Malaysia Financial Blogger | Financial Freedom Ideas | imDavidLee.Com

What’s Your Expected Salary Increment for Year 2012?

Just wondering, what’s your annual increment like? Normally, the increment can range between 5-20% which depends very much on individual performance, size, nature, and culture of the company.

However, for those skilled employees, the wages are still linked to experience, productivity and demand. Most of the organisations are still willing to offer attractive remuneration packages for candidates equipped with the desired skills. Thus, highly skilled and productive employees are more likely to earn more.

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Sensible Ways to Use Your Year End Bonus

Most of my friends plan to invest in property when received their year-end bonus. It would be great to go for property as its potential for capital appreciation and a healthy rental yield. I have been influenced by them and planned to use my future bonuses to invest in a residential property soon.

Besides that, I also plan to set aside about 30% of my monthly income to go towards stocks and unit trusts investment. According to Malaysian Employers Federation in its year 2011 MEF Salary Survey, it was reported that the year-end bonuses are reducing at the average 2.13 months forecast for executives in year 2012. Therefore, it’s time for us to spend it wisely during this recession period.

You would need to have a financial plan if you have a great pool of money coming your way and you are not sure how to put it to good use. You can do this on your own or consult financial advisor for assistance.

Tips on Using Your Spare Cash

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Managing Rising Cost of Living

The concern on the rising of living cost is a global one. The living cost essentially will involve food supply, housing and transportation cost. In fact, there’re various factors that contribute to the rise in the price of goods. It is worrisome as it hurts the people, especially the poor. Besides that, increasing the fuel price is another concern as when fuel costs higher, the transportation cost will also be increased and then lead to higher price of goods and services.

Thus, a reduction in the personal tax rates will appeal to high income earners working in Malaysia and it could attract more foreign talents to work as it will allow them to retain higher level of disposable income.

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Performance Based Bonus

Just like last year, it’s no difference for the bonus payout time again. Staff performance appraisal and review once again will determine the level of bonus you will get. Besides that, the bonus payouts also depend on how well the firm performs. In the other words, it’s not guaranteed paid for employees.

However, giving out a bonus is very subjective. Therefore, it would be inevitable that employees are given a standard bonus. This is because each individual has different perceptive; your manager may rate their employees from their own sets of capabilities instead of their subordinates.

From management perspective, if the company made a profit in the last year and they’d like to recognize their potential employees by rewarding them with a bonus. However, we also know that not every employer will give 100% and sometimes it might cause employees dissatisfaction.

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Building Your Investment Portfolio During Recession

Smart investors can always set a small amount of money in their investment portfolio primarily poised to take advantage of dips in the market. For most of them, they will always try to hold cash about 20% to 30% of their total investment portfolio to take opportunities when there is pullback in the market.

When a recession strikes, the asset prices such as shares market, property will fall. Normally, ordinary investor who perceive that as high risk in doing something with their cash will potentially won’t earn the modest return. The reason is they feel fearful to take the challenge and have negative thinking when market downturn.

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