Financial Freedom

Day 98 - 902 days to go

Today is another great learning day. I continued to learn from a few property investment gurus in the Wealth Mastery Academy workshop. By chance sit next to a personal finance author and expert. I attended his seminar 4 - 5 years ago and bought one of his books. He told me that he authored 6 books since then. He is also a regular speaker in various personal finance and investment seminar.

I am not sure if he is from Seremban or he just chose to stay in the small town which is about 1.5 hours drive from KL. What I learned from him and my another colleague who has been staying in the same town is that they paid only 20 to 30% of the price for a house with the similar land size in KL. Of course, the property is not expected to increase in price to the extend that is close to the KL counterpart. however, they really enjoy quality of a big house with much lower investment cost.

The speaker is better off compared to my colleague in a sense that he only needs to travel to KL whenever he conduct seminar in KL which is normally during weekend with less traffic. However, my colleague needs to travel two hours for one way every workday. Nevertheless, his whole family enjoy the bungalow with big piece of land with the hard work of the husband and father.

Met my ex colleague and learned that she sold a piece of property which appreciated by more than 200% within 5 years. Of course, in terms of capital outlay which is the down payment, her gains could be more than 2000%. It is only commercial property that will has such a high yield in so short a period. Therefore, it is quality and not quantity that counts.

My sifu Milan challenges participants to invest in at least a piece of commercial property for good gain. Base on his estimation, 3 to 5 million bank loan on good quality property is what it takes to have a good retirement. It takes 10 to 12 years to achieve financial freedom. I agree with his calculation and will work hard towards the goal.

One more common strategies used by speakers for promoting their course is that they will jointly promote their respective course i.e. if you sign up one, you will get the second one free of charge. another one is that internet is used more often for any type of investment even for property investment.

Happy events:

1. Met the speaker again after many years and learned some money savings tips from him.
2. Learned quite a bit for the property investment talk.
3. Met my ex colleague and happy for her for her success in property investment.

Gold Investment

Day 5 - 995 days to go

Have been trying to invest in Gold all this while and finally open a Gold investment account in a bank, by chance as I intention to go to the bank is to cancel an existing credit card and to replace with another one that offer much more benefits. Just like other forms of investment, I always look out for what is new in the market and swap to one that offers better benefits as a smart consumer since there is no cost to swap it. Another benefit is to be able to use the airport lounge when I go overseas whaich I will be doing more often in future.

I always like to read information or brochure displayed in banks to find out what is interesting to me. Well, Gold investment is not something new but I am not aware this bank offers this investment account. I investment the minimum amount i.e. 10 grams for a start, reason being I like to use my personal trading skill to decide when I want to add more investment rather than "hard sell" by the bank officer. The current gold price may not be attractive enough for me to invest seriously but the main thing is I want to take action to open one gold investment account as I realise that as long as I do not open this account, I will not pay attention to this form of investment and hence gold price movement. Ideas have to be translated into action to be useful.

I also apply for a new card offered by Citibank which give "free" trip to a few countries either 3 days 2 nights or 4 days 3 nights. Then only I realise that they also include voucher for one day seminar, etc. Seems like a lot of goodies but actually are mostly sponsored by other merchants. The so-called free trip is actually not free as we need to pay for registration fee. However, it is still much cheaper than what one needs to pay. Again, I learn some marketing strategy from a merchant.

Well, actually I am not interested to get free trip as I own a few timeshares and I just give 0ne week free holiday to my ex staff, Tee for his honey moon in Switzerland. It is the 3rd time I do this. The first two times were also given to my colleagues, to Phuket for honey moon and to Los Angeles for family trip.