Link Roundup #29: 10 Things to Know This Week
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. The Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less – Vice
This is my first time being exposed to the degrowth movement, and while I’m still learning more about it, I have to say… I like it. For far too long, we as a society have measured ‘success’ by how well we’re doing financially and economically, rather than our happiness and well-being.
And it *is* true that the planet can’t sustain our current lifestyle and consumption.
2. Heat map of the rental market in Klang Valley by the Red Angpow team
The Red Angpow team did something really cool. They combined one vertical of high tech, big data, into one vertical of finance, the property market. With the data, they could generate things like this freaking heat map denoting rental market in Klang Valley.
This the heat map for the rental market in Klang Valley.
KL-PJ corridor commands the highest rental price generally more than 2k per month.
Source: Red Angpow – We painstakingly collected the data from all property websites that covers the whole of Malaysia.
1/n pic.twitter.com/EMGIv5vaFe
— RED ANGPOW (@red_angpow) June 10, 2019
I can’t emphasise how cool this is. It’s freaking amazing. I’ll be following this startup’s development for sure.
The Red Angpow team also has nice content over at their blog section. I especially liked the article analysing the relationship between a property’s distance to train stations and its price.
3. Foreclosures on the Rise – The Star
A must-read article. Did you know that circa 2009/2010, at the height of the property boom in Malaysia, developers used all sorts of tactics to encourage property sales, some of them borderline unethical to buyers?
And now that the property market is not as great, people can neither afford to pay those instalments neither sell off their properties, so the number of foreclosures are on the rise
The article is a bit confusing, so I picked some sentences out that gives you a gist of it.
- “People bought properties in droves over the past 10 years, paying minimal downpayment and some made multiple purchases.”
- “The purchase of multiple units, prevalent in the years starting 2009/10 was due to developers giving huge rebates, the use of mortgage brokers, investor clubs and the speculative element in society.”
- “These mortgage brokers may apply up to six banks for a buyer. When three approve a loan, instead of buying one house which cost RM800,000, the buyer may end up buying three.
- “Assuming a 30% rebate, that is RM240,000 per house. So the borrower takes a 90% loan, or RM720,000. The buyer gets a “cash back” of RM160,000. Buyers rationalise he can use the cash back to pay the car loan or use it for one of the three houses on completion and flip the other two.”
- “As a result of the excesses of the past years, today, some banks want the unit to be valued independently when the developer sells to buyers. They want to know “the real price” of the house to base their loan approval, and not the SPA price (after ‘cashback’), the source says. “Some banks are more careful and stringent now. They are beginning to realise the negative repercussion of rebates,” the source says.”
What a messy situation.
4. Why You Should Tell Your Co-Workers How Much Money You Make – The New York Times
Because no one wins but your employer. And when I say employer, I mean the business entity (ie, Genting Group or something) and not the person (although s/he’d get pretty rich from it too).
a male counterpart told me he was making $10,000 more than me a year for the same job. he then helped me prepare to ask for a salary increase. I got it. had we not discussed our salaries, I would have never known.
not discussing salaries only benefits the employer. https://t.co/ATYvYccO13
— khaleesiana (@cleopatrasoul6) June 13, 2019
*Especially* share salaries if you’ve been at your company for a while. Sometimes you might find that the newer employees are paid the same, or even more than you even though they have a lot less experience. At a certain skill level, job-hoppers are compensated better than loyal employees who’ve stuck with the same company for a while.
Anyone here has had that open, honest discussion with your colleagues? Any tips you can share on opening the topic?
Maybe… sending this article to them with a note like, ‘I’m happy to share if you’re open to it. Lunch?’
5. 5 Steps to Achieve Anything (From One of the Top Marketers in the World) – Inc
Is not so much as what the top marketer said, it’s who said it. I don’t know who Roland Frasier is, but I think I need to start following this fella because his credentials are amazing. According to the article:
- He is the co-founder and/or principal of three current Inc. Magazine fastest growing companies.
- He has founded, scaled, or sold 24 different 7 to 9 figure businesses ranging from consumer products to industrial machine manufacturing companies with adjusted sales ranging from $3 million to $337 million.
- He is currently growing DigitalMarketer.com, RivalBrands.com, and Plattr.com while advising over 150 other companies on digitally centric customer acquisition, activation, referral, retention, and revenue strategies and plan implementation.
Go read the 5 steps, who knows it will spark something in you.
6. 11 tips for starting a small business with little to no money – Business Insider
This article is more like a compilation of great Quora answers. Great answers though. Highly suggest you read through if you’re starting a business and don’t have much money to begin with.
7. These Are The Best Jobs For Work-Life Balance – & How Much They Pay – Refinery29
Disclaimer: ‘best’ is relative, and the data is from UK not Malaysia. But in any case, if you’re looking for careers in lines that might give you better work-life balance, you might be interested to look up these jobs:
- Sales Development Representative
- Research Fellow
- Customer Success Manager
- Marketing Assistant
- Engagement Manager
- Data Scientist
- Recruiter
- Copywriter
- Web Developer
- Audit Manager
- Recruiting Manager
- Operations Analyst
- Executive Assistant
- Product Manager
- HR Business Partner
8. PSA: The National Library Has Over 10,000 Free eBooks That You Can Read Online – Says.com
Why didn’t we know about this amazing and FREE resource sooner! Ah now I ikhlas sikit for paying taxes lol.
Registration is free for Malaysians and PRs, and you can borrow up to 10 books at a time. Click the Says.com for instructions.
I was excited to see that have two REALLY GOOD personal finance books, The Money Game by Adam Smith and Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki!
9. Getting rich can boil down to 6 ‘wealth factors’ no matter your age or salary – The Ladders
Many, many, many studies have been done to find out the rich are rich. You can read the answers and results in many formats, but I love the wealth factors presented in this article for how succinct they are. The 6 are:
- Frugality, or a commitment to saving, spending less, and sticking to a budget
- Confidence in financial management, investing, and household leadership
- Responsibility, which involves accepting your role in financial outcomes and believing that luck plays a little role
- Planning, or setting goals for your financial future
- Focus on seeing tasks through to their completion without getting distractions
- Social indifference, or not succumbing to social pressure to buy the latest thing
10. Even though I could afford a $2 million home, my house costs a fraction that much because I’ve embraced a truth most people don’t understand – Business Insider
Holly Johnson has a high net worth, but bought a house costing below $200,000, way less than the $2 million house ‘recommendations’ from mortgage and housing affordability calculators.
She did it because she knew that she doesn’t have to buy a high-priced property, because it doesn’t reflect the life that she wants.
Keep that in mind the next time you use a housing loan calculator. The amount they gave you is the maximum property amount that you can afford. They want you to buy the expensive properties – they earn more that way. You don’t have to take their recommendation.
For example, if the calculator said that you can afford a RM600,000 home, maybe consider a RM300-400,000 one instead.
Plus there are so many hidden fees, direct and indirect, when it comes to properties. Ask any of your friends who bought a house.
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.
