By: Rajen Devadason, CFP speaker and author.
Date: Sunday, 16th September 2007
Credit card has been around for over half a century. It is a small rectangle plastic object that carries the bearer’s status while freeing him from walking with pockets full of cash. Nevertheless, these cards has resulted people worldwide entangling themselves in the most expensive legal form of consumer debt. As an intelligent Malaysian, we must be responsible to analyse our ultimate financial destination, in accordance to our current behavior toward money. Will it be scarcity or surplus? It’s in your hand to decide how you want to behave and the future lies within your choice.
Start paying attention to your money now. Here are some few ways to begin the process of flipping your brain’s money switch off. Make sure you track your expenses. Write down your source of monthly cash inflow and your fixed expenses. After that, you’ll have a clear view of your monthly cash flow either deficit or surplus. Obviously you will want to reduce your expenditures and grow your income source.
The next step is to start saving your money. Find your long lost piggy bank so you can start using it and look for your savings account passbook to save money steadily. Then, you need to curb possible credit card mismanagement. Pay attention to how you use your cards and track how often you use it to buy something useless for the sake of impressing the people you don’t like with the money you don’t have.
If you are willing to take small steps towards financial discipline, you might end up in luxury with impressive stuff that you can afford, without having much trouble with debt.
Summarised by: Farhana Zahani Zainal Abidin
