Category: Finances

• Increase Your EPF Funds

  08.01.07 |Finances, Investment| Permalink | 6 Comments

  
  
  

  How many of you have invested in Unit Trust? How many of you know how? I am not a pro as well in Unit Trust investment so I chose to take a lower risk Unit Trust investment. Malaysia still got a lot of work to do in making Unit Trust work for us. Before investing, I did some research and reading on the good funds out there. Public Mutual has won a couple of awards and some of the funds have good track record of their yearly earnings.

  Do you know you can use your EPF funds to invest? You are eligible if

  1) Your balance greater than RM55K in Account 1
  2) Below 55 years old
  3) Must not have any withdrawal from Account 1 in last 3 months.

  The minimum amount you can invest is RM1K and maximum is 20% of your balance in Account 1 minus 50K.

  Withdrawal Documents required are 2 copies of your NRIC with clear thumb prints and completed the application forms. It will take 1-2 weeks for it to process if your agent is efficient.

  I have invest in Public Mutual Savings Fund for 3 years now and the average return is 8%, not bad yeah as compare to the EPF 4-5%. For saving funds, if the company profits, dividends are given to boost up your investment. Lastly, to maximize the growth of your funds, you have to increase the fund yearly by doing a yearly withdrawal.

  I am not an agent of any of the funds mentioned. In all investment there are risks. Do not simply blindly make an investment based on what agents tell you. Previously I have bought other trust funds that made loses, beware of those. Do the research and see the historical records. Most of it is published in TheEdge or other investment magazines.

• Trading Account In US

  07.25.07 |Finances, Information, Shares| Permalink | 4 Comments

  Someone asked me to blog about stocks trading in US. It is really simple to trade shares in US. All you need is to open an online trading account. There are couples of US online trading available like Ameritrade, eTrade, Scottrade and others. Each has its own pricing, benefit and T&C. You have to pay attention to Service Fee, Trading Fee and other administration fees.

  Here is a chart that I have put up, note there may be changes to the fees:

  	TD Ameritrade	eTrade	Scottrade
  Minimum To Open An Account	$2000	$1000	$500
  Minimum Account Balance	$0	$1000	$500
  Trading Fee	$9.99 Unlimited Shares	$12.99 With Conditions	$7 Unlimited Shares With Conditions
  Quarterly/Annual Account Maintenance Fee	$0/$0	$40/60	$0/$0
  Wire Funds Out Fee Domestic/ International	$25	$25	$20/$40
  Stocks Certificates Issuing	$50	$40 per certs	$250
  Account Closing & Transfer Out Fee	$75	$60	$0
  Other Fees	Other Fees	Other Fees	Other Fees

  My advice to you before selecting a trading account, do read their company portfolio and read customers’ review on their company.

  After you have chosen an online trading account, you registered and open an account. You have to fill W8 BEN form. This form is to state that you are not an US Citizen, if you aren’t. You will be tax differently.

  Do not play with Margin Options, switch it off. This option allows you to borrow money to invest in the shares. It can burn you deeply if your shares fall under its value. Interest is high.

  With US shares, you can buy 1 unit. It is different from Malaysia where you need to buy minimum of a 1000. Of coz, it is a little crazy to buy 1 unit as you will be wasting transaction fees. Let say company XYZ share is US20. You can buy say 10 units and pay US200 + transaction fees.

  Selling and buying is just a click of a button. The trading acct will provide you with tools like streamer that allow you to view the shares price live and online. You can set it to your targeted shares. For me, I am long term investor, I do not do any short selling. I buy and keep. However if the shares go up to a certain threshold, I may sell. Some shares do give out dividends when the company profits.

  You can also set your target price on the trading tool. When it hits the target price, your shares will be automatically sold off. This is very useful especially when you cannot monitor US shares during the night time. Sometimes shares can hit the peak for short period of time and dropped quickly.

  Lastly when you have profited and want to transfer money back, you can use wire transfer to bring money home to any local banks. You need to request your local bank swift code or ABA routing number. All local banks have it. In your trading account, you need to fill up your wire transfer information with ABA routing code, your local account number and other required information. Happy Investing.

  Take note any investments, there are risks. Before diving into an investment, do your research. There are message boards (aka forum) from Yahoo or any other where a lot of people talk about the individual company. You can gain some information from it. There are also analyst reports to help you with. However it has a lot of financial terms which is difficult to digest.

• Bank Mergers Causing Turmoil

  03.23.07 |Finances, Management, Service| Permalink | 6 Comments

  The first bank account I had in Penang was Ban Hee Lee Bank. Later it merged with Southern Bank and now it became CIMB. Imagine, how many times I had to change my ATM card and bank book. This is not the major problem, it is when they merge systems between banks. Do you know that the records from the previous bank are all gone? Ok not gone but it is kept some where and at times goes, it will not be retrievable.

  What was my headache? The bank sent me a letter stating that on March 16, I will not be able to access my old bank Internet banking. I need to register on March 18 to hop to the new Internet banking. No problem there. I did that and found out that there are no transaction historical records. Sigh. I called up the helpdesk, the agent told me the IT team cannot transfer the data from old to new system. Hey I am from IT, I know it can be done, just the matter whether they want to do it or not.

  Worst is the bank manager called me up to say he cannot simply send out account statements. I told him other banks are sending me monthly statements, why is there a problem? I guess not in their process. :snooty:

  If you want to change system, please do not create problems for your customers. You can send out statements for that month to all your users. By the way, my account is a passbook account. I cannot change to statement account. Actually I can, I need to close the passbook account and create a new statement account. Sigh.

  I tell you, the old Internet banking system has a very terror feature, if you want to transfer money to other banks, you can key in all the info. The back office will actually take that info and generate a bank cheque to send to the other banks. Thumbs down service.

  Let’s hope the CIMB Internet banking is good that I don’t have to enter the bank ever again. The queue in the bank is just crazy.

• Local Share Investment

  10.04.06 |Finances, Investment, Service, Shares| Permalink | 9 Comments

  I never invested in local shares before and I never knew how. I do have an account in US to invest in US shares. That was because my company has a benefit share plan for us to purchase our company shares at discounted rates.

  Anyway, last Friday, a courier package came and it was from StemLife. The company is going public listed. Cool. 😎 I didn’t read the prospectus, it was as thick as my programming books. I read the form and was tempted to invest. It was a 2 pages form, but the things I have to do, to successfully apply for the shares, is exhausting. I received the package on 29 Sept, the dateline is 5th Oct. Not much time to work with.

  Things to do:

  1. I have to apply for a CDS account to be able to buy any local shares. Fortunately I know a friend who works in the share trading company. I got her help to get me the CDS account on the same day. 1 obstacle done.

  2. I have to make a copy of my IC, front and back on the same page.

  3. I have to fill in the form carefully. No liquid paper can be use on the form.

  4. I have to get a banker’s cheque. Personal cheques are not allowed. I blog about it yesterday, it was done too.

  5. I have to buy two 50sen stamp, one for A envelope and one for B envelope. They will send you back the A envelope with your cheque if it is not successful.

  6. I need to send it, it says using Ordinary mail. You can opt to drop it into their office if you are staying in KL. It is really impossible for people outstation to send ordinary mail and reach the destination before date due. I send it using Express Mail, not sure whether they will reject my application. By the way, register mail is a no no because PO box cannot sign when receive. :giggles:

  7. Mail it and wait for response. Phew.

  Now all I have to sit back and wait for them to tell me if it is successful. By the way, the company will ballot, if you get pick, the shares will be sold to you. If I don’t I need to go back to the bank, to claim back the money.

  I just learn that you can do all the above except for number 1, using Internet banking. In order to do that, you need to setup the account first by submitting a physical form. For Maybank, you can use ATM or Internet Banking. Somehow, I don’t know why StemLife was not listed.

  It was a great experience though to beat the deadline. If it was from some company that I don’t know, it will probably end up in the bin.

  Anyone want to know how to invest in US share?

• EPF Cheque

  06.09.05 |Finances, Information| Permalink | Comments Off on EPF Cheque

  Finally I have received the EPF cheque after 32 working days. The officer told me that I will get it in 21 working days. Anyway, there were some hiccups in between. The HQ officer wanted another letter from the bank because the S&P and the Grant has a different address. It was due to the purchase of the property before it was completed. The officer was very ambiguous on the instruction and had to call him a couple of times to get the exact content of the letter. If they have put the information on their website, wouldn’t it be easier?

  I must say the bank was very efficient to produce the letter for me on the spot. Another plus point is EPF office is just near my house. I will be very frustrated if I have to go to town every time to submit missing documents.