Link Roundup #38: 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. Malaysian Salaries Are Insufficient – The Star

Finally, we as a nation are focusing on low salaries. Before this the narrative seems to be more to blaming – as if we’re struggling solely because we’re simply poor savers and budgeters.

The Star’s editorial team rightfully pointed out that even EPF (aka KWSP)’s Belanjawanku guide lacks so many necessary expenses, like insurance, phone bill, PTPTN and contribution to parents.

2. I thought becoming a landlord would bring in $400 a month, but it ended up costing me. There are 6 things I wish I’d known before I rented out my house – Business Insider

Buying property with the intent of renting it out is a popular passive income strategy. Theoritically, if you can get someone to rent your place more than the mortgage amount, you’ll get the property for effectively free, by the end of it all.

Well that’s the plan anyway. Things don’t always go as planned. Read the article for some really good insight on things that might not go well.

Personally, this article pretty much convinced me to always hire a property management company (if I ever plan to buy/rent out property) because the author ‘learned the hard way that if you’re not direct and confrontational, or you would rather avoid awkward situations involving finances and your personal assets, being a landlord isn’t the best idea.’

3. Quitting Your Job? How to Tell Your Boss You’re Leaving Brilliantly and Authentically – Inc

This is a great article to bookmark for those of you who are planning to put in your one/two/three-months’ notice. How amazing is this template though?:

I Have Another Opportunity: I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to work with you, but I have another opportunity that I just can’t say no to. It’s exactly what I’ve been seeking for my next career move. At this time, I don’t believe this kind of opportunity exists here, but I’d love to keep in touch and explore ways to work together down the road.

There are 5 more templates you can choose from, depending on your situation.

4. Reality-TV Show Tries Financial Makeovers for Those With Student Debt – The Wall Street Journal

The show is called “Going from Broke”, produced by Ashton Kutcher and will be streamed at Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment (first time I’ve heard of this media also). It’s going to be an entertaining and educational show about debt reduction. The fact that we have content like this… what a world we live in.

Here’s the trailer:

5. The real cost of not wearing makeup at the office – The Fast Company

Look at these two studies:

• A 2016 study by sociologists Jaclyn S. Wong and Andrew M. Penner found that attractive individuals outearned their peers by about 20%. When researchers started factoring in “grooming” (which for women included whether or not they wore makeup), the gap narrowed.
• But being considered too attractive can also hurt women. Another study, published in 2019, found that “attractive businesswomen are judged as being less truthful than less attractive women.”

Ah, makeup. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Also, this part is so true:

“The whole ‘Don’t wear makeup if you want to save money’ is not an option for a lot of people. It’s also demeaning. It pits this sort of ‘I’m the smart cool girl who doesn’t wear makeup’ to ‘Well, you’re the brainwashed girl who does wear makeup.’”

6. ASNB – Getting Fixed-Priced ASM Units – DividendMagic

DividendMagic got his hands on some ASM funds and wrote about it, since it’s pretty hard to get for nonBumis because of, um, *shifts uncomfortably* racial politics.

The sales charge wasn’t cheap, though:

ASNB – Getting Fixed-Priced ASM Units. How I got RM17,500 worth of ASM funds. At a cost of RM1,300. Effectively, a 7% sales charge on it. https://t.co/CreO5t2END pic.twitter.com/B8zdzswFk3

— Dividend Magic (@DividendMagic) October 29, 2019

7. Ask the Bitches: My Dad Sucks with Money. How Do I Make Him Change? – Bitches Get Riches

… I didn’t expect ‘don’t’, but the reasoning makes sense.

How about when your parents get sucked into some MLM or Ponzi scheme, though? Or if they excitedly tell you about some random ‘business’ or ‘investment’ opportunities which don’t make sense? How then?

Still figuring it out :/ I’m torn between being protective of my parents and understanding I don’t need to control their money behaviour.

8. 4 rules of success I learned from working in Hollywood for 10 years – The Ladders

The industry may be Hollywood, but the rules apply everywhere. I especially liked Rules #1 and #2: always talk to the decision-maker (can confirm; if not have fun not getting things done); and learn to sift through the BS (need to detect people who like attaching themselves to projects they know nothing about).

9. How meritocracy harms everyone — even the winners – Vox

Pure meritocracy doesn’t exist because privilege is real.

But this I think you know already. What’s surprising (to me at least) is how the ‘winners’ (ie the rich/elites) will lose too. Click on the link to read the article.

10. Study by Sisters in Islam

And finally. A fact that just needs to be known by everyone.

70% lelaki yang berpoligami mengakui berpendapatan kurang RM3000. Pendek kata kalau tak mampu berlaku adil dari segi masa, nafkah dan lain2 jangan berangan nak kahwin lebih. pic.twitter.com/XnSgsQXmvw

— Hakim Rahman (@HakimAWANI) October 17, 2019

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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.