One close friend who’s around the same age as me does not have a credit card today. (I am 41) He used to have many and it gave him lots of debts. These days, cash is king for him. Well, this was shared in FB today. 47 percent of youths have high credit card debt. No fifures were mentioned but do note that within 2017 alone, more than more than 3,400 people between the ages of 20 and 30 sought counselling and help from the Debt Management and Counselling Agency. (AKPK) The news article was in TheStar.com.my The news came from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) Assistant Governor Nazrul Hisyam Mohd Noh. He challenged the youth to manage their finances better. He said, “I challenge all of you to break the myth that the young generation are not financially savvy and do not contribute to these statistics.” (By the way, personal loan is a ‘later stage’ than credit card. Usually, personal loans were taken to pay for the credit card debts….
Debts aside, how are we in terms of protecting our wealth, whatever we have today? LIAM President Anusha Thavarajah said that 56 per cent of Malaysians are currently insured, with the figure to reach 75 per cent by 2020. (Actually, 75 percent is pretty okay to me.) Thavarajah also shared that a few insurance companies have come up with the “Perlindungan Tenang” scheme targeting the bottom 40 per cent household income group (B40) for as low as RM3.80 sen per month. His worry is real when he said, “Our main obstacle is lack of awareness by the people on insurance. We hope with this competition, more awareness can be created especially among youths.” Here’s that article for reference.
Personal finance to me consists of 4 things. Earnings, Savings, Investing and Preserving. Here’s that earlier article for reading. We have no choice but to do all four. Earn too little and there’s no way we could save enough for investing. We could suddenly incur high debts if we do not have insurance coverage because a medical card may be as cheap as RM100 or lower per month but if we do not have it and we needed to do a minor surgery, that’s easily RM10,000 gone. One kidney stone removal operation for example would already be around this number and this is a common one for Malaysians. My dear readers, we are no longer living in yesterday when people say 20 sen is enough for two meals. Poverty happens everywhere in the world and we just have to keep up with how the world is progressing. Someone posted this in Facebook today. He said that his biggest ‘financial’ gain was to get married to a good wife and they are now bringing up their family.’ Let me tell you that if you really do love your family, then support and provide coverage for them financially. Happy investing!
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written on 5 Sept 2018
Next suggested article: No, No, my family does not need me to invest into property
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