REIT – Real Estate Investment Trust
Recently, the investment term "REITs" come across my mind. I keep seeing news about REITs in newspaper, forums and personal blogs. A REIT or real estate investment trust is a real estate company that offers common shares to the public.
What is REIT? According to Wikipedia:
A Real Estate Investment Trust or REIT (pronounced /ˈriːt/) is a tax designation for a corporation investing in real estate that reduces or eliminates corporate income taxes. In return, REITs are required to distribute 90% of their income, which may be taxable, into the hands of the investors. The REIT structure was designed to provide a similar structure for investment in real estate as mutual funds provide for investment in stocks.
In Malaysia, REIT is a little bit different (source).
- 1. Investors' dividends will be taxed at investors' books.
- 2. Non-residents' dividends will be taxed at 28%. It is an upfront and final withholding tax.
- 3. There are NO explicit requirement of minimum payout ratio in the guidelines.
Maybankard Ezy Cheque – Will You Take the Offer?
I received a Maybankard Ezy Cheque yesterday. It is a cheque with amount of RM2,000. You can get extra cash by simply bank in the cheque.
There is no document to fill in, no waiting approval and 0% interest-free for six months. You will need to pay back (by charging to your credit card) the money within 6 months, RM333.33 each month.
It is an interest-free for the installments but you will need to pay the cash advance fee which is RM77.60 (3.88%). Will you take that offer?
Personally I think it is not worth to take it unless you need the money urgently. The cash advance fee for credit card normally is around 18% p.a. So it is consider cheaper to take the Ezy Cheque than to take credit card's cash advance.
If the cash advance fee is 2% or less, I think I will take it because I can use the money to invest in stock market or mutual funds, where I think I will get a better return on the investment (more than 2%).
What Have You Done to Achieve Financial Freedom?
I think most people may have a same dream in their life - to achieve financial freedom. I am having the same dream too.
Financial freedom means that you are in control of your money, rather than it controlling everything you do. It's a long journey to achieve freedom: learn, fail, learn and fail... the only success.
What have you done to achieve financial freedom?












