My Blog

A credit card can be a good or an evil card, depending on who’s playing with it.

A smart player uses his credit card to buy things online, to travel to other countries without having had to bring a lot of cash with him, to pay for his petrol or groceries in exchange for cash rebates or rewards, and etc. At the meantime, a lousy player spends beyond his limit with his card, use it to pay for another card’s charges or even worse, not being careful enough and let his card information got stolen which then ends up paying for other people.

Anyway, I’m not here today to talk about the pros and cons of credit cards but to show you what (criteria) you should be looking for when you are applying for one.

There are a few things that we (fresh graduates) should look out to avoid being charged unreasonably by the credit card companies, a.k.a the banks. If you check on http://www.moneysection.com, those few things are annual fee, joining fee, annual percentage rate (APR), grace period, balance transfer and last but not least, monthly or hidden charges that could cost you quite a fortune if you miss them. Balance transfer only applies if we have more than one card, and assuming that we don’t (need), I will not discuss it here.

For us fresh graduates who’ve just got our first job in town, we will not want any annoying annual or joining fee which could eat up quite a portion of our pay check just like that. And of course, like any other loan’s monthly interest rates, least APR is the best but considering our situation here, with 0 annual fee and 0 joining fee and a minimal of salary qualification (as low as RM18,000), the best APR we could get currently is about 18%. But as long as we pay the amount we spend with the credit card within the grace periods (normally 20 days), the APR doesn’t apply.

So you might think, hey, then I will not be charged for anything by owning a credit card as long as I do not forget my bills, and this is way better than an ATM card! If you think that, think again! The credit card company will not survive if they don’t make a way to charge you, and that’s where monthly or hidden charges come in. Before you apply for any card, be sure that you are aware of what you might be charged monthly. Some cards require you to spend a certain amount of cash in a month in order for the (monthly) fees to be waived, while others might require card usage up to a certain number of times, and etc. Be sure of no crouching tiger hidden dragon before you sign up, or the tiger and dragon might come out of nowhere and swallow you in whole, alive.

Other than that, dealing with credit card companies can be quite a nuisance sometimes if they wrongly (or purposely) charge you without proper or in-time notice. So, a quick mental note here: find a decent company to deal with.

To make sure you won’t settle your bills late, it is good to have a saving account opened with the associated bank for easy transaction online. Out of many cards, maybe you would want to check out Maybank FLEX or the one from Direct Access.

Please spend wisely.

Album : Mountains
Artist: Lonestar
Year  : 2006
*****

It has been a while since I came across a good album. A good album for me is that you enjoy every song in it, not just one or two of them. Mountains by Lonestar certainly qualifies as one. The songs (Country) in it are great. Underlying the sweet melodies are beautiful stories told in the simplest ways. A good album that should be in your collection !

Song recommendation: Always in the band, Hey God, Mountains and all of the others.

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Album : Call Me Irresponsible
Artist: Michael Buble
Year  : 2007
***

Listening to Michael Buble has always been soothing. His last album It’s Time is one of my favorites of all time. He is unique, he is rare and he is good. As usual, you would find some jewels– his rendition of some of the all-time greatest hits in this album.

Song recommendation: Me and Mrs. Jones, Always On My Mind, Wonderful Tonight

2.06 billion units of Amanah Saham Wawasan 2020 (ASW 2020) are available for public subscription from 12 Sept to 25 Sept 2007. The previous launching was on March 12 this year with 1 billion units offered.

ASW 2020 is a fixed priced equity fund open to all Malaysians aged 6 months and above and is subject to 51:49 bumiputra and non-bumiputra quota. Each unit is priced at RM1.

A maximum limit of 20,000 units has been set per account holder. Of the new offer, 60 million units have been allocated to the disabled.

Like ASNs, ASW 2020 is one of the unit trust funds that parents will buy for their kids’ college education funds or people will buy to save for their retirement years.

Over the past 5 years, the fund had been promising by giving an annual return of over 6% to the unit holders. This is very good considering interests rate from fixed deposits at major local banks are only 3.7-3.8 % (1 year maturity period) while the inflation rate is currently at 5-6%. To be able to cope with the inflation rate or in other words, to avoid being poor, ASW2020 is simply a good investment because it is capital guaranteed like your fixed deposits, with the interests doubled.