On 16 Feb 2019, Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has declared a dividend rate of 6.15% for Conventional Savings 2018, and 5.9% for Shariah Savings 2018. Here is the table on the EPF Dividend Rate in the past 20 years. Why EPF can maintain 4,25 % to 6.9% dividend for the past 20 years? One of the important part is portfolio management. Refer to EPF Annual Report, they always maintain the portfolio into Real Estate (10%), Cash (3%), Fixed Income (51%) and Equity (36%) Note : Equity could be diversified partially to oversea equities as well.   This is very important for you if you want to maintain the yearly return between 4% to 7% per year. If you are investing into fixed deposit only and always complain about the return is too low then there is your problem, not the fixed deposit's problem. If you are investing your money into unit trust by only choosing equity funds, then you might facing negative in your unit trust (if you only invest in local/Malaysia market). ...

Many investors talking about the next global financial crisis after 2008. They say there is a circle like 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, 2000 dot.com bubble, 2008 Global Financial Crisis and now comes to 2018... Everybody is talking about the crisis but no one knows when the crisis will happen. In fact, financial crisis is happening every year. You can simply google on  List of economic crises  then all the history will be listed down for you. The question is, how can you turn the crisis to opportunity? Are you ever ready on the next crisis? Now, you go back to study your own portfolio... 100% cash (FD)? 100% equities (stocks)? 100% properties? 100% unit trust funds? 100% on own business? Non of the above? If you are holding some unit trust funds in your portfolio, what would you do with it? Stay put? Re-balancing your portfolio? Or keep investing? There is always no 100% right answer in investment. I would say portfolio management plays an important pa...

Ryan is a basketball player who play a forward position in his team. He trained hard in every training session. No matter on his stamina, shooting skill, dribbling, blocking and he is strong on physical too. He is a determined player and he wants to score at least 20 points in every game that he involve. During the game, when Ryan got the ball, he quickly pas the ball to his teammate. Even he had a clear chance to throw a shoot, but he just pass the ball out. End of the game, Ryan only scored 6 points. The coach asked him, "Why you didn't take the shoot when there were several chances to throw the shoot?" Ryan replied, "Coach, every time when I get the ball... I feel no confident and doubt on the ball, I am not sure the ball that I shoot out can score or not?" The coach and teammate were shocked. "You had been training so hard all the while and now you have the doubt?" Coach said. "You have to focus the right thing son.." ...

A farmer planned to expand his farm by planting few papaya trees. He started to plant the papaya seeds one by one. Everyday, the farmer will watering its with the watering system built by the farmer and wait for the papaya trees to grow. After few weeks, the papaya trees started to grow up. The farmer apply fertilizer regularly and he is very happy to see the trees had growing up. He knows that he will get the harvest in the near future.  Day in day out, the farmer is doing the same thing by watering and fertilizing the plants.  One day, he sit down and look at the papaya trees... He started to have doubt on his plants, "Are the papaya trees really can grow the papayas in the near future?" "Why there is no results after 3 months I had been working hard on it?" Everyday the farmer was thinking the same question... One day, the farmer decided to chop off all the papaya trees because he think that the papaya trees won't give him any harvest...

Since when you started your savings habit? Or you don't have savings habit at all? What is the benefit of savings? Saving  provides a financial “backstop” or "backup" for life's uncertainties and increases feelings of security and peace of mind. Once an adequate emergency fund is established,  savings  can also provide the “seed money” for higher return investment tools such as bonds, mutual funds / unit trust funds and stock. There are few simple ways to start your savings habit. 1. Save First, Spend Later You start to save a small portion from your monthly income, example 10% to 30% from you total monthly income. 2. Spend More, Save More This is how you save the while you spend. Example, you plan to save all the RM20 notes from your wallet, each time you see there is RM20 notes, you keep in your piggy bank. Every time you spend your big notes, if the balance you get are RM20 notes, you keep its. You will surprise after few months, and y...

Last week, a client asked me this, "I heard there is a financial crisis in every 10 years, do you think it is good time to top up or to buy more unit trust funds right now?" What do you think? Crisis? or Opportunity? Invest more? Sell off all? Or to hold back and wait? I answered my client, "Yes, everybody is talking about the mega financial crisis in every 10 years circle, but the problem is nobody knows the exact date of this crisis." I continued, "If the crisis happened in last week, local stock market slump down to 20% in a week, your unit trust portfolio dropped 15%... You know that the unit trust portfolio is for your retirement plan in the next 15 years, and the money you putting in unit trust funds is 40% of your the total cash in your hand. What would you do at this point of time?" "To sell off all for cutting lost? To top up more while the unit price is low or to hold back to wait...?" "Do you see this is an c...

There are 8 benefits to invest into unit trust. 1. Affordability In Malaysia, everyone who has reached age 18 can invest into unit trust for their own name as first holder. As unit trusts are a collective investment scheme, the investors can start with an investment amount as low as RM1,000, even some company can accept the low initial amount of RM500 for a new account. Investors can start their investment through Cash Scheme or KWSP Scheme. 2. Diversification The funds in a unit trust are invested in a wide range of assets, this reduces the overall risk of the portfolio. This means that the poor performance of any one asset in the fund is not likely to have a major adverse impact on the portfolio as a whole. Never put all eggs into a same basket. 3. Professional Fund Management Unit trusts fund managers are approved professionals in a highly regulated industry. Their license, background and expertise ensure that decision making is struct...