e-LATiH - thousand over free online training courses with cert by HRD Corp

FYI, there is an online e-learning portal called e-LATiH by HRD Corp (formerly known as HRDF, under MOHR), which you can freely register for an account to enroll for a selection of 1000++ free online courses.

The URL of e-LATiH is: https://elatih.hrdcorp.gov.my/

This online e-learning portal is open to Malaysian and also non-Malaysian. Basically, everyone are free to use it without much restriction.

Categories of the courses, which could be either in English, Malay or Chinese, including:

• Leadership or organisational development
• Education, skills development or languages
• Marketing and innovation
• Management / business management and corporate governance
• Public relations, customer service or communications
• Purchasing, logistics, supply chain or electronic business
• Process and operation
• Quality management and productivity
• Safety and health
• Sustainability
• Scientific or technical, statistics or research and development
• Wholesale or retail or electronic commerce
• Building, construction, maintenance or landscaping
• Creative arts, journalism or entertainment
• Digital technologies and digital transformation
• Engineering
• Financial services and financial technology

The courses are conducted in the form of pre-recorded video. Upon completion of watching the full video, you will be given a Certificate of Completion by HRD Corp. No examination is needed for most of the courses, while some courses may have assessments in the form of quizzes or short assignments.

You can start learning anytime, and complete a course at your own pace with no specific deadlines.

Which handphone can you buy with your monthly fixed income?

Handphone is a necessity nowadays.

Every now and then, new models of handphone are being introduced into the market, with price tag ranging from a few hundred ringgit to a few thousand ringgit.

From the perspective of personal finance management, one simple formula to evaluate your affordability for new handphone is that: the handphone price should not exceed your one week worth of net income for each year of usage.

Therefore:

• If you tend to change a new handphone every year, your handphone cost should not exceed 1/4 of your net income (equivalent to 1 week of net income).
• If you tend to change a new handphone every 2 years, your handphone cost should not exceed 1/2 of your net income (equivalent to 2 weeks of net income).
• If you tend to change a new handphone every 3 years, your handphone cost should not exceed 3/4 of your net income (equivalent to 3 weeks of net income).
• If you tend to change a new handphone every 4 years, your handphone cost should not exceed 1 month of your net income (equivalent to 4 weeks of net income).

If you are going to trade in your old handphone when buying a new handphone, your cost will then be the selling price of the new handphone deducted by the preloved selling price of your old handphone.

With this simple evaluation method in mind, the tables below show the maximum cost of handphone you can buy, relative to your monthly salary.

and the table below maps the handphone price range with some popular handphone models for your reference.

Assumptions and conditions:

• Net income = Salary - EPF contribution - SOCSO - EIS - income tax PCB
• Employee's portion of EPF contribution = 11%.

You might probably be interested to also read about:

• Which models of car can you afford with your monthly fixed income?
• How much housing loan can you afford with your monthly fixed income?

How much housing loan can you afford with your monthly fixed income?

Recently, we talked about which models of car can you afford with your monthly fixed income?

Now, let's apply the same method to find out how much housing loan can you afford with your monthly fixed income, for your own residence (not for investment purpose)?

Certain residence types, such as single-storey linked house, double-storey linked house, town house, semi-D, bungalow, etc. do not need to pay monthly maintenance fee and sinking funds. Even some of the gated and guarded ones involve monthly security fee, the amount is minimal compared to those that require payment of maintenance fee and sinking funds, such as apartment, condominium, SOHO, etc.

As the maintenance fee and sinking funds is a form of monthly commitment to own the property, we need to consider these 2 commitments in our calculation.

The formula is pretty simple: your monthly house loan instalment should not exceed 1/3 (one-third) of your net monthly fixed income.

As such, for properties without maintenance fee and sinking funds, your affordability will be as follow:

and for properties with maintenance fee and sinking funds, your affordability will be as follow:

Assumptions and conditions:

• Net income = Salary - EPF contribution - SOCSO - EIS - income tax PCB
• Employee's portion of EPF contribution = 11%. Although currently the employee can opt to contribute only 9% monthly to EPF, we use the normal rate at 11% for this budgeting purpose.
• Housing loan instalment upper limit = 1/3 of net income, which is the same as your car loan instalment upper limit. If you are serving both housing loan and car loan at the same time, a maximum of 2/3 of your net income will be committed to these 2 loans.
• Maintenance fee and sinking funds: normally within the range of RM300-RM400. We take RM350 for calculation here. These 2 fees will cause a deduction of RM350 in your available fund allocation, and affect your residence affordability of about RM86.5k in selling price.
• Housing loan assumption: taking 90% loan, at interest rate of 3.5%, 30 years instalment plan. Although nowadays quite a number of financing institutions are still offering housing loan interest rate of 2.x%, and provide instalment period of up to 35 years, since we are foreseeing a hike in interest rate is happening now, it is reasonable for us to take interest rate at 3.5% for our calculation. 
• Price of residence = the price of residence that you are affordable to buy for your own stay, based on the assumptions and conditions above.

You might probably be interested to also read about:

• Which models of car can you afford with your monthly fixed income?
• Which handphone can you buy with your monthly fixed income?