Below is another case study I’ve done for a reader. This is the email I received from him.

Dear KC,
I will be 40 years old soon. I am married with a 10 years old daughter. My wife is same age as me, she is a housewife. I have very little knowledge about the profession of financial advisory as retirement always seem far and away. Reading your book awakes me to the importance of financial planning and the quality of life.
My asset as bellow:
1) House (own stay) – Market value of RM800K with RM470K loan outstanding.
2) Second house tenanted at RM850/month. The market value is RM300K with no loan.
3) Share holding of RM840K, all invested in KLSE.
4) EPF RM460K.

Could you please advise if I have saved enough to meet the following requirements?
1) Do I have enough for retirement with monthly income of RM6500? I plan to retire as soon as possible. I will still continue to work after retirement but it would be nice not have to work for money.

2) Education fund for my daughter at about RM300K current value. The education fund is my second goal. It is up to my daughter where she chose to study. I hope to have the resources available if needed.

3) I do not have any insurance except those provided by the employer. Please recommend basis insurance requirement after retirement. Currently the employer provides PA & medical for family. No coverage upon cessation of employment. Should I take up medical insurance upon retirement? How much is sufficient for the family?
I plan to sell the second house and invest the proceeds in equity for higher return.
Thank you.
Ron

Retire with monthly income of RM6500

To retire now with passive income of RM6500/month (78,000 per annum), assuming that the average annual return of 8%, Ron would need to have an investment portfolio of RM975,000.

Looking at Ron’s current asset:
- Share holding of RM840k in Bursa Malaysia
- Second house of RM300k
- EPF RM460k

His total assets are RM1.6million. Let’s exclude EPF from the portfolio, he still have RM1.14 million. To get RM78k return per annum from RM1.14 million worth of investment assets, he just needs to generate 7% return.
His retirement need is met in this case. To generate a 7% return per annum, it is pretty much achievable with the right mix of asset allocation.

Ron mentioned that he plan to sell the house to be invested in equity. But I wouldn’st suggest that because of several reasons:

1. If all his money is invested in equity, it is like putting all your egg in the same basket. Unless he is very good in stock picking and knows what he is doing. Warren Buffett invests almost all his money in stocks and he takes care of his portfolio really well.

2. His second house is giving a return of 3% per annum [RM850 x 12)/300k], which is much lower than the required return of 7% per annum. But properties appreciate over time. Another option is to refinance the house in order to withdraw more capital to be invested in the stock market. Doing this, he can still grab the full return when the house appreciates, while he is making money in the stock market and only paying low interest charges to the bank.

Anyway, there is no absolutely right answer for this. If Ron knows stocks very well compared to real estate, he can definitely sell the house and make more money from stock using the same amount of capital.

As a conclusion, Ron can retire already!

Education fund of RM300k

Since Ron’s daughter is only 10 years old, she will only need the large amount of education fund maybe 8-10 years later. At that time, Ron can withdraw his EPF account 2 for his daughter’s education fees.

Insurance Planning for retirement

Basically, Ron would need to get his family well-covered with insurance protection to prevent any unforeseen illness. Since Ron can afford to retire now, if he chose to stop his employment, it is advisable to get his personal insurance coverage effective.

There are 5 categories of life insurance coverage:

1. Personal Accident plan – this can be purchased from general insurance companies and also online at Tunemoney.

2. Hospitalization and surgical benefit – this is the medical card we often talk about. Most medical card cover until age 80 with adequate lifetime limit. It depends on the hospitalization package you prefer. I would suggest to get a lifetime limit coverage of not less than RM300,000 per person.

3. 36 critical illnesses – For a person who is actively earning money now, I suggest to be covered at least 3 times of your annual income. But for a retiree, probably RM100,000 would be enough just to fund the nursing care and some outpatient medication. Most of the major medical fees are covered if you have a medical card.

4. Total Permanent Disablement – This benefit is included when you are covered for 36 critical illnesses.

5. Death benefit – This benefit is also included when you are covered for 36 critical illnesses. For a retiree, death benefit is not so important compared to those actively working adults who are the breadwinners in their families.

You can allocate 5-10% of your income for insurance planning. Normally it is adequate to get your family well covered. In Ron’s situation, he can allocate about RM400-600/month for insurance planning.

Ron, well done!

You are doing a lot better than majority of the population at you age.

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

He can retire now & afford his daughter’s RM300k education fund[Case Study]

I first encountered the term “Economic Outpatient Care“ or EOC from the book “The Millionaire Next Door” by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. When I first read the book over more than ten years ago, I thought EOC is very common. The term as defined in the book refers to “the substantial economic gifts and acts of kindness some parents give their adult children and grandchildren.”

Personally, I believe that EOC is just an extension of parental support through adulthood and beyond. The parents raised their children and continue to give support as they see fit. Now that I am a parent myself, I do wish to assist my children even after they reach adulthood and have families of their own. This will depend of course on whether I have the resources to do so.

I do see acquaintances or relatives that practice EOC. I observe that it is more common for those who are better off and can afford to do it often. I have been a recipient of EOC myself but it was far in between and for special circumstances only. Hence, I do not expect or anticipate it when it is given.

The book also states that “In general, the more dollars adult children receive, the fewer they accumulate, while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.” I believe this situation is avoidable if the recipient is taught or trained to not take it for granted and to strive to build his own fortune or wealth.

The parents or the distributor of EOC should take responsibility for ensuring the recipient is not dependent on their support. The recipient must acknowledge that the gifts should be used or invested wisely.

Some questions to ponder on are:

• Do you receive EOC?
• Do you think you fall into the statement above?
• How do you use your gifts?
• Has receiving EOC influence the way you handle your finances?

For those who do not get EOC, what do you think about this subject matter?

Reference book: The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko, 1996 Pocket Books

Read other articles by Jacquelyn at WParent.com on parenting matters and Tips4Everyone.com on solving marriage problems.

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

Economic Outpatient Care

I’ve been following Salvatore Dali’s blog for a few years and he is the first and trusted person I will turn to when it comes to investing in stock markets.

Listen to his interview at BFM here:
(he also explained why he includes beauty’s picture every time he post on his blog)

(feed subscribers and email subscribers, please visit the blog post to listen to the mp3 embedded).

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

Investment Interview of Salvatore Dali, Blogger of MalaysiaFinance

This is a guest-post by Sayeed, a senior manager in a large MNC in Penang. He wrote an earlier blog titled From Credit Card Debt to Owning 6 Houses. His philosophy in life is sharing and learning, “the more you share, the more you learn”. Following his association with the world of investments focused in the past 5 years, both Sayeed and his wife are confidently leading to a financial successful lifestyle, his wife retired as an employee and today runs her own business, blessed with 2 kids, this couple have learnt through tough times about their financial literacy. Sayeed is currently focused in accumulating wealth and dreams of becoming a future speaker, author, trainer and coach to help others achieve financial success.

Have we come across people who have unfinished business in their personal lives and / or uncompleted a goal or target that they were working on? Every time, we encounter people and even ourselves, have been in situation where we set a goal but left it uncompleted. I have met people working on their business later called off, people working on career goals later gave up and the most famous people working on diet later forgot about it totally.

The biggest motivation factor that brings this to happen is due to not getting effective results or bored with the system. Well, many books like Normal Vincent Peale’s Think and Grow Rich, David J Schwartz’s Magic of Thinking Big, and even Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits..talks about the most important factor that is required to make things happen, begin with end in mind !!

Well here are some pointers on make a success in a goal setting process:

1. Begin with end in mind.

Knowing what do we want, where do we want to go. I will call this final destination stop with a imaginary word “DREAM”. We need to have a dream. All of us have dreams, we want to be someone, achieve, own, gain, nourish and make it in the real world.

When we were kids, we were open to these discussions and without hesitant we would pronounce of what we wanted, but as we grow old, the reality sunk in, we have more “NO” being told and we settle for the mediocrity.

So it is the time to relive our dreams, it is never too late to achieve dreams. If you have not, then you should watch The Secret Movie, it talks about how people in today’s world have achieve their dreams, and it is so true, when we see interviews of people who have achieved something in their lives, they have mentioned, “it was my dream” to achieve it.

So start dreaming, it is FREE.

2. (Re)Live the Dream.

Now, this is a strong recommendation, our mind work in very objective ways and would copy and do what the mind sees. So make pictures of the dreams that you have. Have a dream book or dream slides. I have dream slides on my laptop. Every morning, I’ll see these dream slides. I have slides divided to [l use the word my = my family and me]; my dream home, my dream car, my dream finances, my dream vacation, my dream business, my dream knowledge etc. It is in slide show, with a background music score (I just change recently the music score to “Note to God” sung by Charice.)

3. Visualizing it.

It is important to visualize it. Set a time of the day, for me, it is early in the morning when I set into my office. Visualizing that I have achieve the dreams and being there. It teaches my mind to be focus on those items. The mind works in very mysterious way and get to hunt for things that is seen. So be careful of what our eyes watches.

4. Being in the zone.

If you want to achieve something, you need to be in the “zone”, like the twilight zone . Being in the zone, simply means, you read, write, talk about your dreams to yourself. Self talk is very important. Thank to God for giving your these opportunity in every prayers, HE who decides all this for us, all is his gifts and we understand without his blessings, there is nothing for us. Self talk as if you are in the future, blessed with all the good things that you have planned. Now self talk is not telling others, that is arrogance!!

5. Keep Track

Finally keep track of your progress, have a plan on how these dreams are to be achieved and when to be achieved. Keep a report card on how well you are doing, if you are not doing well, maybe there is an adjustment required, do it. Have a personal coach in certain of the goals. I have personal coach for my fitness, finances, business (even Tiger Woods have a coach).

It’s okay if you miss the goal, reset and re plan it.

Finally, all these are not easy actions, it requires a great amount of patience, persistence, courage and personal change. $ucce$$ is within us, between our 2 ears above our eyes, yes, in our head!!

If we think we can, we are right. If we think we can’t, we are right too. Doing the 5 top actions would not be a problem for us as all the above are activities. But what will keep us going throughout the activities are ourselves. That is the toughest.

But not to worry, there is a solution for that, reading books “ non fictional, on finance, personal growth, management, business etc. Most my friends have given up reading with simple answers like, (I don’t have the time), I don’t like reading, Reading no longer go into my head”, “enough studying my whole schooling and college days” and the best one “I hate books”.

So here is a suggestion, just get 15 minutes a day to read a book, best before going to bed. Develop the habit from there, do it for 21 – 30 days and a habit will be developed.

Happy Dreaming !!

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

Focus: Achieving Goals

What is my net worth? Some people love to calculate their net worth from time to time. There are others who avoid doing it as ignorance is bliss especially when the truth can be painful sometimes.

Recently, I went to one of my favorite financial blogs, “The Simple Dollar” referring to the same subject and the author Trent, made a big change in the way he calculated his net worth. Previously, he included his home and automobiles which gave him a nice positive net worth. He has decided to eliminate the value of his home plus the value of the automobiles and consequently, this puts him into negative net worth territory.

Calculate your net worth

It depends on your personal choice on how you want to calculate your net worth. The easiest and basic formula is, “Net worth = All assets – All liabilities”. This is what I used to calculate my own net worth. As opposed to Trent’s method, I do include the value of my house, cars as well as other properties in my net worth calculation.

Another method of calculating net worth which is derived from a survey can be found in the popular book “The Millionaire Next Door” by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. Their formula tells you what your net worth should be right now based on your age and income.

The formula extracted from the book is:

“Multiply your age times your realized pretax annual household income from all sources except inheritances. Divide by ten. This, less any inherited wealth, is what your net worth should be.”

For example, if you are 30 years old now and makes RM50,000 a year and you also have investment returns of RM10,000 a year, multiply RM60,000 (RM50,000 + RM10,000) by 30. You will get RM1,800,000. Divide this amount by ten and you will get RM180,000.

The authors also define which category you belong to in terms of wealth accumulation. By following the example above, multiply RM180,000 by two to get RM360,000 (RM180,000 x 2). If your current net worth meets this figure and above, then you are known as a PAW (prodigious accumulator of wealth). If not, you are either a UAW (under accumulator of wealth) or an AAW (average accumulator of wealth).

I do not have to ask which category you want to belong to. It is normal to want to be known as a PAW, striving to build your personal wealth. Personally, I like the basic formula and I do not worry too much if I am not a PAW as long as my net worth is a big positive number and remains so until I reach old age.

Do you have a personal formula for calculating your own net worth? Do you follow Trent’s method of excluding your house and automobiles as assets?

Reference book: The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko, 1996 Pocket Books

Read other articles by Jacquelyn at WParent.com on parenting matters and Tips4Everyone.com on solving marriage problems.

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

What is My Net Worth?

This is a guest-post by Sayeed, a senior manager in a large MNC in Penang. He wrote an earlier blog titled “From Credit Card Debt to Owning 6 Houses”. His philosophy in life is sharing and learning, “the more you share, the more you learn”. Following his association with the world of investments focused in the past 5 years, both Sayeed and his wife are confidently leading to a financial successful lifestyle, his wife retired as an employee and today runs her own business, blessed with 2 kids, this couple have learnt through tough times about their financial literacy. Sayeed is currently focused in accumulating wealth and dreams of becoming a future speaker, author, trainer and coach to help others achieve financial success.

I was raised by my grandmother after I lost both my parents at the age of 4. She became the essence of my life while growing up and there were times of worries what would I do without her. She was married to a man, who was the richest man in town, but upon his death, the wealth was gone and her finals days of life, she was without a single cent in her bank. How did that happened?

One thing that was in my mind, study hard, get a good job, get married and live happily ever after, of course this was the preaching that came from my grandmother. She always wanted me to have a government job as well so that I will get the pension scheme when I grow old. She had the whole plan thought out for me, until I grow old. Call it responsibility or love, for me it was my grandmother, my only chance of survival, which for me was far greater than responsibility and love.

Now, what does happily ever after was she telling me about? Well I didn’t had much time to ask her, but was it about big house, big car, a lot of money, travelling around the world, buying things that I like and have the time for myself to do what I like without the need of going to work?

I followed exactly her advice, studied, not so hard though as I found a girl during my college, got married to the girl, had family, work, house, car, credit cards, mortgage and kids. I did it, exactly, happily ever after without a cent in the bank.

The saying goes in Malay, “kais pagi makan pagi, kais petang makan petang”. There were too much of a month left after the salary is gone. We were both husband and wife working hard, to settle all our bills and still had zero saving at the end of the month, with of course owing a lot of money to credit cards. Wow, that’s not a dream, it was a nightmare!!

We have had dreams; we planned to have a beautiful house, with a land that we can sit in the evenings having coffee or tea, which I prefer, having a dream car, travel to many countries like Europe, US, India, Africa. My wife, she just loves shopping, that’s her passion. She never ever wanted to go to work or work for someone, since day one she wanted her own business. Well my passion was into training, teaching, writing and coaching.

Actually to bounce back from a negative cash flow and the urge to get out of that rot, moving towards a better lifestyle was driven by our dreams and passion. It all fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle, the growing up experiences, the dreams that we had, the struggle that we faced and finally the strategy to success, was what I call as the “God’s Plan” for us.

We just believed and worked towards getting it done. I did write this in the earlier blog “From Credit Cards Debt to Owning 6 Houses”. Well, did I say “dreams and passion”? Yes, absolutely correct. This is where we want to start off on our journey to financial stability.

Without a dream or motivation or passion, this whole journey can be very difficult. For some, the dream could be a huge bungalow, car, travelling and status stuff, but for others, it may be doing what they love on their own time despite not having all the big bungalow or car. Someone may just want to be debt free, not wanting to go to a “job” or having enough money for retirement age etc.

These are few steps along the way; we have learnt and put into practice:

Find a dream of what you really want, break it down to – health, wealth, faith, travelling, hobbies, career/business, etc.

Put them into picture form – have a DREAMBOOK, cut and paste on the book, or have a DREAMSLIDES on your computer – even better you can add in your favourite music number on your DREAMSLIDES [of course doesn’t work on DREAMBOOK]

Read and/or view it daily once at least, visualize it, personalize it.

Keep adding to your dream collections. – The sky is the limit. Don’t be logical whether you can or cannot, it’s what you want.

Tick off those that come through.

No matter what the dream or passion or motivation is, it is important to be identified now, put into writing and pictures, visualizing it and reviewing them periodically. In the book/VCD “The Secrets: Law of Attraction”, Jim Carrey the famous actor of Ace Ventura and many more, understood the law of attraction very early in his life. He wrote and carried around a million dollar cheque to himself well before he came to movies. When he was offered for the movie Ace Ventura, he received his million dollar cheque in real life.

Well I have some ticks that I off from my dream list, it is good to see it happening…..wouldn’t you.

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

DREAMS Do Come True!! – Our actions and visualizations set our Future

It is a step-by-step guide to making money online without spending a single cent.

Before I started making money online a few years ago, I bought all the “make money online” books published by local author. I also read them all. Generally, those books provide a good introduction, but not really showing you very detailed step-by-step guide.

But the 8-day Internet Wonder is different. It is an easy read that provides you relevant and up-to-date method that really work. Edwin show you how you can research a profitable niche and later expand it to a website that can provide income flow to you for long term.

Edwin is kind enough to give me an extra copy of his book to be given away to you. It is pretty simple to enter this contest. You just have to write a comment below and tell us why do you want to make money online? And what’s the difficulty or obstacles that keep you from doing it full time?

Edwin John lives very near to me. Let me try to get an interview with him and I will reveal more secrets to you.

Stay tuned!

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

The 8-day Internet Wonder by Edwin John

My publisher had finalized the book cover design and also the book title for the Malay translation of Top Money Tips for Malaysians.

The finalized title is Tip-tip Kewangan Untuk Rakyat Malaysia. It is not a fancy title, but apparently shows that it is the translation version. There is not much changes on the book cover except some colour changes, and my photo added at the back cover.

I checked through your replied emails to see if anyone suggested the title. But I couldn’t find the exact match.
So I chose the best match and here are the winners and their title suggestions in bracket:

Ani Munirah (Tip-tip Kewangan Utama Untuk Rakyat Malaysia)
Woon Lip Fuey (tips kepada rakyat malaysia)
Harvinder Kaur (Tip Kewangan untuk Rakyat )
Solleh Mahfoz (Tip Kewangan Paling Popular untuk rakyat Malaysia)

Congratulations! Please contact me to provide your mailing address and I will send you a complimentary of this book once I receive it next year.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the emails you reply to me. I highly appreciate all your effort to make a wonderful suggestion.

Happy new year!!!

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

Tip-tip Kewangan Untuk Rakyat Malaysia

This is a guest post by Wai Yin, who had achieve financial freedom at age 38.

I learned about managing finances when I was a child from my parents especially from my dear mom who has given me life and also taught me how to be prudent with money. I modeled my mom in several ways. We were not rich then, my dad was in business debts  and I have to give tuition at age 13 to pay for my school fees and other expenses. However I thank them for giving me a fantastic learning environment ,virtues and values which has helped me in my later years.

Although I do high risk investment at times, I believe I am conservative as I usually invest with what I have. My mom’s investment rule is never borrow to invest & she is successful in investment, owning houses & stocks without debt , getting good passive incomes for  retirement. My opinion is that it is ok to borrow from the financial institutions, in fact most investors and businessmen leverage on the banks too; it depends on our risk appetite and how well we manage it.

For me, I tried to keep it low because of my mom’s teaching. Also, I believe that greed and fear are buddy, it comes in a package. When we make friend with greed, we accept fear too. As I find fear draining my energy, disturbing me and making me lose my focus for bigger things in life, I choose to stay away from greed as much as I can.

Whether my approach in investment suits you or not will depend on individual. It worked well for me and I hope my sharing will help you too .By the way, I am not trained  in investment and I have no background on crunching financial data, I learned through the many mistakes I made and they are my best mentors. My passion is on leadership & personal development.

Although investment is a different subject altogether, I find what I have learned in self development helps in my investment’s strategies and also in other areas of my life. I believe it is the attitude, character, belief & value system that make or break us. Luckily, all of these can be changed if we have a willing heart…

Firstly, I learned from the books I read that my hard earned money need to be protected, further I also need to make it work harder for me rather than sitting in the bank.

Lesson 1: Never Believe in “lobangs”

The no 1 lesson I learned : “Never hear say some lobangs and jump into it”, only a fool does that. Always do homework, there is no free lunch and we have our part to play if we want to be an investor . I saw people attracted by the money in the stock market or property market and follow blindly. When the investment fall apart, they usually lay blames. When we justify our self, we learn nothing.   Take charge of our own action  and be responsible. Instead, review what are the lessons we gain. If we got the right answer, we will soon be on the road to winning and success in life. God gives us a great mind to think, do not store it in the store room or backyard….

Now assume we did the homework and understand the investment well, do not start yet unless we want to lose our money. Understanding the ups and downs, features and options of an investment is an external exercise; we also need to do the internal exercise which is our self. Most of the investment’s consultants talk about checking our capital, our risk level, to invest long or short term etc which I called technical stuffs, I find understanding our attitude, belief & behavior pattern in different situations and outcomes are equally important.

This is the psychological part of a human being and we react based on the experiences, expectations ,values & beliefs. This is important because when there is sudden change in investment’s climate , or so called good lobangs etc, our emotion will decide how we play the game, our logical mind no longer take control under such situations.

For eg, we can be easily influenced; if most of our friends had did it and make money, I believe you will not want to be left behind. When so called “opportunity” strike, even low risk takers are convinced to park their money there and expect to flip it soon… Knowing our self well is like knowing our enemies in the battlefield as quoted in the Sun Tzu’s Art of War. In investment, we are our biggest enemy,it is crucial to know our self well so that we can discipline our thoughts when necessary

Lesson 2: Never invest with the attitude of gaining big overnight

Lesson no 2: Never invest with the attitude of gaining big overnight. Big gain comes with big risk…and unless we are well prepared for that. Maybe we strike it right the 1st time but believe me money that comes easy, will go easy too. There are people who were destroyed by their previous success and ended up worst than before. And I can assure you, more people lose money in investment than winning from it. If investing is as easy as 123, there is no poor people around.  If you win it big overnight, it is luck and I suggest you to keep the money properly and be really careful in future investment

Lesson 3: Invest to Win

Lesson no 3: Invest to win.  The confidence of winning must be  75% and above before we put the money in. Why do we want to play a game that has 50% or probably lower chance of winning?  Isn’t this like gambling ? Yes, I agree in investment , there is risk and there is no sure win, but we do have our choice not to play the loser game ( 50% or lower is loser game for me) . I saw many doing this…when the market is hot, they rush in, worry they may miss it…When the market plunge, they panic and dump it. They have no idea where the market is heading… they react because of fear. Actually, fear can only attack us when we do not have confidence or we lose our confidence for the future.  If we have confidence with the company, the industry and the economy outlook, what will we do instead? Robert Kiyosaki has recently said in an interview that such economy downturn has got little or no impact to professional investors; it only gives them more opportunities. The professional investors do value investing, and they don’t fizzle out when the investment’s climate change. They invest with confidence and there is only one reason for them to invest, that is to win.

Lesson 4: Perpare to make mistakes

Lesson no 4: Prepare to make mistakes .Even professional investors make mistakes, so do we. Accept it and see if there is anything for us to learn from the experience.  Here, I like to share one of my past experiences of having an invitation in year 2000 to participate in a pre-IPO private placement by Robert Kiyosaki’s investment team as I get to know one of them while helping them facilitate the popular cash flow game. The company was in the mining industry preparing  for listing. Will you jump  onto the opportunity since they are gurus? IPO is a hot subject then… is it risky? Very! But want to take it? why not, is a rare chance to tag along professional investors.

I was ruled by greed,  believing they can’t  be wrong and I jumped in with little information on the industry plus never  familiar with the listing criteria in the Canada Stock Exchange, all the information I had were hear say….The IPO never succeed (so guru make mistakes too)  I held a paper loss and has written it off long ago. Is the experience painful? Well, actually I am glad I had a chance to learn my stupidity at my early age; otherwise the losses may be bigger now. There is no sure win, the question here is can we afford to lose when we make a mistake ? Do we move forward or dwell on it ?

Lesson 5: Action

And last but not least, lesson no 5: Action. I saw some friends who done every checks but still worry so much when fear start to take control. This is what I shared previously on taking actions. If we stay in our comfort zone, definitely it will not be the track to success; in fact it is a fast track to nowhere. Start small if we are fearful…, my opinion is that, it is good to be fearful so that we can be prudent with our money, however, do not let fear paralyze us. If we have done our best to check out what we don’t know, let’s have faith, step out with  courage and confidence. If we want to change our current lifestyle, changing our self is inevitable; let’s embrace change with the right attitude and I assure you, the speed of your change in the right direction will determine the speed of your success in life.

I hope the above sharing helps, but if you are looking for professional tips on investment, I afraid I might have disappointed you. The above are valuable lessons that I have learned and it has helped me make wise decisions for my investments.

This is a guest post by Wai Yin, who had achieve financial freedom.

You can read Wai Yin’s previous articles here:

• Achieving Financial Freedom at 38
• Action leads to Success

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

The Important Lessons I Learned On Investment

Top Money Tips for Malaysians is being translated into Malay language. Last month, I’ve put up a poll to ask your feedback whether I should include my photo on the cover design.

Thanks for your feedback

Most of you said that I should go ahead. Just put up the picture because

• Most author do so, why not?
• It shows that I am a “real” person
• It is easy to recognize when I publish new books in the future
• It gives a personal feel, more bonding to the readers
• It is a great publicity
• It is the perfect time to reveal myself

However, some readers did give me very constructive feedbacks of not putting up the picture reasoning that:

• People won’t care about how I look
• Because it is a translation, I should keep the cover in tact.
• I am not famous. Don’t fool myself.
• The cover design may not be attractive if there is big picture of my face

Poll Result

There are more than 200 votes from you.

72% voted “Yes”
28% voted “No”

Therefore, the decision is pretty easy to be made. I decided to include my picture on the cover. But it won’t be a very big picture showing all the defects on my face (sorry that I didn’t allocate any budget for facial care). Instead, there will be a small picture printed on the back cover.

I take your advice seriously. Special thanks to:
Sayeed
Ray Lee
Coinstar
Adino
2bz4money
Henry
Woon Lip Fuey
Kumar
Benson
Tan Wei Yee

Thanks a lot for your participation in the poll and I learnt a lot from your comments.

I will post the finalized cover design here soon.

This article is posted at: KCLau's Money Tips

[Poll Result] My picture on the cover?