when they can’t repay the amount,they have turned it to debts.

1. The first thing we need to do is to avoid credit,or set an expense plan to use a credit card.Maybe try to set a budget on credit card monthly and ruling of usage of credit card(e.g pay off utility bills and petrol,or only buy groceries) so that it can make balance of credit card under control and within acceptable expenses level.
2. To set up a good habit on savings(e.g force yourself to save at least $500 or 10% of income per month in any situation and only use the funds in emergency).This will help you set down your financial base and give you a chance to manage your money in a simple beginning.
3. If you have to buy something which is very expensive but quite essential and necessary,you should schedule your repayment before you buy it and every time you get your salary,keep that part of money and pay for the balance as soon as possible.
4. If you have a heavy debt and you can not afford anymore,please try to contact to professional financial planner so that they can assist you to restructure you debts(e.g IVA-Individual Voluntary Arrangement,debt consolidation…) and overcome your difficulties.Their debt advice will be importance to you!

Of course,I can’t list all ways to improve your financial life.But the golden rule here is ‘before you pay out,you must make a careful consideration first’.

Last Thursday,I just reported that “Credit card info was stolen” which informed by HongLeong Bank customer relation department.

Today I’m surprised that I had received the new card in the afternoon.All the details about cards are remaining the same because it is just a replacement.But the design of the card is different which is a much current used design.Which one is the nicer?

I quite enjoy the effecient service and response from the bank(It is not an apple-polish).From my experiences,nowadays we can not prevent those online transactions that they have already been a kind of trends of shopping because of rapid growth of online shopping.At such time,we can not easily confirm which websites are safe enough as there are a lot of bugs on platforms and softwares.And more and more faked websites are showing around.A quick response and effective monitor from bank side is like a firewall for customer to reduce the risk from frauds.

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