You’ve qualified for your first paycheck. What’s next?

In this competitive business world, getting a job seems to be getting tougher day by day and more and more graduates are jobless. But, you’ve got your first victory of securing yourself a job. Congratulations!

Okay, with your first victory in mind, you have to continue your daily life with whatever amount promised for your qualifications. You have to do a very good financial planning or budgeting of your income and expense. Apart from that, you must also take care of your career path. An early start is a good start!

I’ve heard numerous complaints that the paycheck is too small, not enough to meet expenses, etc. But, hey, trust me… I used to save more in my first job than I could save right now, even though the current salary is much higher. Why, you ask? Simple. That’s it. Simple. Keep your lifestyle simple. During my first job experience, I used to take public transport, eat simple food and do loads of overtimes. Now, I drive my own car, no overtimes and at times, let myself indulge in hearty meals in posh restaurants just to keep up to our standards (or other people’s view of our standards).

So, here I list some of the things that I suggest you should do right from the start:

1. Use public transport for as long as possible

• It may seem glamorous to get on your own car, but the hassle of finding a parking space in the city centre, getting stuck in the traffic jams and getting an occasional summons for over speeding is not so glamorous after all. And not forgetting the fact that once you are used to getting your own vehicle, getting on the public transport would be the last thing you would want to do.
• And try to save as much as possible for the down payment of your car. The more down payment you put for the car, the lesser interest you would be paying for the loan later.

2. Get yourself covered

• Shop around for a suitable insurance plan.Since there are various insurance companies with various plans, get a good/reliable agent that could suggest an appropriate plan for you. Remember, as your needs are unique to you it is not necessary that the plan suggested to you would be the same as the one suggested to your friend. And do not delay getting yourself covered, as you would be paying higher premiums as your age catches up with you.

3. Start building yourself a safety net

• No one else, but you yourself are fully responsible to take care of your financial health. This means that you should also be fully prepared for the rainy days. As the workplace gets highly volatile nowadays, you should be prepared for self-sustaining without any income between 3-6 months. This would depend on the number of people who are dependent on you for financial support. The more people signifies that you should get ready for a bigger, stronger net.
• Even though with lowest interest rates, it is advisable for you to keep them in a savings account (separate from your salary account, if possible).

4. Start investing

• With whatever amount leftover from your salary, start your investing, even though with a smallest amount. The earlier you start, the better for you as the power of compounding has a miraculous effect on your savings.
• Remember, investing is not saving and there can be short-term investing and long- term investing.

5. Pick up saleable skills

• At times, you may be wondering why you are getting lower offers while your friend who studied together with you and graduated with similar results can command a higher pay check. He/she probably has a skill that is wanted in the industry. A saleable skill. That is what the employers are looking for. That is what that makes a high earner apart from his other mates.
• For example, if you are in the IT industry, ask from your seniors/ read from related magazines:
  • What is the current trend in the industry?
  • What programming language/skill in demand currently?
  • Which is the booming sector right now? (eg. medical,banking, etc.)

Use all these knowledge gained to boost your skills so that you can command a relatively higher jump for your next pay rise or even your next job.

6. Build your network

• This is very very important in the long run. Whether you plan to work for others until you die or go on your own, networking is very important. People should look upon you as an expert and reliable person in your field. If there’s any offer for part time jobs or even favours requested from you, by all means take them up if you think you can deliver them (higher quality than expected, and faster than due date). If not, you are just risking yourself to be shunned by them even before you are going to bid for a job.
• For the beginners, try to build your name first rather than worried about the money. Once you have built sufficient credit to yourself, others will start looking for you.

7. Don’t jump jobs just for the money

• Money is not everything, but it is the only thing! You may have heard it and yet why not hop jobs for the sake of money? It is in your best interest that you do a proper analysis before you jump.
  • Does the new company provide you with a good career growth?
  • What about the work environment there?
  • Do you enjoy that type of job?
• Apart from that, make sure that you stick to the same industry and build up yourself. Then people would start to recognise you in that field. You will find that it would be more rewarding in the future in terms of monetary gains and self-satisfaction.

For a start, practise these little tips first. Let’s start small to ensure that you have a great financial well-being in the future.Good luck!

What can you do to supplement your income?

There are many things out there you can do to supplement your income. However, since most of the time people don’t get to do what they love to do in their primary jobs ( they are most like to be working for the paychecks) first of all you have to ask yourself a few simple questions. This is an important step as you want to enjoy yourself as well as earning some income at the same time.

• What is your hobby?
• What is it that you can continue to enjoy to do even though there’s no money involved in it?
• Can you get support from your family members in what you intend to do? (not necessary but you will soon find that it will be much easier if you had their support or understanding)
• Do you need any special facilities or equipments and how much cost would be incurred?

Having thought about all these questions mentioned, you have various choice of jobs that you can start-off as a part-timer or as a hobby. Besides generating some income for you, it can continue to be your favourite past-time. You can relax yourselves and free yourselves from the daily stress.

Among the choices that you have:

• Teach part time
  • This can include at colleges/institutes or giving private tuition.
• Baby sit
  • If you find that you love kids, you can always offer baby sitting service, starting from your relatives.
• Designing websites
  • You can help to design and maintain websites for the smallbusiness owners and gradually as your skills improve, you may even offer your services to the corporate group as well.
• Service computers
  • Usually customers find it difficult to troubleshoot or maintain a pc (from viruses, defragmenting, installation of software,etc) after their warranty period is over. Why not offer your service in this area?
• Tailoring service
  • If your service is good and you are good with your hands, you are sure to have your hands full especially during festive seasons.
• Bridal & make-up service
  • This seasonal service is also good for a part-timer who is artistic and creative. Together with this, you can have decoration service also included.

The examples given above are merely to jumpstart in case you are having difficulties looking for ideas. But hey, the sky is the limit. You don’t have to limit yourself to these jobs alone as you can come up with your own method to supplement your income as you should know best what you are good at!

Let’s See How We Can Make Some Extra Bucks – By Doing Nothing

I love the concept – do nothing and make some money at the same time. Almost nothing, that is…

1.Put aside the change
Put aside all the coins that you receive everyday into a piggy bank – yeah, mummy is always right. Just continue to do what you were trained to do from young. After some time, you will be surprised that you have some substantial amount of money in your savings.

2.Terminate your gym membership
No, don’t get me wrong. If you are actively utilising your gym membership, by all means go ahead and exercise. After all health comes before wealth. But, if you are not using them and paying hundreds of dollars every month hoping that you will be using them soon (and this has been going on for a year or so), it is about time you looked into terminating the membership immediately and try to exercise at home instead using simple equipments such as the skipping rope and dumb bells.

3.Change to regular petrol
Unless you own a very new car and too sensitive to the performance of your car, you can always change to the regular petrol from your premium petrol. This will save you a few cents for every litre and for the few hundred litres your car is going to gulp down over a few weeks or months, you should be having a thicker wallet.

4. Use credit card instead of cash
Let me warn you first – you have to be extremely disciplined to follow this step, or else you will end up cursing me for giving you this idea. Credit card companies usually give out points to their customers for every swipe of the card that you make. Just make sure you record every transaction that you make with your card and before the end of every month, make a full settlement on your card. This way, you are not charged for your card, but you get something free instead for this service. At times, after a certain period of accumulation, you can even go for a free vacation! That’s a brilliant idea, wouldn’t you agree?

5. Disconnect your cable TV
For a person who is concerned about his finance, cable TV would sound too luxurious. Instead of being a couch potato, the time can be utilised to earn additional income or exercising or doing some better things. Or at the least, try to minimise the channels or switch to a lower plan, if available.

After following the steps mentioned above, you would have made some amount of money. Well, a dollar saved is a dollar made!

What is a Mutual Fund?

As the name indicates, Mutual Fund is a form of collective investment that allows investors with similar investment objectives to pool their savings. Then, this pool of fund is invested in a portfolio of securities managed by investment professionals also known as fund managers who are hired by the company.

Usually, returns that can be expected out of the investment in mutual fund is a combination of regular income payment (or a distribution/dividend) and capital appreciation.

Sometimes known as Unit Trust, there are various categories currently, including:

• Equity
• Fixed Income
• Money Market
• Real Estate Investment
• Exchage Traded
• Balanced
• Government Sponsored
• Syariah

An investor has various options to invest in a mutual fund which includes:

• Lump sum investment
• Regular savings
• Reinvestment

Before an investor jumps into a unit trust investment, it would be wise for him/her to understand not only the advantages but also the disadvantages related to it.