Monday, March 31, 2014

Investment is about Ideas

Small People talk about things (small matters)
Regular People talk about other people
Big People talk about ideas!

I learned this phrase when I studied in USA. But, it was not in the classroom I learned about the phrase. Instead, I learned about it when I was helping my friend working in a restaurant in Boston. As I said before, as a student you are not being taught how to be a millionaire. The real learning about life is when you went through some experience in life! At that time, I don't really appreciate the phrase. Later, after I have worked for several years, I realize that ideas what make us progress. No idea is small except idea where it is not given any opportunity to be tested or practice in real life.

It is normal for us to listen or being in a pep talk without any real purpose. Some conversation may have small purpose such as learning about your relatives or friends condition, life and etc. But, most of the small talk is just a small talk. Most people wasted hours of conversation in small talks rather than learning something out of it and try to execute what they have learned. People always keep talking rather than listening. Nowadays I like to talk a lot. But, if I think and feel my conversation partner has something valuable, I would rather be a listener. This is the reason a Malay proverb said "bila orang tua cakap, diam dan dengar" which can loosely translated to when the older people talk, shut up and listen. You may learn something out of it.

I remembered when I was a young lecturer, we have a problem where the data storage in a EEPROM is too small for an image. In those end of 1990's, a thumb drive was only 64MB which was also not sufficient. One day we sat at a restaurant and had some drinks. There were three persons discussing about the issue. The other persons were my former supervisor and a talented lecturer who read a lot. When we raised about the issue, the lecturer who read a lot suggest to us to try to control an IDE hard disk directly in order to have a large data storage. We taught it was not possible. But, our friend told us that some of the information was readily available. He never bother tried to implement it because he did not have any need for a large storage. After spending for a week, we successfully implemented the IDE controller using Microchip PIC! Later we adopt the technology with a JPEG DECODER to display movies without the need to use a computer at all! And it was being displayed by UTM when Tun Mahathir visited UTM in 1999.

Investment is also the same. What you need is an idea to be successful. Most of the time, I prefer to listen to successful people talk about their investment. However, last week I learned something new from my old friend who migrated to Universiti Malaysia Pahang. Although his salary is not as high as a lecturer, he still managed to invest in property! He already bought and sold many properties for the past five years in Pahang. Most property investors would prefer to focus on big cities in order to get quick return. But, my friend proves that you can still make a decent income if you have the right strategy and execute it properly. I estimated his initial capital was less than RM40,000 when he began five years ago. Now, he managed to build his own house estimated about RM150,000 cash! While at the same time he still own many properties in Pahang.

Let us get back to my blog series about

Balasan kepada Surat Siti Hajar kepada Perdana Menteri Malaysia. 

http://surexperience.blogspot.com/2014/01/balasan-kepada-surat-siti-hajar-kepada.html

I am hoping feedback or ideas from my readers on how to start a property investment for this poor girl. And I am looking forward to have different ideas from different people. No matter what is your idea, please provide the initial assumption to be made.


Friday, March 14, 2014

Educate Yourself in non-technical of Your Work to Balance Your Life

I went to Universiti Malaysia Sabah two weeks ago. I was supposed to help Electrical Engineering Program of the Engineering School to defend themselves in the EAC evaluation. Actually they don't need to do that since the program was approved for two years last year at my first year as an IAP (Industry Advisory Panel) member. I didn't mind spending some time helping others to improve themselves. At the same time, I learned a lot new things. While being there, I managed to ask around about the property market in KK since the first time I went to KK in 2012. To my surprise most of the lecturers are missing huge investment opportunity by not taking any action to invest. Some are still reluctant to take any action and still pondering what to do.

As a lecturer, we spend so much time to prepare, find new information, new techniques and knowledges to teach other people. But we forgot to educate ourselves. Yes, many of us learn more about the technical aspect of our work. Yet they forget to learn about other knowledge to balance their life growth especially personal financial management. If we focus all of our time for the technical aspect of our work, two major possibilities may happen: forever you become slave to your employer or you become eccentric (crazy for American). Eccentric people are people with unbalance skills, knowledge and emotion. There are vast knowledge to learn. Yet knowledge for self improvement is something most of us forget to learn. Among the self improvement personal financial planning is very important. It affect every single thing in your life including your faith.


Conventional wisdom is to work harder and longer time to gain more. Some people opt to do more than one job in order to gain more. But we must always ask ourselves, how much time do we have? Do we have extra hands and legs to do more jobs? Are we going to be forever young? Aren't we going to have family in the future? Is our family getting bigger and consume larger expenses? How much can we save whereas inflation always at the door steps? We must train our brain, emotion and believe that there are always ways to out run the inflation and growth in expenses. We must train ourselves that to out run them there are other ways than working longer hours or do double or triple jobs at a time. Once we believe in this philosophy, GOD or your mind or friends or mentors will show you the way. If you don't believe in them, the doors automatically shut down and make it harder for your to find ways to improve your life. Then you will always blame other people for your weaknesses especially the government.





You will see in your life and history, a belief is a very strong weapon. People climb mountains because they believe they can do it. So they prove to themselves that they can do it. American people under President Keneddy believe that they can go to the moon and beat the Russian. So, many people who believe in the same goal put their efforts, time and mind to achieved it. Yet many people have wrong beliefs. Ordinary people always believe that to out run inflation and increasing expenses they need more money. It is like to defeat a fire, you need to put more fuel into the fire! To defeat a fire, first of all, you must be smarter than the fire.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Turn Your Hobby to Income

It is fun to have an hobby. It is also good to have one to relieve stress by spending some time doing your hobby or doing something totally different than what you always do in your daily work. Some hobby need time, money and energy to do. When you are young, time is abundant. While money may be just enough for your life. And, energy is easily replenished.


A hobby should complement your life, not totally separated. Yes, a hobby is used to get away from your daily life. By doing different things than what you do at your work place, your brain can have some rest and re-energized. But, it must be calculated into your budget planning, lifelong learning, and future life you want to be. As you get older, your expenditure increases due to having a family, or enlarging your family members, some of your children go for further study, buying larger car, and so on.

Thus, it is important your hobby can generate some income. And if you are persistence with your hobby, it may become your main income. I was formally trained as an electrical engineer. My hobby was to write computer programs, play chess, read books and do community service. As I began my journey as a consultant or electronic design engineer, customers began to ask to also provide software solutions. Hence, my hobby became my additional income. A few years later, writing programs is a norm in electronic engineering study and practice. Thus, I have no problem to adapt to this new demand.

While involving in community services and design consultant, I realized that property investment is crucial in personal wealth growth. I saw many problems related to small business, house and shop rental. After purchasing my first two houses, I started to plan to buy a shop. I finally managed to do so six years later. My financial didn't immediately improve. Like playing a chess, when you grab a material, you need time to stabilize your financial. In order to improve my investment, I read a lot of books related to personal financial planning. The best book that ever inspire me was THE RICHEST MAN IN BABYLON which I first encountered in 2009.

You learned a lot when you are in a difficult situation. So did I. The book inspire me so much that soon I translated the book into Malay language. I did some analysis to better adapt the knowledge to the modern financial instruments. It took a few years more before I can really adapt the knowledge in the book into practice. Surprisingly, some of the knowledge in the book was given to me by different people in different manners. But, the strategic and psychology behind them are the same.

The main point is you should have more than a hobby in your life. As you grow older, you should have more hobbies. Be mindful, as you grow older, it becomes harder to replenish your energy. You will have more responsibility which means you will have less time for yourself. Thus, you should learn and adapt to make an income from your hobbies. Therefore as you grew older, your hobbies may support your future life. The latest hobby in my life is property investment. There are many activities associated with property investment. Choose what you like so that they can be your strength.


Friday, March 7, 2014

New Phase Launch for Investment Opportunity

There is a very good opportunity for property investment in Skudai area.
The location is only 10 minutes to UTM Skudai, 15 minutes to Gelang Patah. This means you have multiple potential tenants.
The workmanship is excellent. The brand is well known. The architecture is using the latest trend with very good finishing workmanship.
The location of the houses are about 60m to 200m to the main road.
The surrounding area have not been developed. But, other developers already started flatten their lands. This means the properties have very good future price appreciation.
The main road is under construction to be widen from 1 lane for each way to 2 lanes for each way.
All phases are gated and guarded with separate entry for each phase.

Phase 1:
Terrace Two storey, 20' X 65',
Price RM280,000
Sold out

Phase 2:
Cluster Two storey, 35' X 70'
Price RM430,000
Sold out

Phase 3:
Terrace Two storey, 22' X 70'
Price RM380,000
Sold out

Phase 4: to be launch (SOON with pre-launch price)
Cluster Two storey, 35' X 70'
Price estimation: RM580,000
128 units only
100m to main road

Phase 5: to be launch (SOON with pre-launch price)
Semi-D Two storey, 40' X 80', built up 30' X 60'
Price estimation: RM650,000 - RM680,000
100 units only
Above: 4 roms, 3 bathrooms
Ground: 1+1 rooms, 2 bathrooms
60m to main road

ONLY 2 units banglo, one international and one bumi
Estimate price: RM1 million!

Those who are interested, you can contact me so that we can bought the property together for a better bargain!