Check Tyre Manufacture Date and its Certification

I still remembered when I got my first car and I didn’t understand the importance of changing new tyre until my tyre broke into pieces in the middle of the highway. That was due to the tyre was too old (> 7 years old)and the rubber become too hard. I couldn't imagine the tyre can just break into pieces at that time! :)

From that time onwards, I always pay attention to my tyre and to make sure it gets changed maximum every 4 years. Well, the usual recommendation is  you should always change every 2 years to 4 years for safety purpose. The reason is most tyre manufacturer only has 4 to 5 years warranty period. So assuming if your tyre is brand new, you can only used up to 4 years or 5 years.

Wait a minute! If you buy a tyre in 2010, does that mean you should change in 2014? Well, that is only true if your tyre was made in 2010. If your tyre was made in 2009, you should change in 2013 and if your tyre was made in 2008, you should change in 2012 (which is 2 years after you buy a new tyre). So, it is extremely important to understand when your tyre was made? If it was made in 2006, your tyre has already expired although you buy a new one. You’re being cheated!


How to check tyre manufacture date?

Well, tyre manufacture date can be found from your surface of your tyre. What you need to do is look for the 4 digit numbers. First 2 digit numbers represent the week of the years (1 year has 52 weeks) and the second 2 digit numbers represent the years after 2000. Here are the few examples that you can see from your tyre:

As you can see, the 0907 refers to this tired was made in week 09 of 2007.

The manufacture date (i.e. 2307 - week 27, 2007) is usually stamped at the right side of the DOT code as you can see below:

 
However, I’ve seen not all tyres are like that. So the rule of thumb is just to search for the entire tyre that contains the 4 digit numbers. So, please make sure you check your existing tyre (is it already expired?) or the new tyre that you buy (is it really new?).

My recommendation: You should only buy new tyre with less than 1 year old. Please check every time you get a new tyre and don’t be cheated. This is also good for your safety.

P/S: Well, if you don't see any 4 digit numbers. This is usually the 4 digit numbers are at the other side of the tyre. For some tyres, only one side have the manufacture date information. An inexperience worker may not aware of it and fix your tyres wrongly. The date should be always faced outside.


US, Europe or Malaysia Certification?

There are basically 2 international standards of certification. In US, the DOT code is being used and in Europe, the E-mark is being used. Your tyre should at least contains minimum one of them (either DOT code or E-mark).  The following shows example of DOT code and E-mark (e.g. Eii or E4) from your tyre:

However, as for Malaysia certification, it is usually marked with the “Sirim” logo and the word “SNI” (optional).  The following shows example of the “Sirim” logo (i.e. MS) and the word “SNI”.

Well, “Sirim” and “SNI” is in fact not a big deal (although it seems to be a big deal). If you have the “Sirim” and “SNI”(optional) mark on you tyre, you still want to make sure you have a least one of the either the DOT code or E-mark on your tyre. Having US or Europe certification is most  important thing.  If your tyre is made in Malaysia, the "Sirim” and “SNI”(optional) marks must be there.

My recommendation: You should make sure your tyre must at least contain the DOT code or the E-mark code. If you're Malaysian and you really scared (in Chinese, we call it “Kia Su”), you can make sure your tyre has the “Sirim” Logo but please also make sure it contains DOT code or the E-mark code as well. If you’re super scared (i.e. super Kia Su), you can make sure you tyre has 3 of them (i.e. DOT code, E-mark, and Sirim)!!!


Summary

Tyre is the most important safety that we all should pay attention to but it often gets ignored.  You should understand how to read these codes on your tyre (at least the manufacture date), to make sure it is not old or expired (i.e. > 4 years) and make sure it has the proper certification (i.e. DOT code or the E-mark). You should also often check your tyre condition (e.g. enough air pressure – usually is 32 psi for normal compact car). Good luck!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2011! Drive safely too…

How to be Public Mutual Gold Member?

Ignore this post if you're not interested in Public Mutual funds (biggest unit trust company in Malaysia)

You may or may not have heard of it. There is a thing called “Mutual Gold” membership from Public Mutual. You will get this status when you have invested at least RM 100K investment in any of the load funds (i.e. funds that have sale charges). For example, investing in no-load funds (e.g. bond or fixed income fund) is not eligible for this Mutual Gold membership.

By the way, I got this status 2 months ago! :) This is how the package looks like:

It is calculated based on the Mutual Gold Qualifying Points (MGQP). Basically RM 1 of investment is equivalent to 1 MGQP points. You probably haven’t realized, this MGQP is also stated in your investment statement too.


FAQ

(1) If I’m the second holder of the fund, am I qualified for MGQP?
 No. You must be the first holder of the fund to be qualified for MGQP. That also means that you should NOT simply switch to second holder especially you invest together with your spouse.

(2) What are the benefits of being Mutual Gold member?
Well, you can just check it out from the public mutual website here.

(3) If my fund’s NAV drops, will be my MGQP reduced too?
No, it won’t. It will be reduced if you sell your fund or switch to no-load fund (e.g. bond or fixed income fund).

(4) Will my MGQP increase if the NAV goes up?
No too. The capital gain from your investment will not be considered for MGQP. For example, your invest RM1K after 1 year, your balance become RM1.5K, your MGQP will still remain at 1000 points.

(5) Which benefits of Mutual Gold that you find most useful?
For me, I particularly like the following benefits of becoming the Mutual Gold member (well probably you have different list): 

• Free personal accident insurance (Well, this is free insurance. Why not?)
• Quarterly statement of accounts (Hope it at least provides more information than what I can get online)
• Free switching fees - 18 switches per annual (No more excuse that I shouldn't switch to optimize my investment)
• Email update for quarterly fund review (Not sure how useful this is, have to check it out)
• Free will writing service (Cool, this is usually NOT free service)

p/s: Well, wish you will get your mutual gold member soon if you're public mutual investor. The next thing is the Mutual Gold Elite which required 500K MGQP(points).

How do others perceive you is NOT important?

I’m going to share with you this very interesting topic, that I usually share this with my people and other leaders verbally. This is the first time, I write this down in the blog. Let’s see if you really find this interesting…

When you just graduated from university or when you're still in school, you usually do not care how others perceive you as long as you think you're doing a right thing or the things that you like to do. So you don’t care about their perception as long as their perception is wrong or not valid.

However, the more you have grown up, the more you found out that how others perceive you is important. This is mainly because how others perceive you can turn you into who you are being perceived as. Others may perceive you wrongly, but the fact is whether their perception is right or wrong or the truth, it doesn’t really matter because what they perceive will turn you into what they want you to be. Do not believe me? Let me tell you why…


Have you heard of micro-messages?

You may not notice that your body send out millions of micro-messages every moment, every day.  These are all hidden messages generated from your body language which eventually can become a very powerful programming language to program another person’s mind without you even notice it. Let me give you an example:

Assuming you have 10 employees who work for you, one of them (let say employee A) is very stupid in your perception somehow. So everyday when you come to work and you see this employee A, your body language (although it is not obvious) send million of micro-messages to this employee A and the micro-message is “You’re Stupid”.  You’re actually sending millions of this affirmation message - “You’re stupid” to program this employee A’s sub-conscious mind everyday you see him. This message is then translated to “I’m stupid” by his sub-conscious mind and eventually turns this person to be really a stupid person even though initially he is not. The technical term for this is called “Neuro-Linguistic programming” or “NLP".

What so powerful about this micro-messages is that they can remotely program somebody sub-conscious mind. Of course, these-messages become even more powerful if more than 1 person to send the exact same micro-message. For example, you influence another manager to think or perceive the same about this employee A, thus not only you but also other managers also send exact the same messages to this employee A. The more people send the same message to this employee A, the higher chances this employee A will turn into what they want him to be.


How to defend these negative micro-messages?

Well, if what I said is correct, then everyone can remotely program anyone as they like. Well, not really. First of all, you can’t easily control your own micro-messages because it is in your sub-conscious mind.

For example,  you can NOT easily force your sub-conscious mind to send a micro-message that conflicts with your perception.  Secondly, you may not be so easy to remotely program a highly confident people because you’re sending a million of messages (i.e. You’re stupid) to him but he might be sending even more messages - thousands of million of micro-messages (i.e. I’m clever) to himself!


Who care as long as I’m confident?

Well, are you sure you are 100% confident? If the answer is absolutely yes, you got it. You do NOT really need to care about how others perceive you. If your answer is no, then you should really care on how others perceive you.

When they perceive you good, they send good micro-messages to you. When they perceive you bad, they send bad micro-messages to you. Good or positive micro-messages eventually help you to build-up your confident. That is the reason you should care about how others perceive you.


Summary
 
Usually people care about how others perceive them is because they may not understand themselves much. That’s why understand how people perceive them can help them to understand who they really are.

However, I’m talking at the different level that let’s assuming you understand yourself and what other perceive you is wrong, you still need to care about their perception. This is because this perception is extremely powerful and important that it eventually can turn you into someone else that you’re not. This due to the micro-messages and Neuro-Linguistic programming as I mentioned above.

Well, agree or disagree? Do you care how others perceive you? Any comments?

p/s: Having said so, if you care so much of how others perceive on non-important stuff, that may NOT be a good thing to you too. This is because you’re focusing on the wrong thing. So prioritizing and choosing what you should look at others to perceive you is also important. By the way, my very old post that you may find interesting: The Power of Perceptive Reality.

Should I worry about retirement?

Have you every thought of how much money that is needed for your retirement? If no, probably you want to start thinking about it now. This is an interesting article I get from “thestar” newspaper: Is savings enough for retirement?

Apparently from the survey by AXA Retirement scope 2010, Malaysian seems pretty aware of the amount of money that they will get after retirement (i.e. 54%) as compared to the rest of the countries except India is ranked number one. This is a good sign as least you still know exactly how much you will earn or get after your retirement.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if this considered to be good news or it simply means other countries have taken care of their citizen’s retirement therefore they don’t really care about it? Countries such as UK and Australia, you can see that they don’t really care about it. I think this is mainly due to the fact that their governments have taken care of their retirement. That is also one of the reasons why people like to migrate to Australia. :)

Having said so, if you look at the data, majority of people around the world still do not really give a damn about retirement. Because more than half the population do not aware at all how much they will earn after retirement. “Who cares? There are still plenty of time!” - this is the most common reason why people still do not want to take it seriously. But I afraid by the time you start thinking about retirement, it is probably too late…

Let’s look at this another data for Malaysian’s perception on whether their retirement income is sufficient or not. As you can see, (35% + 2%) = 37% think their retirement income is sufficient. It used to 62% in 2007 and now this drops dramatically.


Looking for Solutions?

• If you ever want to know the amount of retirement fund that you need for your retirement, you can look my previous example, how one can calculate the retirement fund: 10 Years Retirement Plan is Possible.

• Once you know exactly how much is needed for your retirement, you have 2 solutions. First solution is to earn more and the second solution is to spend less. You can check out my previous post: 2 Solutions to Retire Rich.

Discussion: Since we’re now in the trend of getting more and more people neglecting retirement planning, how should we fix this? Should we increase the awareness of the people OR should the government take care of it so that we all do not need to worry about retirement (like what Australia and UK do)? What do you think?

Understand Net Asset Value (NAV) in Mutual Fund

Although Net Asset Value (NAV) is a general term but it is commonly used in relation to unit trust or mutual fund. If you invest in stock, then you probably know the stock price for each single unit stock.

So, NAV is something similar to stock price but it is usually meant for unit trust or mutual funds or exchanged-traded funds(ETF). NAV per unit is the price or value of each single unit of the funds. Let’s look at the formula:

NAV per unit = (Total Asset of the Fund – Total Liability of the Fund) / Total Number of Units

Note: When people say NAV, it usually refers to NAV price per unit of the fund although the "per unit" is not explicitly mentioned.

For example, if the total net asset of the Fund A is $100 million and the number of unit issued to the public is 150 million units, the NAV would be ($100M/150M) = $0.67 which is 67 cents of each unit of Fund A.Well if you’re not finance people, this is probably too technical for you. Let's make it the simpler definition of NAV. NAV is the unit price of a mutual fund! Is this simple enough?

What does NAV mean for you?

It basically really means NOTHING to you. Okay, okay, perhaps something. It tells you the value of the unit price of a mutual fund. Just like stock, it tells you whether a fund is too expensive or is still cheap? Wait a minute! Can you really tell? No, you don’t because it is all about comparison. You need to compare at least 2 funds to tell whether the NAV is expensive or cheap. 

FUND	N.A.V ($)
A	0.67
B	0.90

If Fund A is cheaper than Fund B, what does this mean? It means you can buy more units from Fund A with the same amount of money. E.g. with $1K, you can buy ($1K/$0.67) = 1492.54 units from Fund A and ($1K/$0.90) = 1111.11 units from Fund B. 

But does this mean you have more units and you will earn more? No, it does NOT tell you the performance of the funds because the value of your investment is always the same which is $1K. So eventually, it basically means NOTHING to you too. Unless Fund A and Fund B started out the same day with the same price, then you can only tell that the Fund B performance is better than Fund A or else you can’t conclude anything out of it.

Discussion

In my opinion, the NAV of unit trust or mutual funds doesn’t really mean anything. It just tells you the current price of the unit trust but it doesn’t tell you the performance of the fund. You shouldn't buy a fund because of it's NAV is cheap. When choosing a unit trust or mutual fund, one should look at the fund’s financial objective, how good is the company management and does the fund has shown any good track record and etc.

On the other hand, don’t forget the investment is all about emotion too. Let’s look at the Fund A vs Fund B above. What do you think majority of people will buy? Fund A or Fund B? Fund A is cheaper right? So the chances for Fund A to go up is higher than the chances for Fund B to go up? So when everyone buy Fund A, the price of the Fund A will go up eventually?

So now back to you, will you buy fund because of the cheap NAV?