BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Friday, August 6, 2010
One of the key steps to having better finances is to list down where the money is coming in and going out, personal finance experts said at Asia Inc’s Women’s Forum yesterday.

Nurul Jafriah Abdullah, chartered financial consultant and manager of the wealth management unit from the Bank Islam Brunei Darussalam and panelist at the Women’s Forum, said that “even saving $50 a month, can go a long way”.

“The problem is that $50 to each individual, is just $50, so what we do is we show them the figures, and multiply it for them. If you tell them how much they can get at the end of the year, and after 10 years, where it is purely for savings, it helps,” she said adding that it helps especially with people who are in “so much debt, that they just have to start somewhere”.

For people who tend to fall off the bandwagon on their savings’ plan, they would normally find something to spend their money on eventually.

Nurul said that one of the best ways to not be tempted to spend the money that has been saved was to “try not to see the money”.

“Do a standing instruction, and place that savings somewhere else. In some cases, people tend to look at their salary, then look at how much they spend, and finally how much is left over for them to save,”she said.

Nurul said that people should look at it the other way round, where they first look at their salary, then how much they save, and finally look at what is left for them to spend.

Asked about the general difficulty for Bruneians to manage money, and whether managing money is an issue in Brunei, she said that she believes it is, based on her experience.

“As you can gauge based from the experience of the credit card directives, a lot of people are complaining about it, so that gives you the picture about how many people are having difficulties with their finances,” she said.

Nurul was a panelist for the fourth session of the forum, which touched on women managing money.

She was joined by Carol Yip, financial coach and author, founder and chief executive officer of Abacus Advisory Malaysia, Nurul Ain Jaafar, senior account manager of the local business development unit, of the Brunei Economic Development Board, and Azizah Ali, country manager of Microsoft (B) Sdn Bhd.

During the session, one of the collective solutions for knowing how to manage finances, was for individuals to “have a goal when saving their money”.

Asked more about this, Nurul said that “individuals have their own goals, and their own objectives, to find a path”, without generalising everyone across the board.

“By visualising and writing it down, then they will be able to see what they are aiming for. The same goes for financial planning, where if you want a retirement fund of half a million, you have to write it down and see whether it is realistic.” She added that the financial plans also have to be “specific and measurable, achievable and realistic”.

“If we can only save up to $200,000 but you have set your goals to be $1 million, that it is unrealistic,” she said.

The panelists also agreed that financial planning has to start from a very young age, which is why they believe that personal finance, should be a subject that should be taught in schools. “The (money problems) are because of the financial literacy in Brunei. Hopefully, if we were to implement something for the students, from the schools, then our next generation, won’t be facing what we’re facing,” she said.

The Brunei Times

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