link roundup
Link Roundup

Link Roundup #14: 10 Things to Know This Week

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Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂

1. #Budget2019: 25 Highlights From Pakatan Harapan’s First Budget In Power – Says.com

A good summary of what you need to know about Pakatan Harapan’s #Budget2019 / #Belanjawan2019 announcement.

I like most things from Budget 2019, except:

  • P2P lending as a way to finance housing. From what I’ve observed so far, P2P lending’s interest rates are pretty high, from 12-18%. Why would anyone want to finance their home ownership via P2P lending, when normal housing loans are just around 4%? Also, apparently investors make their money on the appreciation value of the property. That makes the borrower a ‘custodian’ of the property, instead of for their long-term housing solution? It just doesn’t make sense, but to be fair we haven’t seen the full guidelines of the implementation method yet. So let’s see, but until then I’m highly sceptical.
  • Higher budget allocation for JAKIM. They got an additional RM100 million, from RM1.1 billion to RM1.2 billion. Sigh, expect more moral policing next year too I guess. Note: I’m not attacking Islam, I’m attacking Jakim. You can’t deny their actions give the religion a bad reputation, not only nationally but internationally as well.

A lot of people didn’t like the digital services tax. As a Spotify premium subscriber, this affects me too. But you know what? I’ll take the hit. First of all, I’m already paying lower because I’m in a family plan (related: 3 Ways to Get Cheaper Spotify Premium in Malaysia). Secondly, I’m just happy they didn’t increase the personal income tax, after it was lowered last year! This is pretty much the only ‘sacrifice’ I have to make, so OK la, no complaints!

MalaysiaKini has a handy tool to check how #Budget2019 will affect you personally. I can recommend it. Take it here, or click the picture below. Good job creators Lee Long Hui and Sean Ho!

link roundup

What are YOUR thoughts on Budget 2019?

2. 5 Financial Personality Types That Affect Your Money Habits – I’m Funemployed

LOVE this article! She explained the different financial personality types pretty well, including the investing, spending and saving money styles. There are five main types: The Spender, The Hoarder, The No-Eye-See, The Lalang and The Calculative Bugger.

I can see that I have elements of the Calculative Bugger, the Hoarder and little bit of the Spender. Which type are you?

3. 5 Malaysians Earning More than US$100 on Patreon and What They are Doing to Make Money – Entrepreneur Campfire

I didn’t know there are Malaysians making money from Patreon! What a cool compilation!

In the article, there are 5 Malaysian content creators making more than $100 per month on Patreon, plus 6 more who make less than that (at the moment).

You know, ever since I’ve become a content creator myself, I’ve become a lot more open to paying for online content, which is something I always expected for free last time. I’m still stingy, so it’s a learning process, but I do contribute a (small) monthly amount to the Try Guys on Patreon.

Which content creator do you support and contribute money to? I’m not referring to media portals (although they count too), but more to individual or group content creators.

4. These 15 Behaviors Will Make You Almost Irreplaceable At Your Workplace – Forbes

Agree with everything on the list, especially #9 – they are problem solvers, not complainers!

Look out for people at your workplace who show these behaviours. They’ll go far, mark my words.

5. These Tiny House Kits on Amazon Start at Only $4,690 – Apartment Therapy

Isn’t it amazing that you can now buy HOUSES on e-commerce platforms?? And some can be installed within a day!

If one day I get tired of living in the city, I’d do this: buy cheap land somewhere, install a house, and live/work from there.

It’s not an unattainable dream. We don’t have companies selling house kits yet in Malaysia (not that I know of), but Atiqah is currently in the process of building her Epic Home tiny house. You can check her updates here.

6. 3 Steps to Living Below Your Means – The Motley Fool 

I’ve been overspending a lot recently and appreciate the reminders in this article. I HAVE to get around to automating my savings, dammit.

Any of you set up a ‘transfer and forget’ system? Where does it go to, and how much?

7. Korean Women Are Destroying Their Makeup to Protest The Unpaid Labour of Beauty – Quartz

This is an interesting article – I’ve never thought of beauty as a form of unpaid labour. In this particular case, I see this movement as more of a reaction to South Korea’s extreme standards of beauty. I mean, over there they normalise plastic surgery what. Women spend a lot to be considered ‘attractive’, which they hoped will help them to get ahead in life. I understand why they’re angry when their money and efforts didn’t show the ROI they want.

After I read the article, I thought of beauty in relation to income. There’s evidence to believe that wearing makeup – or at least grooming – will help you earn more money. For that reason I do spend some amount of money on beauty products.

On the other hand, I read this article with the headline ‘very unattractive people earn significantly more money‘, and I’m confused again, back to square one.

In any case, I have no plans to expand my 5-10 minutes makeup routine. Am suddenly very thankful to Mom for passing me nice genes.

8. How You Duit: Blogger Edition – CompareHero

It’s so nice to be included in the list, thanks again CompareHero! I enjoyed answering the questions, and reading replies from other financial bloggers 🙂 Click the link to read the article.

9. From Jan 1, solar power users to enjoy cheaper electricity bills – The Star

This is super cool! I think financial incentives are great to promote sustainable energy projects! These will be implemented through two policies:

  • Supply Agreement for Renewable Energy (SARE) programme. You can install solar panels in your homes with zero upfront cost, and monthly payments are done every month to TNB
  • Net Energy Metering (NEM) mechanism. You can produce solar power to get better rebates from TNB .

At writing time, I can’t see much information about both policies yet, but those of you who are interested to lower your energy costs and be more environmentally conscious at the same time, look out for them!

10. Four Strategies to Help Small Business Increase Customer Retention – Entrepreneur

“According to the Harvard Business School, a minimum of 5% increment in customer retention rate increases profit by 95%. Meanwhile, acquiring a new customer is 25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones.”

That’s a damn good reason for you small business owners out there to focus on customer retention rather than pure customer acquisition only!


That’s it for this round, catch you next time! Want to submit a link you thought was great? Reach out to me on FB or Twitter.

To read past link roundups, please click here.


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6 Comments

  1. Hi Suraya,

    Thanks for including me in your link roundup! These are great reads, I especially love the Korean women destroying makeup article. I think the importance of grooming/not grooming depends on the industry. But I certainly do think women are put under more pressure to look a certain way in order to be taken seriously much more than men. Something I’ve noticed from personal experience.

    Thanks for sharing 🙂

    1. Hi Nicole,

      You’re welcome! It’s an awesome article, keep it up!

      Re: Korean women destroying makeup – coincidentally read an article from the financial diet exploring the issue. It’s definitely more important for customer-serving and high-level corporate positions. But at the end of the day I think grooming is the important part, and that doesn’t have to be expensive

  2. Hi Suraya,

    Great pieces. Really enjoy them. I wish to add something.

    P2P lending. Secured or borrowers with collaterals usually go to the proper financial institutions such as banks, and finance companies etc. People who resort to P2P platforms to borrow are people unable or disqualified to secure these loans from financial institutions, thus they have to resort to borrowings from these unsecured platforms or even illegal loan sharks!

    It depends on your creditability, borrowers and lenders and their platforms. Risk of debts being returned is also factored in the rates.The rates vary from the lowest to the highest rates of secured and legal to the unsecured and illegal:

    Rates per anum Institutions

    3-5%. Banks and finance companies
    6-8%. Companies Bonds( debts)
    10-12%. Pajak/Pawnshops; collaterals required
    15-25%. P2P; collaterals may or may not require
    24-50%. No collaterals required: loan sharks or creditors.

    1. Hi Fred,

      Thanks for your comments, that’s very informational! I didn’t even know there is such a thing as companies bonds, and the rates for pajak/pawnshops.

  3. Hi Suraya,

    Just wanna discuss on the JAKIM. You mean JAKIM or JAIS here?
    Cause in my POV, I dislike the existence of JAIS, but I think JAKIM is necessary for us to know the halal-ness of different products here in Malaysia.

    My two cents! 😀

    1. Hi Wina163,

      Good point. JAKIM does a lot of amazing thing for our halal market development too. Alright then – then let’s just clarify I don’t like the parts where they nosy tak tentu pasal lol

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