To Thrift is to Grieve!

Whatever happened to the time-honoured divine tenet of savings?

How about such saying like-A dollar save is a dollar earn?

In these troubled times, the evils unleashed from Pandora's Box have come back to roost on all of us!

The first evil is the crazy runaway inflation that smacks you in the face as you wake up daily. The price of food keeps going up. One day, economy noodles is RM1.80; the next day it has scaled a new height of RM2.00. Last month, iced tea without milk went for RM1.40. Today, it is RM1.60. Only god knows what is happening all around us in Malaysia. Go to any supermarkets and you can see the difference in January and June prices.

The second evil obviously is the low interest rate regime. Imagine to keep RM1 in the bank, you get less than a sen after 365 days. If you have a million ringgit stashed away in a fixed deposit account, you will get only below RM660 to spend per month. Definitely, not enough to keep body and soul together in the Klang Valley!

So as the ringgit shrinks in value and the low interest regime laughs you to the poor house, what can one do?

Take more risks-play good stocks on the Bursa when the market weakens and try to buy a property to maintain the value of your ringgit. Believe me, rentals are higher than interest returns if you buy property assets in choice locations that can easily be rented out.

To thrift is to grieve! How true!