Funeral Service Package

Day 29 - 971 days to go

All industries are getting more competitive and even funeral service provider are having intense competition. Discount and price war which is a Red Ocean strategy is considered Promotion 1.0. Since there is "no end" to price drop, innovative merchants are launching many types of packages that combine attractive long term investment scheme (actually the floor is free of charge but this is only Promotion 1.5).

I just bought a Funeral Service Package for the early preparation for my mom as there is a 20% discount now. (hopefully she will only use it many many years later). Well, buying any funeral service related package which include the so-called land/property has been promoted as a form of investment. Price will be increase gradually overtime. The decision needs to be make is that "Do you that the investment in whatever form is as good as or higher that the increase in price for the package? (similar to inflation impact). If the answer is yes, then you should not buy the package now as it may only be used in many years later i.e. instead of buying a call option with no maturity, one may want to buy on spot i.e. immediate when needed.

The package that I bought came with two options: 1) 20% discount; 2) no discount but free with a 35 years swiftlet Farming investment plan. The selling point purchaser is given a free investment scheme with up to 4 x of your invested amount. Too good to be true buy many investors buy the idea due to it potentially high returns and also it is tight up with a very well- known trustee.

From my analysis, the so-called free investment plan is actually about 50% funded by the package seller. The the other 50% is actually paid by buyers. All the investment returns is mainly based on projection. As the ex Treasury trader, I think that the expected return is just too good to be true. There are many risk element in this type of swiftlet farming such as natural disaster, illness to the swiftlet, birdnest production and also whatever happens in the 35 years that will yield much lower results than projected.

I took the 20% package rather than facing all kind of uncertainties for the next 35 years for the swiftlet farming investment scheme. Of course high risk high returns just that I dont want to worry about investment returns for the next 35 years. I would rather keep the 20% discount now and make my own decision for investment. Another point is than RM5,000 35 years later may only worth RM500 due to inflation impact.