Please File Your Taxes

A little reminder to everyone who has a file with the Inland Revenue Board.Its that time of year again! File your taxes before 30th April 2010. You could be slapped with a fine should you submit late.

As they say, there's nothing certain in life but Death and Taxes.

If you are filing your taxes by filling up the form, make sure you do send them earlier just in case, you know, it gets lost in the mail.

As for those who are doing e-Filing, you can do so here. Happy digging up your receipts!



Boodyboy, out!!

Loan Calculators

I know many of my peers are at the age where they are considering making either their biggest or 2nd biggest investment in their lifetime.

And they are : Properties and Vehicles.

And most of the time, we all need a loan to purchase these items as people usually do not hold so much cash.

Well, even if you do have enough cash, take a loan anyway, why bear all the risk on your own when you can use the bank's money to buy something you want. You could be better off investing in something that could bring higher returns than your loan interest rate.

Well, when you are shopping for a loan, you maybe bombarded with tonnes of brochures and flyers from different banks.

I usually like to do my own calculations well, so at least I at least have a benchmark to use when comparing loans.

Here are the 2 websites i use to calculate loans:

Housing Loans: eFunda (Mortgage)

Car loans: Autoworld

For housing loans, I know the rate usually floats according to the BLR, but since we cannot predict the movement of BLR, you would have to assume the rate is fixed for however long your tenure is.

Hence I do not use the lowest rate as it would not be a fair indicator. I usually use about 5-6% as the interest rate.

That being said, enjoy shopping for loans!


Boodyboy, out!!

Its Not Rocket Science; its figuring out where the money in your pocket went

Has this situation happened to you before?

One day, just as you are about to step out of the house, you take a look inside your wallet / purse. Then you realise you don't have enough money in it.

You think to yourself,"Hmm... I just withdrew a couple hundred bucks that day. Now where the heck did all the money go to?" Common situation right? Happens to me too ;-p




But the worse thing is that, by the time the 3rd week of the month comes, you go to the ATM and realise, "Shit, there isn't much money left inside too!" And this is a vicious cycle. Happens every month. And you still don't know where the money flew to...

And how do you stop this from happening?


My suggestion is: RECORD YOUR DAILY EXPENSES





Most of you would start to imagine yourself in the situation pictured above. Don't worry, it won't take you hours every night to do this. Its actually quite simple to do. If you do it daily, it will take less than 5 minutes. But if you do it weekly, it might take longer as you might need to try and remember where and how your money flew away.


All you need is either a notebook / diary or my fave, Microsoft Excel.

And for starters, you only need 3 columns: Date; Description of expense; Total / Cost


And all you need to do is fill it up daily. Petrol, toll, food, groceries and etc.


Its that simple!


Do it for a start, keep track for a few months and sooner or later, it becomes a habit.




And after a few months, you can begin to see patterns in your expenditure. You can then sort out which expenses are fixed and which one is variable.

That being said, you are already on your way to knowing and controlling your own money. And as the saying goes, you cannot master what you do not know ;-p


Happy tracking!!

Required Reading

It is kind of sad to see that this blog of mine was created last August. 7 months have passed and I've not even posted on it once. Well, this ends today.

Now to be on the way to leading a better financial lifestyle, a person would need to understand the basics of financial planning. In some countries, personal financial planning is a part of thier education system.

Over here, we don't have anything of that sort. We have people who work in financial industries who cannot for their own sake manage their own finances.

For those who love reading, I have a great recommendation. It's a really simple read, no big words, and very much based on story-telling.

It is called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

I've read it 3 times over myself a few years back because it was simple and I wanted to grasp its main concepts. And of course, he preaches SAVINGS as a essential start towards financial freedom.

*Excerpts from Wikipedia on the book*

***********************
The book is largely based on Kiyosaki's upbringing and education in Hawaii. The book highlights the different attitudes to money, work and life of two men, and how they in turn influenced key decisions in Kiyosaki's life.

Among some of the book's topics are:

the value of financial intelligence
that corporations spend first, then pay taxes, while individuals must pay taxes first
that corporations are artificial entities that anyone can use, but the poor usually don't know how
According to Kiyosaki and Lechter, wealth is measured as the number of days the income from your assets will sustain you, and financial independence is achieved when your monthly income from assets exceeds your monthly expenses. Each dad had a different way of teaching his son.
********************

While I do not advocate you to follow exactly what he does, his concepts do make sense, and he simplifies it to make sure its easy to understand.

After reading the book, a good way to remember what was taught in the book would be to play its board game, Cash Flow! Do note its kinda hard to find this board game over here.

I've had the privilege of playing this game once before, and yes I turned out to be the winner!
Well, of course, you would also need to luck of the dice. It's a simple game, and the situations in the game seems too easy, and we know in real life decisions are more difficult to make.

But nonetheless, it reinforces what you have read. Its a great game to introduce kids to financial planning and I do hope more parents actually teach kids about money.

Well anyways, I shall sign out here and I hope to post up something pretty soon.

Save and Invest!!

Welcome Welcome!

Having studied for my CFP (Certified Financial Planner) with the aim of helping the people around me with their finances, my ideals have kinda taken a backstep when i started joining the work force.

I've not had the luxury to come up with useful tips for people who needs to take the first step towards financial planning. I've met many young colleague of my age, who simply have not started thinking about their finances. For those who have, they do not know where or how to start.

Hence, this is why this blog has been created. Over here, I will try my bestest to come up with easy to understand articles that will hopefully encourage people to become more aware, to take charge of their own finances.

There isn't a point of me having my CFP and not be able to help people.

To all my fellow readers, If you do ever have any questions pertaining your own finances, do drop me a personal email at boodyboy@gmail.com, or just leave a comment. If you do know who i am, give me a call, we can talk this over a cup of teh tarik.

Till another time,

Save and Invest!!