Maximum Productivity

Caution at the Superhighway

2007-06-30T04:12:00.000-07:00

What's the first thing your mom said when you got your driving license? Be careful! It's pretty common sense, since you only recently passed the driving test. Most road or highway will be pretty new to you being in the driving seat compared to previously in the passenger seat.

The information superhighway is no less different. Instead of drunk driver, you will meet scammer or instead of road bully (a.k.a mat rempit) you will meet a trickster.

Dolly the lamb

Several years ago Dolly make the headline (in case you were casting in Lost). She was the first cloned animal right out of a lab. Now that's wonderful invention. To whoever who wish to be immortal out there, watch out for this cloning development, you never know, when this technology would be perfected for human (read:You). One cannot escape the example from Mike Myers in his Austin Powers film, featuring Mini Me (shorter version, bad tempered, bad gene perhaps ?)

What caught my attention yesterday, that there could be alternative use for this Dolly tech, other than immortality (if that even possible). A couple thousand net surfer (with credit card, I presume) recently bought Dolly the 'poodle' over the Net. This is no joke, like Transformer, Dolly has just transformed from the lamb to a poodle. Take a look at the picture here. Honestly, unless you are a poodle or lamb breeder, like a good friend of mine, can you really spot the difference ? It's true what people said, it takes a thief to catch a thief. It doesn't help, when the law enforcement agency miserably playing catch up with offenders, example here and here.

Update : A reader commented the story was misquoted from a Japanese source.... well it would have been something, if it were true.

SOS, my PC is infected! (really?)

I wonder what Homer would do if his PC is infected by virus. But that would stretch imagination too far, for him being able to use a PC other than a cup holder using the CD tray.

A few months ago, while alone at home, a friend of mine R, while surfing got a message her PC is infected by a virus. And Presto! She was immediately offered a discount to purchase an anti virus solution for her problem. She paid the vendor and download the software. Next, her PC got worse! PC performance start to deteriorate. It got worst when she's connected to the Net. In the end she simply send it to the manufacturer, and told me 'luckily it's brand new PC under warranty'. Yeah right.. my workstation was infected too, when she transferred a file to my workstation using thumb drive!

To the untrained eye, it may appear that a problem is being resolved with the new software download. But, what actually happen is a systematic attack by a scammer. Message about the virus infection was a hoax or false positive to begin with. Next, the victim was offered a fix, for a fee, to solve it. This is when the nightmare begins. The software downloaded for the fix is actually a Trojan horse, design to further undermined your PC. Inter alia, your PC has been turned into bots, a mindless zombie for the perpetrator in his grand scheme to manipulate the world [insert evil laugh here].

For technical details about rogue anti spyware go here. It also include sample listing of the software you need to avoid from.

Using search engine

Everybody does it. Doesn't mean it's all green light or good news. It's entirely possible that some of the site by scammer is actually a Trojan horse like the above story and being given higher ranking in search engine results. This site will then be visited by the victim. Last month, McAfee did a study on this. They found that between 3-5% results from search engine will highlights sites which will give nightmare to say the least to your network administrator. According to McAfee one search engine is on the increasing trend displaying results which may contain security issues to your system. If I were you, I'd be more careful, visiting totally different and new sites... especially, when they talk about money. It doesn't matter whether they want to give you money or they are asking money from you. Both should indicate a red flag or warning alarm bell should be ringing in your head, when a site starts to talk about money.

Conclusion

Always read between the line. The Chinese have this saying, believe half of what you see, none what you heard.
Money doesn't solve anything, especially credit cards! Those ads you saw on TV is only a cheap gimmick!

My 5 Rules governing Credit Cards

2007-06-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

Wonderful invention! It's impossible to get by any day without being bombarded with ad on Credit Cards (CC) . We get to see them everywhere, including TV, Internet, billboards, shopping malls, mailboxes, newspaper, you name it!

The following is the Rule I uphold concerning credit cards. It can be harsh and cruel. But it will prevent a burnt hole in your wallets. The writing of this credit cards tips is from the perspective of an individual personal finance.

Zero Charges!

I mean it! My credit card of choice, shall have no registration fee, monthly fee, annual fee or [insert expletives here] fee. Banks is already enjoying the commission whenever the user swipe the CC, there shall be no reason to charge any further to the cardholder! Seriously, you need to get out more and search for the free for life credit cards if you haven't found one. Issuing banks battle around the clock promoting their product, that there are many free service and I mean for LIFE is offered on daily basis.

Hot tips : some of the marketing weasel that will approach you will claim that their product is free for life, but subject to some conditions such as you need to swipe the CC twice a month. Unacceptable! If they really want to market their product as truly free, then let's be honest and stop attaching any strings to the cardholder. You should say thank you and run away. If you are Autobots fan "Start your engine and roll-out!". For Decepticons, Megatron would say "Decepticons, retreat!!" Sorry about that, growing up in the 80's really make you looking forward for the movie Transformers :)

Zero balance

CC ≠ $

Credit card does not equate money, well not your money at least. It is an invention that supposedly help humans for commercial transactions. But seriously who actually gains all the benefit from credit card ? Is it the rich or the poor ? In an interview with Warren Buffet (top investment guru), one the richest bloke on earth didn't own any credit card. The irony is that his flagship company the Berkshire Hathaway actually own a significant stocks in American Express!

Any expenditure made via CC should only meant for the simple purpose you don't have cash in hand, you are afraid of getting mugged or misplaced your funds. This means, you always know upon flashing your CC you do have sufficient funds in the bank to cover / pay off when it is due for payment.

Hot Tips : For meeting day to day expenses I keep one Current Account (C/A) where my paycheck is deposited and one Saving Account (S/A). As and when I use my CC, on the same day, I will transfer similar amount from C/A to S/A online. This means, I'm using my S/A as a temporary account to park and isolate my funds to meet credit cards payment at the end of the month. Therefore when the CC is due at the end of the month I'll gladly pay up ALL the outstanding balance without thinking where or how to get $ to pay my CC. The bonus is when you are using the same bank for your C/A, S/A and CC, then there's no charges for the fund transfer to pay up your CC.

There's two compelling reason for paying off all your CC balance. The first is a no brainier - it is to avoid any interest chargeable to you as card holder should you not pay in full at month end. 2ndly, by paying of all your debts, you shall enjoy high credit standing for future dealing with any lender in the future. Every banking transaction is recorded electronically. Yes, the bank will know your credit history! Watch Will Smith in Enemy of the State if you need further incentive.

Forget the points

But the bank gave points to me for Free !? Yup, I know. Look if it's small item such as to redeem a Starbucks voucher or a thumb drive then it's fine. But not when they ask you to collect tens if not hundred of thousands of points so that you may redeem something. It's not worth it. You might as well just go and buy the item that you are supposed to redeem.

Exception to this rule : If you are regular traveler and your company pay for your travel and other expenses, collecting points may not be such a bad idea. For this to work you need to carefully manage your cash flow and ensure that the claims department is fast enough to reimburse your claims, so you may pay back the issuing cards company before / on the due date.

Online Statements

Most banks, if not all already have this facility. Call your bankers and get the id and password for online access. You need this to monitor your expenses, remind yourself of due dates and potential fraud incident. You can alert the credit card company immediately for any irregularities found in your account, rather than waiting till the end of the month for the statement to arrive via post.

Distance to the bank

Find bank either nearest to your house or your office. Sometimes you just got some issues you need to ask the banker. We all have tendency to procrastinate things if the banks is too far to travel. This is the reason I do not choose CC issued by foreign banks. Your central bank may be restricting the number of foreign bank to set up branches in your country. Therefore their number of branch tend to be small. Even to use their self service ATM machine, you need to queue. I acknowledged they can possibly offer you good service not mentioning the pride of flashing globally recognised branding to your friends. But to me, the only way I'm getting a foreign bank CC, is like I told a friend of mine, the foreign bank better open up a branch in front of my house. Only then, I will gladly use all their facility :)

Hot Tips : Another reason with regards to the important of the location is due to the repayment factor. My CC company presently is different from my C/A. For me to pay via online, they will charge $3, well, it's not free since it is two different bank between my C/A and my CC issuing bank. Therefore it is more efficient for me to make CC payment via cheque. It only cost me $0.15 per piece. Since I already ensure that the CC company is both accessible from either my house or place of work, I can easily make the payment either on the way to work or coming back home.

Any tips you want to share ?

New Age Secret

2007-06-14T17:49:00.000-07:00

During a recent conference in Singapore, the speakers repeatedly talking about the Secret, otherwise known as Law of Attractions. Some say it's a new age stuff, others thinks it's the emperor's in new clothes. Perhaps the earliest authority on the subject is Wallace Wattles who wrote in his groundbreaking book The Science of Getting Rich.

Wattles posits that desired outcome of an individual objectives, dreams and hope if done in a certain way is a result of the respective individuals thoughts and action be it a positive or negative aspect. Contemporary writer Dr Michael Hewitt Gleason simplify the secret or Law of Attraction in three simple steps in his book Software for the Brain. Dr Gleason is one of the protegee of world renown consultant and psychologist Edward de Bono.

Being

Being is about focusing on the objective i.e. Begin with the end in mind - the first habit coined in Stephen Covey's famous book the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A student desire to be a doctor, need to feel what is it like to be a doctor. He need to feel through his veins and have the state of mind of a healer. While skill and training and certification will take a considerable amount of time, there are other equally important aspects such as burning desire to achieve his objective. Relevant soft skills as a doctor such as good interpersonal skills or values such as concern for others is part of experiential learning that is necessary to acquire. This sort of attributes may not necessarily be taught at medical school, but gain in daily interactions with the society in general. It is vital that the mindset for being a doctor is sown early on, while he is still learning to become a doctor.

Do

We have talked about objective. The next step is action. Let's talk about another career; an air force pilot. Top Gun rings a bell in your head isn't ? Patriotism. Free as a bird. The feel being in the cockpit of deadly fighter planes with the flight ability beyond the speed of sound. The adrenaline rush will surely keep your heart pumping fast! So what does a person wanting to be in the air force need to do ? For a start you can watch Top Gun click here :) Find out what does military pilot do, or did ? There must have something in common (a recipe) to succeed to become a pilot. How about their educational background ? What sort of subject they excel at school ? Ask yourself how are you doing with regards to these subjects at school. Do you like it ? Excel in it ? Do you need to work harder to get a better results, perhaps ?

How about tracing the steps they have taken. How many ways have you found out, considered, or explored ? Did all of them went straight to military academy after high school? How about commercial or private planes ? Have you consider this as another possible avenue a stepping stone to reach your objective ? Always remember there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Have

Armed with the first two steps, being and do when you got it right, the rest is self-fulfilling prophecy. After having a strong mental stamina, continuously reinforcing your mind focusing on the desired objective along with considerable hard work and discipline the end result is nothing but predictable success. If you still haven't reach it, then evaluate and evaluate. Compare and contrast. What have you done right ? What have you done wrong ? Learn from your mistakes. Truly it is the best of all teachers. Einstein said 'it is insanity doing the same thing twice but expecting a different result'.

Conclusion

Just like they are many ways to skin a cat, so is the strategy to reach your goals. Use whatever works. Consider the above. If it doesn't, keep on searching. I do wish you will find something better. And May the Force be with you!

Gucci and Benz : Insurance vs Warranty

2007-06-13T00:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure about you, but after high school and reaching 18 years of age, I started to think about driving a car (preferably getting it for free, read : Mom and Dad). After getting statutory license, you gonna need to get the car insurance esp to say a nice elegant car like Benz.

What is an Insurance ?

A few hundred years ago, many civilisation started to have long journey by ships for trading purposes. This was the time when there is no GPS or satellite hand phone around to help you getting out of trouble (say calling AAA when your car broke down). The voyage is often long and entails high risk to the traders, although the reward or potential profit outweigh the risk involved in this maritime trading. This is one of the pivotal moment demanding the need for an insurance policy. Accordingly, the traders form an association and periodically contribute a particular sum in a designated fund. When disaster strikes, (imagine Jack Sparrow on Black Pearl commandeered your ship!) collection received from the fund will be used to compensate either partially or in full to the affected traders. Thus maritime insurance was born.

What about warranty ?

Is a promise from manufacturer that they will cover the cost of repairing product sold to you in the event of of say defective products. Typical example is your Rolex watches or Nokia phones. Apparently product like Gucci shoes do gave out warranty too, like I found out recently me, being typical male.

Real life example

Now this is an adaptation from real life experience. Before that, I need to tell you a bit about car insurance. You see the insurance company gave an incentive for people to avoid any accidents or refrain from claiming their insurance. By subscribing to an insurance policy, you need to renew (cough up) insurance premium on annual basis. Then, the insurer will gave a discount to policy holder who did not exercise any claims from the insurer. This discounts is known as NCD - Non Claim Deductions.

Back to the story, a lady recently purchased a brand new Gucci shoes. Yup the snake leather product as expected came with a warranty being a high value of $3,000 items. That make sense. I could get 3 PDAs for that sum around here. I didn't understand exactly how to operate a $3,000 shoes, or how it happened, but the poor lady, was later involved in an accident while driving her new Benz! Later that night, she probably have the following conversation with the husband :

Wife : Honey, I bought myself a Gucci shoes :)

Hubby : That's great dear.

Wife : It comes with a warranty too.

Hubby : Really ? (surprised) Well I guess they should. At least you can get a replacement if something bad happened to it. Good thing you have bought item that came with a warranty!

Wife : (after kissing the husband) please don't be mad, I ran into a tree while driving the Benz today. I was avoiding a cat crossing a street from getting knock down, dear! At least I avoid killing an animal today, right ?

Hubby : Yes dear. (Oh no, my NCD! Anybody told you the %#$!#!! cat supposed to have nine lives ? What's wrong taking one of it ???!!)

Rental Income from Property

2007-06-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

Would you like to sip your favourite drink at beach with your loved ones, shaking your legs doing nothing, yet your bank account being given a boost day by day? I know it's a wonderful idea. Planning to sip my chamomile tea by the beach using one of my present passive income [doing something once, forget about it and continuously getting paid for it - typical example is a book writer like JK Rowling or singer Christina Aguilera] stream via property one of these days.

TYPES OF INCOME

There is two types. One is rental, you vacate the property and allow others to use it. Or you buy and sell the property at higher price, otherwise known as capital gains.

Both type of income have it's own sets of risk and rewards. Choosing which one is appropriate for you is dependent upon your investment objective, time frame and present level of wealth.

For instance, rental is like a cash cow. Especially in the case of completed property. Rent received from the tenant can be recycled back to pay off the monthly bank loan you need to pay back to the bank. It would be superb if you can get any extras after servicing ALL the cost involved.

Buying and selling property is a great way to make $ too. Often it is suitable for person with higher amount of capital at their disposal to start this investment and have the stamina i.e. the staying power to hold on to the property and sell at an acceptable profit margin.

Fine, So how do I make $ from Rental Income ??

The mantra location, location and location is of paramount important. Remember that it is crucial, that decision to purchase this property is for your potential tenant and have got nothing to do with your personal interest or worst idiosyncrasies. High catchment area is best - check out how many factories, colleges or business operating in the area. Transportation is important too! Is there any subway, bus or toll charges for the road access?

Next you need to work out the cost. There's 2 part to this.

First, the Initial outlay.

This include down payment for the property, legal fees, valuer fees, transfer fees etc. Initiate all opportunity to avoid or reduce this initial outlay. For instance, get quotation at least from 3 lawyers/valuers for estimated cost you need to complete this SPA [Sale and Purchase Agreement]. Shop around with different lending bank for the highest margin of financing so that your down payment is significantly reduced. Say your property is worth $100K, if Bank A gave you 95% financing (i.e. you may borrow up to $95K) or Bank B gave you 90% financing (you may borrow up to $90K), then ceteris paribus, on this account alone you should grab loan from Bank A, so you need to fork out only $5K instead of $10K. Some banks may have offer that should you use their panel lawyer, then the legal fees will be waived.

2ndly, The monthly recurring cost.

Biggest chunk is your monthly loan repayment. To keep it at a minimum, find bank which offer the lowest rate and also the longest repayment period. [In some countries, your credit standing play a big role to determine applicable interest rate]. This two key principles will play a major role determining your level of cash flow. Other cost you need to watch out is like maintenance fee and local government tax. Some is to be paid on monthly basis, others quarterly or annually.

Conclusion

The above is pretty much the steps needed to assess whether property you intended to rent out is worthwhile for you to do so. To achieve self-financing monthly rent you received from the tenant need to cover ALL of the monthly expenses, hence you got yourself a passive income.

P/S : I always get the kick when checking out property and when negotiating for the final price!

Comparative of Internet Marketing to online MLM

2007-06-06T00:18:00.000-07:00

Nope IM is not Instant Messenger, which I thought it was, increasingly IM refers to Internet Marketing. Recently there were 2 chain of events highlighting the importance of IM in today's marketing.

The Job Offer

In mid May 2007, a colleague from previous company I work with rang out of the blue. Hearing that I'm ready making a move within the job market, she offers me a job matching my own experience. Her contacts, an IT guy is expanding a project and looking for people with experience. Me, her and this IT guy common experience would be the SAP platform. It's an ERP solutions being use by multi national corporations globally. When my previous co wanted to automated billing to the client, I was on board in a project for designing and specifying business requirement to the tech people. On top of that I've being using SAP since the last 5 years within the FI Module.

I was looking forward for this meeting. However bit by bits during 'presentation' to the potential team member of this new to be kick off project, ALARM BELL silently ringing in my head with regards to the outcome i.e. what this 'project' is all about. Many of the keywords used and the way the presentation was unraveled is too familiar that some trigger words got mentally 'flagged' in my head what is it about. [Flagged here is just like the 'Labels' section you seen on the right side of this blog to me!] I did ask during the break to this IT guy, whether this is Quixtar or Amway product. But he was wiggling like a weasel answering my yes/no question. It wasn't a surprise when I was right in the end. I'll spare you the highlights / achievements of Amway.

WIMS in Singapore

World Internet Mega Summit was recently held at Singapore Expo centre in the last week of May 2007. It's a gathering of top marketing gurus showcase latest technique in IM (not mentioning their sales pitch!). I had to escape on the last day when the last speaker was talking otherwise I'm really gonna puke, due to much heavy bombardment by sales gurus! Admittedly many of them excel in their respective fields such as Armand Morin and Stephen Pierce.

You can read coverage of the event here, here and here.

So What ??

At first these seems to be 2 random unrelated events but slowly as each of the speakers came forward I began to see a pattern both regarding IM and the Quixtar model. It's pretty much the same thing?!!

What is Quixtar ?

It's a leapfrog of the old multi level marketing (MLM) or Network Marketing to the online world. Nothing has change. In the web version you need PC and starts working from there instead of being a door to door salesmen. One thing remain the same - you are still an agent working / selling other people (read:Amway) products.

What is IM ?

For technical definition go here.

It's basically using internet to market a product. By leveraging the WWW capabilities unlike the real world, it's a lot easier i.e. possible to be a marketer, although you may not have your own product. Now, what's making it even better than Quixtar or any other online MLM is that as an Internet Marketeer you are actually on top of the food chain (read:Business Owner - Where a person owns a "system" of making money, rather than a job to make money.)

An Internet Marketeer decide and determine the business models from what item to sell to how to market to how much to pay for it's online advertisement. As 'Business Owner' he has the potential to reap a lot more gain rather than being an agent like both of what my friend is presently doing (refer to the above).

Conclusion

If not for the Singapore trip, the above connection won't seem so obvious to me. Many links I provided above showed a great deal of potential for internet marketing industries. And yup, I want to jump onboard too!

Now if could just figure out what to sell to you my dear reader :)

Budgetting 101

2007-06-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

Any Tom, Dick, Harry and Sally need to have personal finance plan. It doesn't have to be Rich Dad Poor Dad thick but at least a few key important principles / habits may have unwavering impact for your personal financial health down the road.

I'm blessed being thought about the important of saving since I first get my pocket $. It was my great grandma who thought me the important of saving. You see, at this time I really didn't have even an idea about [the why?] objective for this saving habit, yet she's very influential reinforcing my saving habits more than anybody else in my upbringing.

If you never did any budgetting before, I agree it can be a real hassle. So instead of focusing on how much you want to spent - why not we reverse the process and start with a small sum of saving, instead ?

10% Rule

Don't bother to ask, I made up the figure ten as a ballpark figure. We need to start somewhere and ten is a good number as any. Whether you are working adults, housewife or a student you can't go wrong saving a % of your present income.

The How ?

Easy! Follow exactly how the government did for securing your income tax (Pay As You Earn scheme). In many parts of the world your company in collaboration with the Big Brother has predetermined the sum you need to be taxed and dutifully deducted the relevant amount to the tax authority, say on monthly basis. You shall never see nor touch this portion of income, sorry! Inter alia it's kinda patriotic duty to do so too :)

For working adult

A - Go to your Payroll Dept
B - Ask " Do you have any deduction scheme, preferably Zero Cost that you can offer to me ?"

That's it. You are all set. About the where to place this deduction or Automatic Saving (as some would called it) find a higher yield interest bearing account than where your pay is presently being deposited by your company. It can be a money market account. But we'll talk about target to place this saving in a later post. What's important you need to isolate this 10% sum elsewhere from the rest of your paycheck!

For student/housewife

It won't be far fetched to say that you have a little bit more time than the 9 to 5 working people. You can either opt for religiously isolate i.e. make the saving from the income you receive to a separate account [Hint : Use online banking, if you don't need the exercise to go to the bank] or for a small fee you can instruct your bank to do SI=Standing Instruction for you. From this moment on, your banker will dutifully transfer the 10% to designated account chosen by yourself on monthly basis.

You can read further about the Automatic Millionaire (Saving) here .

For tons of personal finance advice get it here .

What's in the Name ?

2007-05-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

This is the 1st time that I write to a blog ever.

Well before we go any further, the reason I chose for the name of this blog simply because an old nickname given to me back when I was in pre-university course. After a year being in the same class a classmate call me Profit Maximiser. Perhaps it is because we both taking Economics subject and also due to my general characteristics I suppose. Be that as it may, I repeatedly remind her Profit Maximiser doesn't accurately describe me, since I prefer to max virtually anything that I do, hence I suggest the term 'productivity maximiser' to her.

Note : Profit Maximiser is a term we economist use over and over and over when explaining types of market in Economics 101.