DragonBall Z Gold Foil Cards

There is a lot of investments out there being marketed out there nowadays. Gold and silver have been a hot hot topic nowadays since its price have been on a severe down-trend this year. It is much cheaper as compared to last year per say and this prompted a lot of people wanting to buy GOLD cheap in the hopes of selling it high later on when it goes on an up-trend again.

Heck, some financial gurus out there even shouted that they make money by shorting GOLD ETF indexes when it went downhill. These are the same bunch of people that was shouting buy buy buy like no tomorrow last few months ago. I guess they did not warn their readers about their 'EXIT' strategy. They just told you they make easy MONEY both ways aka when the price is up and when it tanked. 

It is not like I blame them, but I pity those that follow them blindly without thinking and analysing things themselves. The proverb "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" is always true to me. Armed yourselves with knowledge , that is why I named my blog to be www.knowthymoney.com. Because when I started this blog like 7-8 years ago, I am truly a newbie to the financial world. And now since I am getting older and hopefully wiser, I still don't know everything. But at least I know something :D

Okey, enough regressing. 

Back to my topic of "Gold/Silver vs Stock vs Property Investment Thoughts":

I am still doubtful on gold and silver investments, either physical or paper investment types. Gold and silver investments are like my DragonBallZ gold foil cards, it can be priceless, but it cannot generate any income to me and its value is highly subjective to the purchaser. 

For example, the DragonBallZ gold cards can trade like USD100 a pop on Ebay provided people go and buys it. (This makes me to wonder whether I have a few hundred of USD100s of gold foil cards lying around at my house drawer..Gotta check it out one of these days. Woot. My severely long term investments, which causes alot of angry naggings from my mom when I was a kid)

Hence I still like stocks (NOT unit trusts) and property investments. Stocks can provided healthy dividend returns to me while for property, my rentor is helping to pay for my property!

Speaking of dividend stocks, due to overwhelming response, do forgive me if I did not re-send out my newsletter on this matter . (See here for more details: In pursuit of dividend stocks in Malaysia). 

Like what I mentioned I will only can do weekly periodic checking on that matter to resend you the list. So sign up ASAP by end of each week (I check it on Sunday) to avoid waiting for another week long. Btw, KCLI has broke the 1,800 barrier and this certainly is interesting event!!

Have a nice weekend!!

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Since property is a hot topic nowadays, so I decided to buy this book "3 Years to a RM10 million Property Portfolio" simply because it had a catchy title and it was wrapped up in plastic.So no browsing T.T

I really dislike Popular Bookstore for wrapping up all their books to prevent people from browsing. It is as though asking me to buy clothes and shorts without testing it out whether it fits!!! Yes, I am very particular about the books that I buy.

At least leave a sample book for customers to browse thru to see whether it is worth to buy it. Maybe there is a lot of people out there is like me: I literally don't buy any books that I can read finish under 1 hours that is my rule!! If I can finish reading something under 1 hours, it means that the book lack anything new that I don't know about.

So what is the book all about??

So the book is about the journey of Dexter Lim and his wife achieving financial freedom thru "No Money Down Method" of buying property. They literally started from ZERO, and with credit card debts mounting. They even started buying the first property with the 10% being funded by credit card. (There is a disclaimer though, as they don't encourage this method. But they were desperate to buy their first property)

So the entire book is about their journey to accumulate more properties and collect positive rental cash flow. I also think that is a good career move that both of them eventually switched their career to something financial related. Dexter switch to become a part time agent while his wife became a mortgage office. (Of course Dexter now surely makes more money doing seminars :P)

And lastly, IMHO Dexter is blessed to have such an understanding girlfriend and then wife who fully supports their investment journey. Trust me, your BED partner is very important to reach personal freedom if you start from scratch.

So where does W.T Kam comes into the picture??

So W.T Kam is actually their mentor and guru into the property foray. Dexter and wife attended his course and in this book, the guru gives his advice on what Dexter did. Whether what he did is correct or did a mistake during his early days.

In the end, like any happy ending book, Dexter and wife ended owning RM10 million portfolio by moving to commercial properties in 3 years!!! 

How To Do Simple Calculations On Property Investment?

What I like about the book which I think is beneficial to the newbies is the "Number for this deal" where Dexter pointed out the value of the property, the value of the down payment and the market value. This is good so that newbies know how to calculate the ROI and potential of the property.

However, something is missing on "the cash out portion of the calculations".Sadly they don't show this in the book, I guess readers need to attend the seminar to know more about this in detail as stated in their book. Perhaps in their next book revision, they would like to include in this info which IMHO no doubt will be useful.

So my personal rating for the book would be 2/5, as I think the book is well written in simple and understandable English and I enjoyed reading Dexter's rags to riches stories. The only cons here is this book is not suitable for advanced property investors like me T.T

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Skim Rumah Pertamaku aka My First Home Scheme applicants can get a special "discount" on the housing interest rates. The discount is BLR - 1.8% which I think is NOT a preferential rate. The market currently is trying to woo customers with at least BLR-2% some even go up till BLR-2.2%!! Even though a difference of 0.4% can be small, nevertheless a penny saved is a penny earned.

KUALA LUMPUR: Young Malay­sians eligible for housing loans under the My First Home Scheme will be charged an interest rate or profit rate of base lending rate (BLR) minus 1.8% for the duration of their loan.

A person has to be no more than 35 years of age when applying for the loan and their individual monthly income must not be more than RM3,000 a month.

The maximum duration of a loan under the My First Home Scheme is 30 years or up to the age of 65 years, whichever comes first.

Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) deputy president, head of community financial services Lim Hong Tat said the maximum loan amount under the new scheme would be 105%, with a loan covering the entire value of the house and an additional 5% for mortgage reducing term assurance (MRTA).

Home buyers would need to also take fire insurance for their new homes and have the option of taking either a conventional or Islamic loan when buying their house.

The loan will exclude refinancing, re-mortgage and a redraw facility.

Lim said the scheme was open to salaried and fixed-income earners and those applying need to be confirmed employees who have been working for a minimum of six months with the same employer.

Businessmen, the self-employed and non-fixed income earners are not eligible for a loan under the scheme.

“The repayment amount is 1/3 of the monthly income or up to a maximum of 50% margin of repayment on a case-by-case basis,” said Lim in an e-mail response.

The Government on Tuesday launched the My First Home Scheme for young Malaysians to buy their first house.

See link here.100% Housing Loan
The website for the scheme is www.srp.com.my 

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Below are of my opinion only, and based on my observations. There is a general saying that the bull market is going to end when the aunties and taxi drivers starts to recommend stock for you to buy. Here is my own observations on the stock market as the bear market for property has yet to happen.

Stock Market HOT

- A-lot of local brokerages are doing roadshows giving overviews on the stock market in general. Their objective is to encourage more retailers to open brokerage accounts for trading. They are usually teamed up with the technical analyst providers/trainers, where these FREE seminars are usually is a pre-view to their courses. You need to pay more $$$ to attend the "REAL" training courses.  During the last bull market, it seems that every weekend there is a seminar by one of the local brokerage houses that is held at 5-Star Hotels. With the free good food and drinks, a lot of newbies and retailers will attend the events. The important part to note that during the bull market, the organizers are very willing to fork out alot of money to provide quality food (I meant like cakes, buffet style lunch, etc).

Stock Market COLD

The frequency of events starts gets lesser and lesser until you never heard any events held by the local brokerage firms. If there any, there is no longer free good food and drinks for the participants. Plus, if there is any, the food served is just a simple fried rice and beehoon....lol.

I assumed the same indicator will apply to the property investment. Already I got a few emails on future property investment talks sent out by my friends. As the property investment market usually SUPER DUPER LAGS the stock market , it will take longer for it to burst. 

The key to property investment is the % rental yields that you can generate and also the long term holding power. Don't talk about property appreciation, as like stock, a property can only appreciate if the buyers assumes that the "highly valued" property  prices will increase even more. However unlike stocks, property market is a thing that is EASY TO GET IN, HARD TO GET OUT in an event of no/poor bidders. Hence, a decent rental yield is vital and this highly achievable only when you managed to buy the property at a very low price.

Something similar to dividend yielding stocks, where in a BULL market it is hard to get a decent % (I mean percentage here) dividend as most of the stock prices have already accelerated upwards.

P.S I will attend one of the coming property investment talks to sample out the quality of food provided :D

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