Thank you first for replying my post with informative suggestion, never knew that it is so crucial to own a medical card or insurance before. Once I Googled, saw a husband paid 1.7M for his wife from his savings due to not purchasing a medical card or insurance. I've made my mind and looking for medical coverage for myself.

Btw, is medical card same with insurance? First time buyer with no experience, can you shed some light regarding medical card or insurance for a college student to take? As there are many aspects to be take into consideration and I do not wish to mislead by some (minority, not majority) insurance agent that would misled the information just for the sake to hit quota.

Thanks again sir.

Basically medical card will self depreciate as time goes by.
To make it simple, an insurance agent's job is to cheat and mislead to secure a business.
By using Google also, why not try to do search on people that got cheated on buying insurance?

Yes, get a medical card. I am not an agent.

I wonder if this tracker help?
I can't upload the Word document, Lowyat system disallowed, if you need it just PM me with the Subject title: MoneyTracker. Thank you.


Attached File(s)
 MoneyTracker.pdf ( 25.2k ) Number of downloads: 60

A story from AKPK

RM 1,000,000 credit card debt

En Bahar* and his wife, Pn Mizah led a very comfortable life. They were doing extremely well as sales associates for a well-known product. Their success was so impressive that they were one of the biggest suppliers for the product in the East Coast. Business was booming and Pn Mizah seized the opportunity to diversify her investments. She purchased a string of properties in various states in the East Coast in addition to her family's robust earnings and investments.

The newfound wealth brought on much vanity to the couple. They felt the need to purchase four cars, two of which were luxury automobiles, all in attempt to impress both their downlines and customers. Although the luxury cars were extremely expensive to maintain, both En Bahar and Pn Mizah were adamant to hold onto those cars. The couple used all their savings on luxury goods that they did not have anything left to fund their business. En Bahar and Pn Mizah then tried to secure business loans from several banks but failed miserably. No one wanted to provide any financing to the couple, not with their extravagant lifestyle and spendthrift ways.

Dejected, the couple turned to 12 different credit cards to finance their business. They were not ill-educated; they knew the effects of interest on credit cards but they simply did not have any other way to fund their business. The couple had no other choice. Pn Mizah could not let go of what they worked so hard for. The business is their only source of income; they could not give it up and tried hard to keep it alive with the help of high interest credit cards.

The couple realised that the profit margin on their business was shrinking due to the high payments on their credit cards. They were worried about losing customers as the lower revenue forced them to stock fewer products. They also could not deliver and fulfill their customers' needs and was losing out to competitors. The couple was desperate to save the business and secure their financial future and they were drowning in debt of over RM1,000,000. Asides from that, En Bahar and Pn Mizah were tired of spending all of their revenue on high credit card interest charges. Their frustration towards their huge debt prompted them to seek the help of AKPK.

AKPK advised the couple to sell some of their properties as it was negatively impacting the business. They were also asked to find buyers for both their luxury cars to eliminate excessive spending on both vehicles. Aside from that, they were strongly urged to find a business loan after eliminating huge expenses on property and car loans. The business loan would help lower the couple's dependency on credit cards, further eliminating their high interest payments and ultimately increasing profit for the business. AKPK also restructured all 12 credit cards and was able to lower their monthly payments by almost 50%. En Bahar and Pn Mizah were thankful for the sound financial advice from AKPK. They can now concentrate on increasing profit without worrying about the ill-effects of credit cards.

try ZIP it first before upload?.
maybe can...bcos, for Excel file it have to be ZIPPED before can upload.

I am glad that you understood the importance of wealth protection. Medical card is not the same with insurance but some insurance (mostly investment-link) can be attached with medical card. If you just want medical card you should go for a stand-alone medical card as it is usually cheaper but with no insurance or add on benefits. Some stand-alone medical card might be sold by general insurance company.

There`s a few things you should look up for when buying a medical card.

1) Guaranteed renewal - which means your medical card can be renewed every year with no exclusion. Some medical cards with no GN might put exclusion on your current illness which leaves you unprotected since you cannot buy new medical card due to the illness.

2) Cashless - this allows you to enter hospitals without the need to pay as the insurance company will issue a guarantee letter to cover your expenses. Most medical card should have GN and cashless. Without cashless you might need to pay first the hospital before your expenses are covered.

3) Hospital/clinic panels - depending on the medical card you bought, some companies have more panels than the other. Panels allows you to enter cashless instead of reimbursement basis. I do have a list for comparison but its company`s confidential.

4) Annual limit, lifetime limit and R&B - this limit determines your maximum usage per year and for the whole policy. Logically, higher limit means higher cost but better protection. Room and board determines the hospital room (single, double, shared room etc) covered by policy. Some companies require copayment if you exceed the r&b while some ask you to pay the difference.

5) Co-insurance or deductible - some medical card might require you to pay a certain percentage of the fees after a certain amount, only pay out if the medical fees is above a certain portion and many more. This is dependent on how the product is and for some (like deductible) is set by the agent. Co-insurance and deductible is not always a bad thing as it reduces the medical card cost by a lot.

6) Age limit - Some medical card last until 99 while some until 80. Lasting longer is not always a good thing as this gives company an excuse to charge extra on your medical card.

7) Extra bonuses, advantage, etc2 - a lot of companies have their own bonuses like increase annual/lifetime limit if you make no claims, increase r&b and many more. Some even have 15% premium giveback. Some have unlimited lifetime limit. Bear in mind that although this sounds great and all, most are redundant and give extra cost to your premium.

There`s a lot of other things that can be discussed but kinda hard to explain this through chat. I usually provide better insight through appointments, but i hope this helps.

For college students, since you are young, your medical card should be cheap, around RM 150 per month with insurance or around RM 100 for stand-alone medical card if you are going for minimal cost.

I agree that medical card depreciates over time but it does not make it completely useless nor redundant. Hence the reason why it is good to have an independent advisor who can do policy review for you after buying the policy, and usually after 10 years or less ask this advisor to do another policy review for you. Although I do agree that insurance and medical card depreciates, mainly due to inflation, it does provide a certain level of protection for the upcoming future and guarantees enough protection for the present. Just like safety equipments for construction for example, some might become no longer useful after a certain period of time due to wear and tear, but does that mean you should not have any safety equipment at all? Certain insurance companies does realizes this problem of depreciating protection hence the reason certain insurance companies provide autoupgrades on their product's sum assured like Hong Leong Assurance (with increase premium of course). Certain insurance company like Allianz also has a track record of increasing their current client's lifetime limit (with no additional charge I believe). I heard similar news of other insurance companies structuring their product to make it more time resistant as well.

Although I do agree that some insurance agents can and had misled people to secure a business, I believe they are not the majority. What I do agree also is the way certain agencies/companies impose quotas and provide lucrative sales reward to agents does make it likely to go on a mad selling hunt in selling products regardless of the clients situation. Nevertheless, I am sure there are a lot of insurance agents out there as well who do care in providing beneficial products and good services to their clients rather than just trying to fulfill sales quota.

It's understandable that you might have a negative perspective on insurance once you have a bad claim experience. I respect your opinion but I hope that one day you can see that one bad apple does not makes the whole basket rotten. The insurance industry is not as bad as you make it out to be and had benefit the lives millions of people.

Well, if the "advisor" will advise me not to buy insurance and any of the sure lose money scheme, then I'll listen.
You also already says the insurance will self depreciate, which meaning it is cheating in the first place, people have to keep on add money to get protected while sller will keep on enjoy luxury life.
Now working in ME, company only providing economy class tickets. By not trusting any of the cheating agent or advisors, I'm enjoying business class tickets.
Guess you are agent, right? And trust me, any of the agent that approached me will say they are the best.

Anyone who claims that <insert-certain-group> are all cheaters should probably not be taken too seriously in the first place. Most likely they were cheated but a few from that group due to the lack of due diligence from his side and then decided to put a blanket statement on everyone in that particular group. Shallow thinking much?

Ive had my run-ins with this particular person, and it's been shown that you really can't change the minds of someone who is older and stubborn, not even with facts and figures.

And since this person keeps on dissing the "advisors" I can do nothing but show proof of my allegations. In this thread, Ive thrown numbers upon numbers, facts after facts, and I've been vouched by members of the community, but he still would not accept that he was wrong. Is this the person that you want to listen to when it comes to financial advising? Again, I dont like to "buka pekung" of other people, but I cannot accept his ways of dissing the "advisors" in general. Had a bad experience with a particular agent? Fine, spread the word. But to label ALL "agents" as cheaters? Shallow, stubborn, and out-of-bounds:

https://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopi...post&p=71949050

This post has been edited by wild_card_my: Jan 29 2015, 10:29 AM

Wouldn't car salesmen all be cheaters then? Because cars are known to depreciate in value very quickly.
Wouldn't building contractors all be cheaters too? Because the physical structure depreciates in value as well.
Wouldn't banks be cheaters as well? Because your savings in your bank account actually depreciate in value.
Is this a life to live? Thinking and believing that you are being cheated everywhere..
Wouldn't your employers be cheating you as well? Your pay is only a third of the expected value that you add into the company..

Personal Insurance is an expensive product. Yes it is, especially the medical insurance.
But which is more affordable for you? The insurance premiums or the deposit required for admission at the hospital counter?
Malaysia has among the world's best medical system (not expertise but management system), if your condition can wait (gov hospitals are not as scary as some play it out to be). But more often than not, we want to know for sure that wherever the ambulance takes us, we won't be left to die at the door, just because we can't fork out the deposit. Even if we can, the nightmare continues after we're well. AKPK and Datuk Michael Chong have whole banks of stories to tell. Who knows whose story we'll be reading next? I sure hope that it won't be from among us here.

You would buy a car insurance for your car, because you spent quite a sum to buy it. Might as well protect it.
But that car only happened because you labored and afforded it. If not for you, the car won't happen at all.
Shouldn't you protect your money making machine (yourself) more than the car? Your maintenance is more expensive as well should the need for an overhaul arises.

Lastly, I am really the best loh

This post has been edited by JIUHWEI: Jan 29 2015, 10:33 AM

All the salesperson are cheater, basically.
I don't go private hospital instead going to government hospital. How much I need to fork out money? <10% from what private hospital charges.
Car insurance I always buy lower than market value.
SO, do I need medical card? Indeed I need it in my dream, but not in reality.

Hi all, I'm a fresh graduate in need of a car. I was thinking of Myvi 1.5 54k or 68k kia Rio?
My monthly salary is 2.2k after epf and socso. I have no commitment at the moment. My parents will help me down 10k. The question is can I afford it?

U gotta first lay down your monthly expenses

U ask like this...how ppl gonna advise u???

An used car suits you better.

Monthly expenses 800. I'm working on probation after 5 months will increase 200 salary and another is I have another job offer of 3.3k haven't minus epf and socso. But still considering.

After u buy car...

Petrol (for me, around RM300 a month)
Service car (my experience...u estimate about RM100-150 a month)
Car insurance and road tax

teach u a trick to make sure u won't have problem paying car insurance...
u only pay once a year
let's say when u buy car, insurance + road tax is RM2K
RM2K / 12 months = RM166.67
so, u put RM166.67 aside every month, u MUST NOT use it no matter what happens

Now, u do your own calculations

Thanks I guess I can't afford Rio anymore. Btw car has to service every month?

My brother getting rm2500 and paying rm850 monthly. Every month have to ask extra money from my mother. Staying in Seremban only.

You allocate the maintenance cost every month, so that you won't get stuck when something happens.
The so-called warranty does not cover certain parts.
Getting an old car(just buy from your parents) and start to learn how to maintain it will be better option.