Being in debt is not fun, it's been 5 months since I started my life to be good in money management. I have been living frugally every month without much entertainment, most of my time spent was either gym, swimming, reading books and writing blog. I'm happy to keep myself disciplined in paying myself first, smarter in spending within my needs and afford ability. The interesting part is get to noticed my debts getting lesser and lesser. Guess what? I am living much more happier.

The journey to debt free (referring to bad debts) requires a lot of determination and disciplined, once you have decided to take the first step, you are on you way to debt free and settling Money problems. It takes a thousand miles to begin with a single step. Money shortages are always stressful and serious debt can emotionally drain you.

Thus, you can find dozen of debt management articles spread across the internet, you can read and understand them, but most of us need to dealt with ourself first, the biggest enemy is ourself. Life has up and down, different period in our life, we would have negative feelings of fear and anxiety.

Glad, after all it just money, take out the negative feelings, money problems can always be solve, you are still breathing, you are still alive, you are not losing your loved one or diagnose by incurable disease. You should be glad.

Accept, and don't blame. Part of your debts could be from your spending habit, it's your spending decision to create the problem for youself no matter you are aware of it or  not. There's always a choice, accept and works towards the responsibility.

Stop, spending is easy, stopping is hard. Digging is hard but stop digging is easy, if you are digging yourself into a hole, it's easy to stop digging. Likewise, same to money, when you stop spending, you are getting better control of your financial. Spend within your mean, you just need foods, water, cloth and a roof over your head to survive.

Personality, there's always good and bad debts, many people value a person by what car they drive, what they wear, what brand they carry in their hand or the brand of the watch they wear. What would be the purpose of having debts when you wear a ROLEX watch? Money is not to value a person status in society but the qualities of the person, character and personality. Sticks with true and honest people who don't really judge people by wealth but your their personality.

Learn, to be a lifelong student, it's part and parcel of learning experience in self-growth, debts you can resolve today can be an experience for you to deals with tougher challenge in future. When there is a challenge, there is always an opportunities, it could be a turning point in life for you to discover a better living lifestyle and a new start of life.

We get the message "Ubah Gaya Hidup", everything just hike up when fuel price increased. House is getting more expensive, stocks market is unstable, banks may increase interest rates. Political drama keep going on and economy isn't getting better, our country is in a mess. It seems like we had no idea what's gonna happen next.

Despite all the negativity that kept pouring in, "Ubah Gaya Hidup" living better for less seems impossible to be truth. In other perspective, a tough time could means a good time to make a difference in your life, a positive change.

How to take advantage in a bad economy?
Many of us are trimming their expenses and going out less, many has cancelled their yearly vacations from their to-do-list, you can utilize this time around to go travel with smaller crowds, MATTA Fair is just around the corner, visit and grab the cheapest package as fast as you can.

Invest, if you have money in your bank account, this would be a buyer paradise to invest in real estate, there may be many houses out for "lelong" and you can get a good location due to many empty lots available. Another opportunity would be starting your business, a great time to serve the market who would like to spend less for more, or perhaps look for a market that has the most number of businesses closing down and start building the root from there by researching the reason and find the solutions to cater for the market needs this time around.

Start a blog and earn money as people would be spending more at home surfing the internet looking for information and ideas to improve their life, aims for something that people would like to read such as money, entertainment, personal development and daily solutions method.

If worst come to worst, you can take this opportunity to explore working abroad where currency is much stronger. If you really have too many expenses you can't cope and in bad shape due bad economy, this could be a good idea to think about.

After all, economy wouldn't be bad all the times, we can make use of the bad times to learn and the good time to save so that we can handle it in future. "Ubah Gaya Hidup" to kicks the bad habits out and cultivate good one.

When it comes to money, it is very sensitive topic to talk about, when something goes wrong, it will ended up in a big fight and worst still affect the relationship that is so close. Everybody fight over money, husband/wife, friends, couple and family members.

No matter how nice you are, when talk about money that's not the way you want, you can be the fiercest person on earth. Money makes the world go round, here's where the common use of "No Money No Talk" came from. Everyone need money to get food into their stomach and a roof over their head, money is not evil, what's evil is the stress that cause by lack of money, for long we have know that stress can affect your mood and emotions, stress can make you gain or lose weight, depression, sleepless, loss appetite, loss interest in sex, anxiety and many more. Stress can kill you slowly and affect your health in long run, so why fight over money?.

If you recall in your past why do you get so angry fighting over money with someone, is it because it does not meet your dreams, desires and goals. Stop for a moment, think again what leads to the arguments and what is cause of the stress and increased the tension. Is it important? Now switch your thought to how lovely and care the person gives to you. In fact, at that point of time, you can only see is their flaws and not why you love them. Even if you win the fight over money and got what you want, unfortunately someone you love and care about suddenly becomes someone you can't be around, do you want that? Money can't buy happiness, money problems lead to stress. Stress can leads to divorce, break up, loss of friendship and disconnect family love.

"No matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides." - Baruch Spinoza

Whether you want it or not, couples fight over money because one or neither party are lack of money management. To avoid the fight, it is important to know that couple instead thinking like two, both should be thinking and acting like one to achieve the goals they set, goals setting should be realistic and discuss peacefully among each other. Hold to the trust to each other.

Only people make money evil and fighting, money has no problem, if you deals money issues in different perspective positively, you could see the other side of peace and harmonious. If you have read "who moved my cheese", when rat hit a roadblock, they would look for other way out, but unfortunately for human being, when they hit a roadblock, they start to blamed on others. If rat can find other way out, why can't you?

What trigger your spending? When you are sad, depressed, angry, excited or lonely? I use to spend more money when I feel bored or carrying a lot of cash in my pocket. That's why I don't carry much cash myself to avoid temptation to spend. Having to identify the way to trigger my spending, I have been very caution to avoid and control them. I find it challenge to disciplined myself and it takes time to learns discipline money.

It is very hard for you to have the temptation not to buy when the stuff you have been thinking to buy are on sales, 50%, 60% or 70% discount. You feel disturb and your subconcious mind keep asking yourself, "buy or not buy?", "sales now, great deals!", "I can swipe first and pay later since it's on sales, I can save a lot." and many more which you are convincing yourself to buy, you are finding a good reason to buy so that you can buy comfortably and feel better in spending, I think many of us have such thought before, self talking to yourself buy or not buy. However, it's good to practices evaluating before taking action to purchase, instead of convincing youself, why not you evaluate why you need the stuff, it is necessary? do I have more than enough? do I have budget for this? If the answer is NO, then just stay away and hang in there for awhile, you may notice your temptation to buy will fade away and you may even forgotten about it after 2 to 3 days. I know the feeling is sucks, whenever the feeling slip through, shift your thought to think positively, think about another fews more digit in your bank account or stay out of debts, it will makes you feel better. 

Discipline Money require self-discipline,  it is a key to reduce debts and increase savings, if you practice it in long run, it will also improve your standard of living. Undiscipline person normally does not have discipline in money, if you notices yourself working day and night for money and the money just slip away easily, it is time for you to review your spending habits and time for money management lesson.

Discipline Money require a lot of self-discipline,  it is easy when you come to think of fantastic rewards to reach financial stability that you hopes for. Take each step forward in controlling your spending habits with bit of imagination and just little creativity to put your hard-earned money on lock. 

What do you see yourself in age 60, retired and finish rich. I have heard that only 1% of the people retired rich and 60% of them finish rich because of business, the rest are either inherited or from high management position (CEO, CFO, etc…). Ever wonder how to be part of the 1% of people to finish and retired rich. Recently I read a book - How You can become A Multi Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Milan Doshi. There's an idea from the book that suggested you can become a Millionaire getting 1 property every 5 years by saving as little as RM450 a month. The idea is pretty awesome and is good if you start from NOW. Since I am in the late twenty group, it would be a good time to start to set a goals for this.

It may sounds strange for a person not reach thirty to have such thought of thinking retirement, but I have been thinking about retirement and visualise them lately, I think I am getting older and older and need to start something. Seeing some of my friends, in their early thirty still partying all night long and not ready to settle down financially, I am not sure if they had any plan but what I know is that many of them are planning to get out of Malaysia to earn more Money. Is the grass greener on the other side?

If you happened to visit some of the seminar about wealth, you may notice, all walks of life is there to look for a change in their life, some are fourty and fifty, some are doctor, businessman and millionaires (no kidding). Sometimes, I was wondering what are they doing here, they shoud enjoy the high pay salary or income. I was wrong, they are having good pay and income but felt insecure and no freedom. It's not passive income but active income, if they stop working today, the money will not be coming in. What they are looking for is multiple source of income which mean the number of days they can survive if they stop working today.The true wealth to retire rich is to live rich with lots of freedom.

So, the next time when someone ask you, how much a person actually needs in order to retire? The answer should be the number of days I can survive in infinity if I start to stop working now.

How many times have you heard that "money is not enough and I am not happy with my finances"? Alright, this is actually the voices from my heart. I use to blame the government because our education system does not include financial education classes for us to manage money well, sometimes I would blame my parent for not managing their money well enough for their kids to live better in future. But wait a minutes, is it their responsibility? This really got me thinking.

When something is at fault, there is always someone to be blamed. Let's think about it, before pointing finger to others, look at yourself what have you done. Let me share with you, recently I open a poll in a well known finance forum asking about how many people who has emergency fund on their hand if they do not work for 3 or 6 months. I wasn't surprise with the results, there are only 5 persons out of 53 that have emergency fund on hand. This is so common I was not shocked. From the 53 people that responded to my polls, I am sure they are smart and disciplined person. Emergency fund is essential in personal finance and why do this people not following? Perhaps it was just one example and I can't justify overall about personal finance but why do this good personal finance fail in the first place?

It kept me thinking for awhile and I think you may know how important it is to budget and manage your money. No doubt that there are still many people I know still don’t keep track of their expenses. Hmm…I use to think, if everyone is practicing, personal finance would not exists and this blog will not exists neither. Probably this is what I want it to happen.

To get a picture why these good personal finance idea is hard to follow and fail, I would use myself as an example and additional feedback from the poll that I had gathered. Here's some of the reasons and obstacles:

1. Not taking action and lazy to get started

Lazy could be the number one reason. They simply do not want to take action to get it started, all sort of excuses popup such as lack of time or rather spend the time in leisure to rest or do things they always wanted to do. In fact, the first step to get started will not take you long to plan and budget your day-to-day financial affairs. Despite doing all these planning will enable you to do the things that bring you satisfaction and enjoyment in later days. After all, it is completely up to you to take the first step. In my opinion, I think everyone should track where their money goes and I have not met people who is good in their finances that don't need to track their money unless they have a personal finance adviser.

2. Get lazy along the way

I know I know is lazy again. The second big obstacle required discipline and you may lost focus follow through. At this stage, even though you have make the right move to get started, but along the way you get lazy and the intention to give up is strong.

Since many will give up at this stage, if you continue to sticks to your goals, you'll will be better off others. You can cultivate good habits to keep you stay focus, for example, writing journal to remind you to sticks to your goals like I did, to blog about personal finance, and each time I wrote and reread what I wrote, it will automatically entered to my subconscious and keep me stay focus all the time.

See, this works for me, there is other ways to stay motivated, such as keep yourself a to-do-list all the time to force a daily routine to track your expenses. You can take about a minute or two a day after dinner or before you go to bed to list down what you had spend for the day.

3. It is not the right time yet

I know you may have a better important things to take care, you may thought of it is not important enough to take care personal finance now . But let me ask you, when is the best time? It is always the best time to start right now, start it small and you will eventually formulate a plan for yourself in long run that works for you. What's more important than paying attention to yourself. As with anything else in life, without financial goals and specific plans for meeting them, we drift along and leave our future to chance.

I always heard this anywhere in self development books or website -> "most people don't plan to fail; they just fail to plan." So, it reminds me that if I fail to plan, I will fail to reach my financial goals.

Given all the reasons and obstacles, the next step is all depends on you to get kick start your personal finance. It's easy to get started and practicing makes easy. The only courage you need is the first step. Here's a suggestion, you can read this book that I introduced before in my previous post - The Automatic Millionaire. Even J.D. Roth (world's most inspiring money blogger) recommending this book in his latest post - Personal Finance Made Easy: Pay Yourself First.

Did you overspent your budget this month due to petrol price increase? Whether you want it or not, we are forced to change lifestyle. Easier said than done, nowadays, it seems like every penny counts. If you spend more than you earned, you are in trouble. You are attracting debt. You may not want to see this happen to you, The Magic of Starting Small "Debt", without proper self-control and budgeting, small debt become big debt, when you have more debt, you will dig more hole to cover the first debt, when you are out of hole to cover, you will seek help from family, friends and relatives. Your one problem matter is now everybody matter. What if they have no family, friends or relatives to help? even good guy become bad guy, human being will do anything to survive, our nation crime rate will increase. This is no more one person matter but a threat to society. Now we can see the magic of starting small debt.

Where else, Sticking to a budget can be difficult, but with so many commitments on hand you have to be extra cautious. Everyday TV, radio and newspaper ads are mining information to our mind to buy this and that. STOP your urge and wait for a week or two, the urge to buy the new thing will gone. Even if you overspent this month, here's where you can apply The Magic of Thinking Small Idea - Trimming small expenses.

Don't under estimate trimming small expenses, if you can cultivate this habit, you can actually find yourself saving maybe a lot or maybe enough for you to fill another full tank petrol for the rest of the weeks. For example, some may sounds uneasy but worth trying,

1. Go to your car and get the car's manual and flip through the pages to look for the recommended maximum tire pressure. A simple math here, for every 8 PSI you add to any tire, you improve your petrol usage by 1%, most of the car tire is 10-12 PSI below the recommended maximum. If you airing up your tires, you can actually save 6% of you petrol usage. If petrol costs RM2.70 a litre and your car need 10 km per litre (for easy calculation) over your next 10,000 km, you can actually save approximately RM162.
2. If you get your haircut every 4 weeks, probably you can go on the 5 or 6 weeks instead. This may save you a few cut a year.
3. Credit Card balance transfer: shop around and transfer a balance to a low-interest rate card.
4. Borrow instead of buying book.
5. Renting a video instead of going for movie.
6. Purchase a ready-made meal instead of going out for dining.
7. Look out for customer reward program.
8. Use CFLs instead of light bulb, because a light bulb use 75 watt which is equivalent to 26 watt CFL, save 50 watt.
9. Terminate your fitness monthly bill where you don't visit regularly.
10. Subscribe ASTRO only the channel you watched most.
11. Unlimited text messages or unlimited phone call or unlimited broadband, if you are not using unlimited, then choose a cheaper package.
12. Cancel your caller ring tone or any other stuff on your handphone which you think is not needed (those unnecessary service).
13. Taking your lunch to work.
14. Carpooling, walking or cycling.
15. Stop smoking.
16. Dating and Romance at zero cost in my old post –> Ways to romantic without using money
17. I run out of idea, is now your chance to show your creativity.

Forbes only reveal the top 40, here's my humble script on the upper part of this site that will generate your position in the rich list of Malaysia. Here's your chance to find out. Try them.

Well, I am not in the top 10% or top 15% richest Malaysia in the rich list, but I am grateful for what I am now, but I will not give up. Hopefully the Malaysia Rich list can provide you some visualisation moving towards your goals to financial planning. No matter you are rich or poor, I sincerely hope that you will feel grateful to everything even it seems to be out on your way. For example, if I am not in the 15% percent richest, I would put a goals to ahieve that in 5 or 10 years time to reach 15%. If you want to be happy, feeling grateful is the pre-requisite to happiness.

After all, the truly successful person doesn't come with only wealth but being abundant in all aspect of life.

Here's the list of data sources:

The Malaysia rich list is calculate using the break down of annual income for different income groups, in this

way, we can ensure the exact percentage and calculate accurately according to the group. Which mean if your annual income falls into different group income, the calculation will be based on the income group percentage to rank you in the Malaysia rich list.

Below is the break down of annual income and group:-

Income group percentage	Individual annual income (MYR)
Below 10 percent	< ~1,200
Below 20 percent	< ~1,700
Below 50 percent	< ~2,800
Below 85 percent	< ~7,200
Above 10 percent	> ~84,000
Above 5 percent	> ~112,000
Above 1 percent	>~156,000

Sources: Department Of Statistics Malaysia
Salaries & wages paid increased by RM91.3 million or 4.7% in November, 2007 compared with RM1,938.0 million spent a year ago. The total amount paid in November, 2007 was 0.8% or RM15.6 million higher than RM2,013.7 million spent in October, 2007.

Disclaimer:
The Malaysia rich list has no guarantee, explicit or implied, is made regarding their accuracy or suitability to a specific purpose. It was intended as a guideline. Million Ringgit Homepage and the owner of this domain assumes no liability for the use of the application and the information generated.

Finally, it hit us, this sentence "PRICE INCREASE" will be the hot topic anywhere in Malaysia. Fuel price jack up and the upcoming price increase for electricity, whether you like it or not, life must goes on.

In my previous 2 posts, I wrote Can your hard earn money keep up with inflation?, the 3.0% inflation that I mentioned in the post is outdated. The new inflation is estimate to rose to 5% or 6% due to fuel price increased. If we can't avoid inflation, then we can take opportunities from the advantage of it, to keep up with the inflation. Foremost, you may need to revise your lifestyle and start budgeting. I always think that the word "budget" is punishment for those who are poor, like I need to think twice before spending and budgeting seemed like a waste of time. After practising it for months, I discovered that budgeting can keep me focused on the goals I want to achieve and that's why I need it. I personally think it's a smart move NOT putting yourself on credit that you couldn't afford - "Spending without Budgeting". You can know more about how do I manage my money here.

I mentioned in my previous post that I would recommend a book. This is the book -> The Automatic Millionaire. All of us know this "Pay OURSELF first" before you pay others, but how many of us are doing that? When you received your paycheck, do you pay yourself first? through this book, you will discover ways never considered.

Here's the sum up, The Automatic Millionaire one-step plan to live and finish rich is to save money. If you are looking for a get rich quick book, you can avoid this one. To practice the concept in this book, required self-discipline and time. Basically the concept of this book is pay yourself first, and try to make it at least the first 10% of your gross income. This powerful concept and the magic of compounding is irresitable for everyone to follow if you want to finish rich.

Do you want to get up at the middle of the night and say this:- 

Ouch 1: I'm approaching retirement and I have no savings? 
Ouch 2: I tried very hard and no matter what I do, I can't seem to make enough money to cover my expenses and save some money. 
Ouch 3: I wish I could quit this miserable job, but I have no choice, I got bills to pay.

Money is not enough, do you blame money? Money is never the problem, you are the master of your Money. It's just our lack of understanding of money and how we manage our financial planning that cause us lose sleep at night.

You know what the things should do, but simply don't do it - Pay Yourself First!. Making excuses and blaming others, your parent for instead for not teaching us about money are over. If you want to continue to lose sleep at night, it's your choice and it's not because you are born poor, it's just lack of understanding. The great things about this book is that it does not ask you to save big, if you can, that's good, but most people are not in that position, which is why this book will show you how little savings can add up quickly. Saving is something found in your everyday life by the way you live and the choices you make. I am sure you have heard of this "Sikit Sikit Lama Lama Jadi Bukit (Malay translated in English as "from little to grows into mountain")" or this "Rome was not built in a day" and neither will your bank account.

There are hundreds of ways to save money, encouraged yourself that it is never too late to start saving, regardless of your age. Follow your own pace and I always put this quotes with me all the time "I cannot go back and make a new start, but I can start now and make a brand new ending."

Cheers~