Hi Steem-ians,
Here is a quick update about my challenging journey from a simple saving up for my mom’s eye’s surgery to finding a place to house both my aging parents.
So basically from my previous posts, as a resident of Malaysia before you can do a hire purchase of a large sum which requires a bank’s help to loan you the money to do so, you must get your financial records clean and your financial habits in order.
But you usually can’t really get check it easily FOR FREE online for yourself; however you can actually make your way to the Central Bank of Malaysia to look for its kiosk and print them out.
For CCRIS (Central Credit Reference Information System) you can actually print them out at a kiosk with your citizen’s identity card, provided you have time to take a day off and go through the jam just to print out a few pages.
And if you do not have enough time, you can actually pay a service of MYR 50 to a mortgage consultant to get you a full page detailed report; and if your credit scores have been very discipline and never late on your credit card payments or other loans repayment your CCRIS should be squeaky clean.
However, for CTOS (Credit Tip-off Service), you technically cannot get any information from the Central Bank of Malaysia because it has allowed the local / foreign banks in Malaysia to have more access to it because they are the ones who you to convince that you are a responsible person handling your finance.
Any services, from Telco to other privatized service providers can report you as a horrible paymaster to CTOS should you refuse to pay up whatever you outstanding bills in your hand.
And you can either check your CTOS (for free) with the bankers should you are applying for a large loan or you can pay approximately MYR 30 via online for a full detail check at CTOS Credit Malaysia
CTOS was implemented and enforced since 2010 in Malaysia, so those who has been going through hire purchase such as a vehicle / business loan or housing loan, they would have already know that this exist.
However when I bought my car back in 2006, CTOS was not enforced and that 18 year old outstanding bill was never reported until 4 years after my hire purchase. And that was also the very reason I was totally oblivious and pretty much pointed the finger and called Maxis, “foul” when they decided to send professional debt collectors (a.k.a Ah Long) to chase after me where I demanded a full detail of the bills before I will pay a single cent.
So after 18 years of nightmare, this is finally resolving as I head out to get a release letter today from Maxis stating I am officially cleared of all bad debts.
So how to ensure you will not have this nightmare-ish experience follow you and keep you from borrowing money from the bank?
- Every telco / privatized services, you must keep your copy when it is opened, and you MUST insist them to check ALL outstanding bills settled before you close.
- Do not be an idiot thinking by refusing to pay up something you never owe; unless it is a fraud case and you have launched an official police report and make sure the services cleared your name.
- Make sure whoever is using the privatized services (especially telcos) under yours or your company name be responsible of their bill payments. This is really important unless you are personally settling the bills all the time.
One of the most important thing that I find it crucial in case you miss any lose ends.
- always allocated 1 – 5% of your monthly income aside for rainy days like this in case you missed out anything. The moment these services issues a summon on your bad debt, you can have your name blacklisted in CTOS.
I hope this brief post of my experience will give most of you an idea that you don’t mess with the central bank of your country.
Unless you want to get out of such financial system entirely and pay cash in everything.
But if that is the case, large purchases will get your country’s income tax government service to hunt you down as well to ask you, where you get such a sum, and at the same time, might attempt to tax you as well.
In conclusion, like 
- be a minimalist
And at the same time, I feel that your troubles can also be minimalized as well.
And thank you to Steemit, with the recent boon in its pricing again, I managed to actually prepare 25% worth of my $1000 USD fine with the help of my fellow #teammalaysia and international friends.
Although I am still quite a bit of financial shortage at the moment but I know that nothing is truly impossible for God and I truly am thankful to the kind-hearted friends and readers who has found my experience useful for an upvote.
PS: I did mention in my post, be healthy too, because a bad lifestyle that gets you in mountains of debt in medical bills will pretty much ripple off to your financial instability as well.
Hospital is a kind of a service (especially privatised ones) and you could get CTOS marking you as a Wanted "criminal" too.
Thank You for Your Time
Please click on the logo to read why I have this project of 1000 SBD at the first place.
