For sure, insurance is a better investment compared to MLM. In fact, MLM is a job instead of an investment.

dude....surf junky??...hahaa..heard a rumours saying that they will shutdown service for asian...just want to let u know...

http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=326577&st=40

1) Read my thread on our discussion on insurance.

2) You are confusing two different things here. Selling insurance versus buying insurance. People who sell life insurance makes a lot of money on commissions. So, compare to MLM, selling life insurance is a lot more profitable. As for buying life insurance, most people buy the wrong kind and wrong amount of life insurance. They are making life insurance agent rich and getting very little in return.

Dreamer

This post has been edited by dreamer101: Sep 12 2006, 09:00 PM

any1 have try any investment plan from bank..plz tag it ur investment n profit
here if possible..at least this will calm down the confusion in investment,FD,ML or etc...
this will help those with others to choose which investment is the best with comparing the profit plus the level of risk involve in the investment.
help needed..
really interested with mutual investment but preferable small amount of investment coz im still a student..
i think most of the university student think like this..
ur help is highly appreciate

for me the best investment still in capital market>money market>insurance>all the scam and mlm direct selling whatsoever

reason:worth the risk that you're taking

I'm saying that buying insurance can be considered as an investment. I understand that most of the people buy the wrong kind of insurance. So, I always emphasize on the professionality of the insurance agent. Sometime, agent themselves also not clear about the insurance policy and it's almost impossible for us to read the policy line by line. There're so many products from insurance companies nowadays, we should buy it according to our need and it must be aligned with our goals.

Thanks for your news...

Financial planning covers 6 areas :
1) cash management
2) tax management (what are tax deductibles?)
3) investment (unit trust, equity, etc etc)
4) risk management (insurance)
5) real estate (buy house etc)
6) retirement. (how to finance yourself after retirement)

educate yourselves in this areas and you can be finance savvy.

This post has been edited by luqmanz: Sep 13 2006, 01:40 PM

Insurance is not an investment. The return is less than FD.

Dreamer

Thanks for your info. I think tax management is really important in financial planning. This is the thing most people will leave out...

If I'm not mistaken, nowadays there are some insurance products giving more return compared to the conventional life insurance. I think education insurance should be one of them. The fund can be withdrawn when our kids go for tertiary education. And also there're some saving insurance where interest is higher than FD. Does anybody has info about this?

Even though insurance sometimes provides returns higher than FD .. we dont see it as an investment. Insurance is a part of our risk management (what happens if I need thousands of ringgit for medical bills? I dont wanna sell my house/car.)
When buying insurance, dont look at the returns, look at the coverage. That's the main point of insurance.

This post has been edited by luqmanz: Sep 13 2006, 10:20 PM

Leekk8 and Luqmanz,

1) Just use a bit of common sense here. Insurance folks take your money and charged you commision to buy unit trust to be included in the insurance. This is what happening in those investment linked policy.

Let me ask you a simple question. Why are you paying insurance agent high commission to put unit trust inside you insurance when you can do it yourself to begin with??

2) In general, unless you meet an insurance agent that is very knowledgable. They cannot and will not separate the insurance portion from the investment portion. You really have no idea how they calculate the return since you have no idea how much you are paying for insurance and investment.

3) You do not know how to calculate retrun so how do you know what are their assumptions??

4) Insurance companies make a lot of money eventhough the agent commision is around 141% to 170% of the first year premium for each policy. Guess where they get their money from?? You, of course.

5) If you really do the calculation and they tell you exactly how much each portion: insurance versus investment. You will know and find that the return is worse than FD. Please noted that you do not pay commision when you buy FD.

Dreamer

IMO

To count anything as a proper investment, their current annual returns should be more than 5%. Anything below and you are not working your money enough. Fact is.. our current inflation is around that level so if you don't make at least 5% your real value of your money will shrink.

Therefore insurance are not proper investment tools, they are just risk management tools. Even if insurance does give you above that, there is usually a catch, it may be because there is some risk involved and you should demand a higher return anyway.

FD, well.. you are losing money just leaving it there...

Mutual funds, well if you accoutn for entering and exitting fees, managing fees, inflation.. If it doesn't make more than 7% per annum averagely.. I wouldn't think about it.

Btw... both FD and Mutual Fund is much more better than you buying insurance.

Nowadays, if you really notice about it, there is bunch of insurances agent fools fooling around for the commisions. They only asked you to buy insurance for future but what really in their minds is commisions. They saw you all as money in his pocket. This is what one of my friends experience of when he being as a insurance agent for a period.

Of course, most of people do buy insurance when some of them being cheated to have a returned more but what you believe later is your 20 years of insurance money RM90 per month
[ RM90 X 20 X 12 = RM21600 ]
only left RM5000. So where does those agent getting 140% - 170% of commision from? You. Think of it. Rather to put it inside FD for your child better from buying insurance. The insurance company just like a vampire sucking your money away.

My simple guide to life insurance

Life insurance is an insurance. It is used to protect against of the
risk of lost of income. For example, let's say A is the bread winner
of the family. If something happen to A ( for example die in an
accident), you will not longer have income from A. The family still
need to survive. Life insurance can provide/replace some portion of
the income so that the family still can survive. In some
circumstances, A will suffer some form of disability and can no longer
work, life insurance provide some compensation to help the family to
survive too. Please noted that in Malaysia, the protection against
disability is limited to what is specified in the policy. In advanced
countries like USA, they have disability insurance that pays as long
as you cannot work regardless whatever the cause is. This kind of
disability insurance does not exist in Malaysia. In summary, life
insurance is used to protect against the loss of income and
disability.

So, does life insurance makes sense to you??

1) Do you have dependents?
A) If you are single and have no dependent, it really does not make
much sense to buy life insurance.

B) If something happen to me, I would like to leave something for my
parents. Is your parent depend on your income for survival?? If answer
is no, why buy life insurance?? If you want leave something for your
parent, why not give your parent the money now?? Save the money from
insurance premium and give to your parent now every month.

2) If you are home maker and makes no income, why buy life insurance??

3) If you are married and your family depend on you to provide income,
in general, you should buy life insurance.

4) However, it may NOT be worthwhile for you to buy life insurance if
you have a lot of savings (more than 200K). In general, life insurance
in Malaysia get very expensive for payment greater than 200K.

All my comments does not necessary apply to medical insurance. Do your
own research to find out what is right for you. If your insurance
agent cannot explain to you why you should buy life insurance, why are
you buying??

The very complicated and complex thing about insurance in Malaysia is
that we do not have pure term life insurance. All insurance product in
Malaysia is normally a combination of life insurance, disability
protection and medical protection. In most cases, unless your
insurance agent is good and you do a lot of research, you really have
little or no idea what you are buying. I am not qualify to tell you
what you should buy and how much to buy in each circumstances.

The bottomline is you need to know is

1) what are you protect against??
Life, disability, medical

2) What is the likelihood for each risk at your age??

3) What is the cost for each option??

4) What is the maximum pay and deductable in each situation??

Insurance is used to protect against the situation where you do not
have enough resources to cover. You need to buy just enough so that
when the bad thing happen, you are coverred. But, you should NOT buy
so much that it costs too much to you.


Dreamer

Thanks dreamer for your info on this. This is really a useful guide.
You said that most of the insurance in Msia is combination of life insurance, disability protection and medical protection, is it true? I heard that there're some insurance, where we pay the premium every year and no saving feature. Normally life insurance has saving feature, where we can withdraw the money at certain age.

That is called term life insurance. In Malaysia, you need to shop around. Some term life insurance costs a lot more than those with a little money back.

Dreamer

Thanks for all the info. I realize we must get an experience insurance agent if we wish to buy an insurance.

Does anybody can give me some idea on the KLCI Futures and SSF(Single Stock Futures)? I wish to know how they operate and how we can buy and sell.

http://www.bursamalaysia.com/website/bm/pr...erivatives.html

Trading procedure:
http://www.bursamalaysia.com/website/bm/trading/derivatives/

Feel free to ask, I'll try my best