By Tan Teck Joo
KUALA LUMPUR - Everyone wants more money, but most University students are strapped and struggle for money. During University stage, students always spend money to fulfill their desires and enjoy their life.
At the very least, we don’t have extra money into investment. It shouldn’t happen in their stage. Uni life is the best time to start in the world of investing.
How nice would it be if you just won a million dollars in the lottery and didn’t have any financial worries? Unfortunately, the chances of this are almost zero.
Yes, you might luckily find job sooner after graduate or you are been working hard at school and managed to save little extra money. Yet, are you always wanting more easy life rather than working hard to earn that little money?
In order to think about how to secure your financial in future, at least in current situation, choosing to invest early is the best way for you to guarantee your financial security.
Thus, sure, it’s important to start investing young, but are bonds, stocks, or mutual funds the best investment for us?
Of course, you can always jump right into day trading on the stock market, but if you don’t know much, there is a steep learning curve there.
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| Reminder for new investor: Don't put all your eggs in one basket! |
Investment helping you money to work to generate more money
There are three basic ways that you can invest your money: stocks, bonds or cash. You can invest in each of these directly. Or you can invest in them indirectly by buying mutual funds, which pool people’s money together before investing it en masse.
Doug May, a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch in Indianapolis, IN, describes three things to consider before investing that will help you decide which route(s) to take:
1. Why am I investing? What is the end goal? Is it for a new car, or is it for retirement?
2. What is the time frame? How long do I have to come up with the money? This varies largely on your goal. If it is for retirement, most students have 40+ years to work with.
3. How much will I need to reach my goal? It’s hard to figure out the logistics of how much and where to put your money if you don’t know how much you’ll need in the end.
Once you answer these questions, you’ll then want to consider three other determining factors: liquidity, safety and return.
Liquidity
Determining the liquidity of your investments really depends on whether your goals are long or short-term.
If you’re investing for long-term goals, you want something that will grow and short maturity investments won’t really do this for you.
Safety
Safety refers to the risk involved. Investing always involves risk, but the amount varies a lot depending on where you put your money.
Many people afraid of losing money choose safer investments. Putting your money only in safe investments may not get you to your final goal though, especially after factors such as inflation and increased cost of living.
While, some investments may fluctuate more on the short term, over time, things often even out, yielding a decent average return.
So it may still be worth it to consider those investments that may have a moderate amount of short-term risk, but have a fairly consistent long-term growth.
This is where it is important to do your research, in order to secure your money safely.
Return
Return is how much you can expect to get back from your initial investment.
Sometimes it’s a fixed rate, like in money market accounts which have a set interest rate and other times the potential to make or lose a lot of money varies widely, like in stocks.
Keep in mind the only way to get a higher average return is to lower your safety.
By Ng Ai Loon
7 April 2011
In general, fast food can be also known as junk food, which is food that is perceived to have little or no nutritional value. A group of scientists at the Scripps Research Institute, who was study on the human eating behaviours are conducted on a study towards fast food, which is tremendously become a trend in the world. In the study, researcher divided rats into three groups and all three were given unlimited access to standard rat food. A second group was given foods like cheesecake, fatty meat, sponge cake and chocolate snacks for an hour a day while the third group was given “unlimited access” to these option. Finding shows that the rats given free access to junk food was quickly became obese and when researchers applied an electric shock to the rats’ feet in the presence of food, the rats in the first two groups were frightened away while the obese rats were not, their attention was solely focused on consuming food.
Question rise up, why did the obese rats act so differently? According to researcher observation, they found that those obese rats brains’ chemical makeup had changed and their brains need more food to trigger the release of Dopamine. Dopamine is normally acting on the sympathetic nervous system and producing effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. So, do you feel this is similar with the drug addiction?
No doubt, many of us know that fast food is unhealthy for our body. Fast food is fattening and fast food is dangerous. But how, people just can’t stop their desire to eating it. Moreover, why do people like to eat fast food and what make fast food restaurants really popular years after years?
Affordable? Fast food has become popular as fast food companies can provide food to customers at very low price? I don’t think it is the reason. In Malaysia, fast food is definitely not cheap, not everybody can afford to eat out at fast food outlets as the prices are even higher than preparing the meal yourself or eating at traditional food stalls. Yet, this was not the reason that makes it remain popular since many decades ago.
Convenient? Undeniably, people will look for fast food whenever they want a quick and convenient dine to filling their stomach. Just to make an example, student and worker which may consider as their supporter, hence, it is understandable for them to visits McDonalds, KFC and pizza hut rather than spending hours in the kitchen to cooking and cleaning as they do not have the luxury of time. Thus, this food which is easy to serve and supplied quickly is good for people who are already famished.
Undeniably, fast food influences our lives as well as our culture since the last few decades especially affects the most on younger generation like high school students and teenagers. According to a research paper, it stated that the relationship between fast food culture and teenagers is inseparable. McDonald, Pizza Hut and KFC are branched out in the whole world as well as Malaysia in which the number of the fast food outlets is increasing over the years.
Based on the research, approximately 23% of the population eats one of the day’s meals away from home. This phenomenon could be seen especially for high school students. Hence, it is foreseen that over the next few years, the number of people eating fast food will be even higher, particularly in urban areas. This impact on our lives as the people lifestyle will be changes, these change in eating habits may also caused the imbalance diet as well as the diabetes and obesity. Fast food, definitely failed in health inspection however, people seem to be addicted to it and can’t avoid or escape from its lure.
No doubt, people are getting influenced by the westernized culture, thus, the attitudes of eating fast food represent a popular culture which is the culture that youngster look forward to. Besides, the fast food marketing strategy in which their marketing channels like internet, promotion which often targeted on youth is the major reasons why the trend is going towards. Just look at those advertisement on internet especially from McDonalds, they are posing an image of cool and fresh. Furthermore, western country might perceive fast food as cheap or it is for low income people, however, in Malaysia, we would not feel that fast food are low class even they are cheap. In fact, some may be proud of it when they told their friends that they had fast food as their meal especially for children or even some of us. Hence, fast food is not merely food or drinks, it represent a set of popular culture, a sense of belonging as well as youngster preference entertainment. A few decades ago, people went to fast food restaurant pretty often, even until today, fast food remains to be a popular choice within the society.
Back to the point, asking people to quit fast food was just like asking people quit smoking and drinking. So, when will be the end for the glory result and outstanding achievement of fast food trend? No one knows. Probably there will be no ending and it will continuously become more brilliant in the future.
By Tay Pang Chong
Without a doubt, school is a very important place to nurture a future good citizenry of a country and for the government to overlook the dereliction of duty by teachers. It may do so over small indiscretions that might affect the efforts to nurture the children to becoming future model citizens. The school environment must be made to be an ideal situation where good character, mutual respect between the races, respect for the law and loyalty are nurtured. The environment must not be allowed to degenerate into something that could affect efforts to inculcate the 1Malaysia spirit.
Thus, encouraging indeed and most commendable that the Education Ministry has sent out circulars to schools that it is taking a serious view of teachers making racial remarks. It should have been done much earlier but it is still not too late even though the circular was sent out only after some teachers were making racial remarks especially a headmistress in Johor calling her non-Malay pupils penumpang and a headmaster in Kedah telling his Chinese pupils "to go back to China" on last year.
Racial polarisation in schools has been a problem for a long time and a lot of approaches are being attempted to make the children of the various races can interact, cooperate and mix with each other. Naturally their attitudes that keep them apart are a reflection of the attitudes and prejudices prevailing in homes and in the environment outside their homes. Therefore, it is very important for the schools to be places where the negative attitudes are discouraged so that the pupils will discard their prejudices among each others.
In a multiracial, multicultural and multireligious society like Malaysia, there is no place for sensitive racial, cultural and religious remarks and innuendos. Just as remarks deemed sexist are being outlawed so must remarks considered racial be avoided. This is important if we are to move forward in our efforts to promote racial harmony.
There is no denying that the best place to nurture this attitude is in the schools. They are the true incubators of the 1Malaysia spirit. If we are serious about promoting racial harmony and the 1Malaysia spirit we should not hesitate to deal strongly with teachers standing in the way of schools becoming a model Malaysian environment. At the same time the ministry must be careful when recruiting teachers. In this view, only those who have the right attitude for the profession and believe in multiracial Malaysia should be recruited.
By Tay Pang Chong
1 April 2011
KAMPAR, 1 April - The residents of a hostel in Westlake were now facing a threat of their property will be stolen especially laptop no matter they are inside the room or away from their room since the laptop stolen cases had occurred one after another currently.
Kok Wai Siong, 20, a resident who live in Westlake hostel around two years was share his experiences of his laptop being stolen on last two month ago.
“I’m sure I have locked the door, but when I come back to my room after the two hours class in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), I found that my room’s door was opened and my laptop is gone,” said Kok.
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| Kok just feel upset but cannot do anything to retrieve back his laptop. |
He said this was shocking him when he realized that his laptop was stolen unknowingly while the other housemates were just beside his room during the period he having class.
“I’m doubt that is it my laptop is stolen by my housemate,” added him.
There is a similar case also happened to the other resident in yesterday but this time the thief was commit the crime while the resident was inside the room.
The victim of this case, Lee Chee Seng, 20, was give advised to the other residents that it is necessary to lock the door even inside the room.
“I was sleeping without closing my door and my laptop has been stolen when I still enjoy my sweet dream. The theft was become so intrepidity nowadays,” he said.
When asked about the action the victims will take after the incident, Kok said that he cannot do anything although he was very upset during that time.
“It is useless to make a report about this incident because I think the police also not able to retrieve back my laptop.
“We cannot blame to the Danish House office since this was not their responsibility to take care of our property,” explained Kok.
Raymond, 21, who is the staff from Danish House, said he had heard of several cases of laptop stolen in Westlake area and Danish House was already taken strict precautions to reduce these incidents as more as possible.
“There are too many residents and we cannot make any promise to them. However, we’ll try our best to reduce the criminal cases to happen in Westlake besides than this issue,” said Raymond.
He then urged the residents should have a sense of protecting their property because there are always have some laborers are pass in and out of here since there are some buildings and hostels are still under construction in Westlake.
According to the security personnel, the reinforcement of the security had been executed after alerted by the official of Danish House by identified the identity of every person who enters to Westlake area.
