My Blog

What life insurance agents truly care about is what they can get from you rather than what you can get from them.

Thus, we need to really understand our basic needs to avoid paying too much to the company. For example, let’s consider the following profile:

Profile: male, non-smoker, healthy, age 30

Insurance coverage: RM50, 000

Period: 30 years

Your agent will surely recommend on either:

1. Investment-linked life insurance

Premium: RM1, 800 per annum (increases as age increases)

Benefits: RM50, 000 coverage, level coverage, crisis cover with critical illness, investment value at RM250, 000 upon 30 years maturity (depends on how well the fund/bond you invest in perform).

2. Whole Life** Insurance (without investment activity) with a higher annual premium (does not increase with age) and a fixed cash value which is generally lesser than an investment return.

If he is truly a good friend of yours, he will probably quote you the following two "real savers" packages:

1. Term life** insurance (level coverage)

Premium: RM662.50 per annum (save 63% compare to investment-linked)

Benefits: RM50, 000, level coverage*, crisis cover with critical illness, 30 years term life without cash value or investment value

2. Term life** insurance (reducing coverage)

Premium: RM283.50 per annum (save 57% compare to term life level coverage)

Benefits: RM50,000, reducing coverage*, without crisis cover on critical illness, 30 years term life without cash value or investment value

**The difference between whole life and term life is that in whole life,

1. you will have to pay extra premium every year. This extra premium goes into your savings for the life insurance.

2. after 30 years, you get your return or cash value (usually at a rate equal to fixed deposit if nothing happens to you. If anything happen to you, you will get paid by that extra premium you’ve paid.

3. after several years, you don’t have to pay for the premium.

*The difference between level coverage and reducing coverage is that

1.  for level coverage, your life insurance coverage stays at RM50,000 for the next 30 years.

2.  for reducing coverage, your life insurance coverage will reduce every year from RM50, 000 right up to NIL at the end of the 30 years.

3.  level covers you from critical illnesses.

In my personal POV, if you want a risk-free and low premium policy, it is best to go for a level coverage term life policy. "Whole life" policy is truly misleading because what makes it look like a whole life protection is that such "financial protection" actually comes not from the insurance element of the policy but from the savings element of the policy (That’s your own savings and not "benefits" from the insurance company). You could have done so much better if you use the extra premium you have to pay for investment-linked or whole life on real estate, stock or FOREX.

Reducing coverage term life is generally not a good idea because it does not have crisis coverage. Crisis coverage for critical illness (now mostly they offer up to 36 kinds) is too important to sacrifice for a cheaper premium.

Investment-linked might be a good idea for those who do not know how to make money out of investment, or those who can’t save money. But remember, there’s always a risk in this policy.

With reference to ‘Life Insurance in Malaysia’ by a blogger named Chen Tong.

一向来都欣赏创作型歌手，喜欢的有王力宏和陶吉吉。最近确定可以加入"甲意"的三甲人选的，就是咱们本地的曹格了！其实自他的第二张专辑 <<格格ＢＬＵＥ＞ 才开始留意他，他那能高能低的超人嗓音正是他最有力的武器，且听他一人如何分饰两"声"演绎著名经典西洋歌曲 <<Ｍｙ Ｗａｙ＞＞就知道了.

延续了<<Ｓｕｐｅｒｗｏｍａｎ＞＞的神话,第二张<<Sｕｐｅｒｍａｎ＞＞亦是佳作,里头几首简单调皮的曲目,更锲定了他一向来带给歌迷的感觉–"口"爱.专辑里面深情的<<背叛>>更是<<星光大道>>的热门曲子.能够以女生的KEY,深情完美地演绎<<听海>>,<<祝我生日快乐>>和<<新不了情>>等多首高难度的歌,更能够交出<<梁山伯与朱丽叶>>和<<睫毛弯弯>>等朗朗上口的曲子的这样的一位歌手,的确是中文乐坛的福气.

The other day at the convocation ceremony, watching my friends going on stage to receive their honors one by one made me wonder – will we still able to be friends like we used to when we step down from the stage? The answer is hardly.

There are stages in our lives. High school. College. Job. Marriage. Kids. Old age. We change because of these stages we go through in our lives, and our circles of friends change because of that. We befriend schoolmates and teachers during the school years. Once we join the society, our colleagues and bosses become our friends. When two people get married, they become each other’s best friend and when the baby’s born, he or she is the new friend who means the world to them.

Today, not many of us will still have a friend from high school with whom we are in touch on a regular basis. The older the harder it seems. When a relationship has got cold, it is hard to feel the heat again. Once you have not spoken to your friend for years, you may not even bother to say hi to him or her again, be it on the street or on the line.

That is why, regardless of which stage that I’m in now, I will always ring up my friend if I happen to be in his or her area to arrange for a meet up. A gathering can spark things up and restore the warmth a relationship used to have.

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.

———————————————————————————-

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.

English grammar is so complicated that I often get it wrong, too. For example, consider the following questions:

1. If I was/were you, I would have rejected his offer.

2. If I was/were to accept his offer, I would have to start the job soon.

Answers: 1. were. 2. was.

Did you get them right?

To avoid mistake or confusion, just remember that if the sentence describes an occurrence contrary to the fact or simply saying, not true or not going to happen, use "were". When the situation described is not presupposed to be false (e.g. maybe it is true or going to happen), use "was".

The same goes for other singular pronouns “you,” “she,” “he,” and “it.” (You won’t have this problem when it involves the plural pronouns).

Now try this.

1. If he was/were angry, he’d have exploded by now.

2. I would always call home if I was/were not going back for dinner.

I think you’ve got them right this time.

15 August 2007,
We wear gowns on this special day.
Gowns shine not from the traces of gold,
But through the dazzles of our smile.

Gathered under one roof,
We sit down but our spirits stand high.
The chill air doesn’t stop us from feeling warm,
For we know we are blessed with love.

The bitter hardship has ended,
The sweet harvest has finally arrived.
It is now time,
To spread the wings and fly.

Yesterday we were only inches away from each other,
After today we will be thousands of miles apart.
But distance will never tear us apart,
For I have you right here in my heart.

Slavisa Pesci, an information technologist and amateur scholar, says superimposing the "Last Supper" with its mirror-image throws up another picture containing a figure who looks like a Templar knight and another holding a small baby.

Not only that, there seems to be a goblet in the middle, and on the right marker, a guy sticking his thumbs in his ears making “moose antlers” and sticking his tongue out.

Was the baby indeed related to Christ as claimed by the book "The Da Vinci Code" ? Is that the legendary goblet everyone’s looking for ? The "moose-antlers", was it some sort of political statement made by Leonardo about the current bourgeoisie ?

The original Da Vinci depicts Christ when he predicts that one of his twelve disciples would betray him.

The final book of Harry Potter, Harry Potter and The Deadly Hallows, has finally been released on July 21.

As excited as I am for finally being able to find out what’s gonna happen to the magical world created by Rowling, the feeling of knowing once the final page is being flipped over and the story ends right there is just sad.

I believed Harry and his friends have walked many of us through our teen ages. I still remembered the days when I would just lay on my bed all day and crazily reading between the lines just to get to the bottom of the story that sometimes I forgot dinner and my mom had to drag me out of my room. I remembered too ringing up my friend late in the middle of the night and together we hopped in his car and hit the cinema with popcorns.

Sadly the story has now reached its end. I like the ending. All’s well that ends well.