July 20th, 2010 by 1stmilliondollar
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When I was kid, my mom always told me to invest in real estate. Why? She said that the number of people is always increasing; while the land is not. It means that the house price will always go up. Well, we live in Indonesia, a developing country; so population was (and is still) growing.
Now, we realized that it is not true that house price will always go up. The Big Picture has shown a chart of global housing price. It compares housing price in a couple of countries from 1997 – 2008.
As you can see in the picture below, Germany and Japan has been experiencing decline in house price in the last 10 years or so. To me, it is really scary.
July 14th, 2010 by 1stmilliondollar
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Is 1-800 toll-free number is always free? We just learned today that it is not the case. We put a copy of our last payment in the screenshot above. As you can see we paid some amount of money to call 1-800. For example, the first line shows we have to pay $2.80.
How can it be? We called Rogers, our mobile provider, to check what’s going on here. Apparently, calling 1-800 numbers is considered an air-time. Currently, we have 250 minutes air time; so once our air-time exceeds 250 minutes, we have to pay for 1-800 numbers.
It is really a good lesson. We have to be really careful now…. call 1-800 number only when it is really necessary. We are not sure with other operators in Canada though.
July 11th, 2010 by 1stmilliondollar
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Every weekend, we write a posting that summarizes interesting things happening in the blogosphere. It’s called “Week in Review” section.
Last week, news were starting to talk about end of the world, double-dip recession, etc. This week, we saw a big rally, it was the best weekly gain in nearly a year.
ETFGuide.com has a guide on how to bear market proof your portfolio. Although we had a big rally this week, we personally think we might have a bear market ahead.
The Financial Blogger had a couple things to consider when buying real estate. Property is, of course, always number one. What else?
The Intelligent Speculator had a tips on how to setup a dividend portfolio with as little as $5,000.
Canadian Capitalist was asking why we invest our own money. Should we just use professionals to manage our money?
