This post has been edited by leecy: Sep 26 2009, 01:55 PM

Invest in equities on my own?

Means invest in aggressive investment funds.
High risk, but oso high return. No capital guarantee in investment, though.
Unless u diversify the risks.

Tax people are ripping our money. If only there is no tax in this world..
Do you think life would be better?

This is totally offtopic but

@Bizmind
If tax collection n spending is done correctly, our schools will be free, our highways will have no toll, our neighbourhoods will be cleaner, our healthcare system will be superb and we'll have less crime. But we all know that our money isnt going to places it shud be . Scandinavian countries impose almost 50% tax on salary. But most of the citizens are happy because the money goes back to the people

Hi there,

I didn't have time to read all the replies here. I just give you my own thought about this (btw, i am not a unit trust or insurance agent ). Hopefully not too many duplication of info already provided

First off, I want to congratulate you on your newborn baby

Secondly, I want to congratulate you on taking the initiative to plan for your babies future

Anyway, back to the essence of this topic. Sorry if I am a bit off the original question as I think they are also some how related

#######

There are lots of aspect in the planning for your child's future such as

1) How much they need from now till they are independent including food, education (primary, secondary, tertiary), leisure, etc? Also you need to determine the inflation effect on this figure (RM1 now won't be worth RM1 in 20yrs time)

2) How many children do you plan to have? If you plan to have more than 1x, you should include the planning even starting now

3) How you want to invest to generate enough savings for #1 & #2 above (which is your main question)?


For #3, as some others had said, it should not be too risky as this is concerning your child's future. Having said that, I will give you some advice what you might consider to achieve the above

Bond

Bond is an excellent tool to generate the kind of return that is higher than FD, yet not as risky as equity. I have personally invested in bond for quite some time (mostly in unit trust form) and they can generate a healthy 7% - 8% per annum return.

YES, investing in bond also have risk of loosing money BUT comparing with equity the loss is much lower (though gain is lower too during peak time)

I monitor on a weekly basis the bond fund price offered by local unit trust company, so I know how is the performance

Capital Guaranteed Fund

As the title says, your capital is guaranteed but with potential higher return than FD. This is ideal for education fund

Make sure you avoid a very big trap that no agent will tell you. Check what is the maturity date. Some funds maturity date is 10 yrs . Which means if you want to cash out your fund before the 10 yrs period, your capital is not guaranteed

Another risk is you need to find out who is guaranteeing the fund. It must be an established bank or insurance company. Or else, forget it


Property

Although when mention about property, people will be scared by the big amount involved and "non" liquidity of the asset, in my opinion, it really depends how you invest

You can invest in low cost property such as apartment (about RM 100k). Also don't forget, you can always refinance the house to generate cash. You don't always have to sell


FD

You might be surprised I say FD because of the notorious return (low that is) of FD BUT it is very very liquid. It should be part of your consideration too

Education Insurance

Personally I don't put too much money on education insurance BUT I don't mention why (don't want to offend any insurance agents here). I have my reasons. Suffice to say you can consider this option if this kind of savings is suitable for you or not


LASTLY, the most important investment advice I can give to you (and anyone else for the matter), no matter how attractive any option is to you, NEVER EVER PUT ALL YOUR MONEY in ONE BASKET

That is THE WORST thing you can ever do

Hopefully you will find these information useful

This post has been edited by greatbargain: Sep 27 2009, 03:28 PM

i agree with his statement. Diverse your expenditure. I dun mind share our capital guaranteed return fund or education insurance with you. Just a sharing.

You should diverse your saving in insurance, fd,property, amanah saham, bond, share ,saving account and emergency fund

This post has been edited by leecy: Sep 27 2009, 05:48 PM

Nope, not into funds. But buy the KLSE share directly.

Xuzen

Sorry and thanks bro..

No need to be sorry la. Just be aware when making ur decisions @ the polling table in the future

Back to the topic :

We're planning to hv children so I want to start saving. I'm currently saving it along with my own retirement fund but I think it's not really a good idea. Because typical age retirement is around 30 years to go but child edu fund around 18 years starting from now.

Or have I been doing it correctly?

Syd G,

It really depends on your ability to save. Different people will have different strategies (i.e. having separate accounts for retirement and education concurrently, or doing it one after another).

As an example, if your combined income is RM5,000 and you are able to save RM500, you could still separate it into 2 accounts.

Education account: Save RM400 monthly for 10 years and subsequently reduce that to RM200 monthly for 8 years at a rate of 5%, you'll have about RM115,000.

Retirement account: Save RM100 monthly for 10 years and subsequently increase to RM300 monthly for 20 years at a rate of 5%, you'll have about RM160,000 extra for retirement.

Of course, this is very subjective. You can always increase your savings into your retirement account because RM160,000 is definitely insufficient for you to retire.

Nonetheless, it can be done concurrently. You just have to spend prudently for now.

Could not agree more with Jordy, what he said was true.
I believe it does not matter how you save, the most important thing is you do save money for future. In early days I start to work, I could not save more than rm200 per month. As time goes on I am able to save more each month as I starts to learn on how to manage my money and learn about money management.

Insurances, investments, educations, retirements, lifestyle.. everything is important to us. We can have it all if do it the right way

BTW, this is the kind of thread that really helps and gives good idea to peoples.

@Jordy
Thanks Your strategy really made sense. I think I'll be screwed with more than 1 kid tho. Heh.

Syd G,

Lesson 1 in managing money. "Don't eat what you can't chew". If handling one child is hard, then don't think of having another one

From TS nick, if TS is Malay I think he should consider ASB. Heard returns for ASB is very good.

Why bother go to ASB anymore, I predict A1M will give return at least on par with ASB as Najib himself will surely want to promote that. In the other hand, everybody can buy A1M.

vandetta,

Your STATEMENT is WRONG. There is NO WAY that any other ASx will return better than ASB. Obviously, you don't know anything about ASx.

Dreamer

This post has been edited by dreamer101: Sep 30 2009, 07:13 PM

care to tell us why? really curious here..

amerz,

Lets just say just because the fund has a "Bumiputra" suffix, it has special privileges and advantage over the rest

This post has been edited by Jordy: Oct 1 2009, 08:28 AM

congratz on being a father ^^

ermm i've some plan if you dun mind hearing it... since there are some issues with agent so i think its better that i dun post anything here bout my company plans ^^"'

anyway i've sent you a pm about it, if you are interested just let me know.. i'll type the plan out and email it to you ^^''

no hard feelings ^^ just another options for you ^^

Why not just share it here?