FINANCIAL PLANNING SEMINAR (THIRD DAY).

After today, I finally finished my Financial Planners Program (FPP). Today, I learnt about Estate Planning. Estate Planning is the most interesting subject in Financial Planning Seminar (FPS).

The speaker who was from AIA Berhad told us a lot of real stories on how badly people will behave when they are discussing the portion they will get from the distribution of their parent's wealth. We can image the real stories by watching the Hong Kong dramas such as 溏心風暴 (Heart Of Greed) and 溏心風暴之家好月圓 (Moonlight Resonance). At first, some people will cry because of their parent's death. However, when their lawyer comes and announces the contents of their parent's will, the first thing they want to know is how much they will get from their parent's will.

From the seminar, I learnt that having a will is very important in our life but it is not the end of the story. Most people including me generally presume that our assets will be automatically transferred to our loved ones after our demise. Unfortunately, there is no such law in Malaysia. Once a person dies, his assets will be frozen immediately even with a will and the frozen assets are known as an estate. Once assets become an estate, it can't be transferred to his loved ones although he has a will until his liabilities like tax, personal loan and borrowing have been settled by his family. We still have to settle our liabilities even though we are no longer around. From here, I know that we can't escape ourselves from paying tax. We can only minimize our tax payment in legal ways. Some people may think that they can transfer all of their assets to their children early before they are no longer around. However, many people are sent to old folks' home after their assets have been transferred to their so-called obedient children. So, we must think carefully when we want to transfer our assets to other people before it is too late.

FINANCIAL PLANNING SEMINAR (SECOND DAY).

I learnt about Tax Planning today. Tax Planning is a very complicated subject for those who earn a lot of money and want to minimize their tax payment. Sometimes, we want to save our money by not hiring a tax consultant. But, I think that if our earning power is very high, it is better to hire a tax consultant. In general, a tax consultant may charge us from RM 50 to RM 300. By hiring a good tax consultant, we can actually save more than the amount we pay to the tax consultant.

From the lesson, I know that we can only minimize our tax payment. Escaping our tax payment will only cause us and our family a big problem when we are no longer around in the future.

FINANCIAL PLANNING SEMINAR (FIRST DAY).

I took Financial Planners Program (FPP) last year January. FPP is specially designed for AIA insurance agents who possess degree or higher qualification. Financial Planning Seminar (FPS) is the final part of the FPP. There are three sessions from 19 to 21 January 2009. Today, I learnt about Business Insurance Planning. The speaker was from AIA Berhad. He spoke a very good English.

One of the points he impressed me very deeply was "We, as insurance agents or planners, should never always just think of U$$$D when we approach a prospect. We are there to help him". Of course, money is very important as we don't have any income and subsidy from AIA Berhad if we can't close a sale. But, if we just think of our commission without taking our clients' needs into consideration, our commission and career will not last long. Once we can take care of their needs, they will never surrender their policies unless they have problem in paying premium. I am not very sure how much my commission is for certain life insurance plans. So, when I approach a prospect, I can pay more attention to his needs instead of my total commission from the sale.