More than 50% have less than RM 50k in their EPF

Your EPF savings alone may not be enough to support your golden
years. Insufficient retirement savings can be due to several reasons,
among them longer lifespan, low salary and early retirement. More often
than not, the money will be exhausted in a short period of time.
Since the establishment of the EPF on the 1st of October 1951, the full
withdrawal age has remained at age 55, while the life expectancy of
Malaysians has increased to age 75. This means that your EPF savings
needs to last for 20 years after you retire.

1. The 2013 EPF statistics for members aged 54 revealed that:-
• 69% of members have less than RM50,000 in their account;
• 54% of members have less than RM20,000 in their account; and
• Only 31% of members still work at age 54.

This amount of savings is not sufficient to support you for 20 years after
your retirement.

Check Your Credit History Online

You can sign up and check your credit report at this link here >> https://www.mycreditinfo.com.my/ which is free for first 2 years for basic report which is where the banks will use to see if your bank loan and credit card approval is successful or not. For the more comprehensive report, it shows your credit card payment habits and it will automatically state whether it is strong or weak for loan approval and payments. For the comprehensive report, you have to pay RM 10 and RM 5 for the less detailed report. The payment merchant is iPay88 where you can choose to pay by online banking or via your credit card with OTP sent to your registered handphone for confirmation. You can do an online search on Google for RAMCI and i-Score to give you the link above which I found.

Merry Christmas 2016

Christmas is drawing near and now it is the month of December - the time where you get your bonus and school holidays are here and you get more time to spend with your kids. Everywhere I go, it seems to be crowded and packed with cars. I would like to wish all my readers here a Very Merry Christmas in 2016 that is drawing to a close. It is time for season's greetings and merry-making. It is also a time to give and to receive. Let us celebrate Jesus' birth on 25th December who came as a Saviour to mankind and defeated the evil one, once and for all. The resurrection power on the cross gave us eternity in heaven when we are called to be with our Maker.

The Best of Both Worlds: Self-Publishing and Traditional Publishing

When I first got published, I was published independently. I was looking for a traditional publisher, but then I realized I couldn’t get published because I didn’t have an agent and that I couldn’t get an agent because I hadn’t published previously. It’s a catch-22. When I decided to go with an independent publisher, I shopped around and found the best fit for me, and once the book started selling well, the traditional publishers came to me. If you’re thinking about self publishing, by all means, go ahead and do it. It’s a rewarding process—just the satisfaction of seeing your words in print is almost worth it, and having other people connect with what you’ve written is an enormously wonderful feeling. So get your words out there, no matter how you have to do it. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

When you’re trying to find the right publisher, make sure they’re a good fit for you, not just a good fit for them. Make sure they will give you the support you’re looking for. Make sure they have a marketing campaign for your book. Make sure they can actually get your book in the bookstores or online—whatever best suits your needs and will help you sell books.

And above all, don’t give up. It’s a very difficult business to get into, but it is amazingly rewarding to get your words out there and connect with your audience. It’s just a wonderful feeling. - Michael Crider

Live Life with Passion

We ought to live life with passion in whatever we do. Just try our human best and leave to God the rest. While we are healthy and able, we should work hard to save up for our retirement in years to come. Be like the ant; storing up food for winter and don't be like the lazy grasshopper singing all day long and go hungry during winter. I love my job and it is beyond my wildest dream to be able to work from home with above average salary compared to an executive in an MNC in Bayan Lepas, the Silicon Valley of Penang. Benefits like medical leave, medical expenses, EPF and SOCSO are also given by my boss. He works hard every day, living life to the fullest and wakes up at 6:00am to listen to Joseph Prince preach via the CD sermons, ordered from Singapore.

Swam at Quayside Yesterday

My aunt's condo at Quayside, beside Straits Quay is around 3,033 sq ft in size, large and unoccupied. This is because the owner, my aunt is living in Singapore and she is a property investor. She bought the place 3-4 years ago for about $2 million and now it is worth about $3.8 million - $4 million. Her new Mercedez E250 is left parked there and is only used when she comes to Penang. It is mostly computerised. The swimming pool is large with many trees and plants and well landscaped. There are several jacuzzis too for one to enjoy the water massage on the body.

Hardly any Opportunities

Now there are hardly any opportunities to make money online as easily as it was in the past. Just copy and paste a pre-written guest post and voila, you get your USD 10. Now I have to submit 5-7 photos with at least 300 words for approval just to earn USD 5 that takes 10 days to receive. There are so many writers hungry for work that they submit several posts per day. Well, as for me, I just cannot allocate the time and research for this menial amount with much work. But something is still better than nothing at all.