Antony’s Personal Opinion

Don’t you agree that the whole world should be able to study for free? Recently I am calculating how much money I have to spend if I would have a child that want to study engineering/science in the university. Fortunately, I don’t have a child yet. Puih….

We all know that education is so expensive. It may not be going cheaper either. So we have to prepare education for our children as early as possible. You may say that there are a lot of student loans these days. But living from a loan or credit is not a good habit. I have been trying myself not to live from credit, except mortgage. Of course, there is a possibility to apply for scholarship too, but not all students are eligible for that.

Now, let’s see how much is the tuition fee for several universities in the world. Assume that my child is going to study computer engineering (undergraduate degree) as international students.

• University of British Columbia, Canada
  Tutition fee: C$ 21,093 / year ~= US$ 18,341 / year
• University of California Davis, USA
  Tuition fee: US$ 17,304 / year
• National University of Singapore, Singapore
  Tuition fee: S$ 22,420 / year ~= US$ 13,925 / year

As you can see, the tuition fee itself is more than US$ 10,000 / year. If we include other costs, like room, food, books, etc., it will easily hit US$ 20,000 / year!

One possibility to get cheap education is going to a country where education is free, for example Germany. I myself is a graduate from Germany and I enjoyed free tuition fee there. Unfortunately, I heard that some German universities has started to apply for a small tuition fee. It is not as expensive as other countries, but then not free any more.

Well, let’s prepare the best we can for our children’s education….

It’s been more than 1/2 year since my first day living in Canada. I cannot believe that I have been using credit card very extensively in the last 7 months; more than I have ever used it in my previous life. Interesting, huh? Living in North America makes me addicted of using credit card, which is not good habit (from my opinion). Why? We pay or buy something, but we don’t actually pay them at that time. We pay them when we received the bill (usually next month). Even after we have received the bills, we are not required to pay 100% of the bills.

Unlike people from other countries, American and Canadian like to use credit card very much. I have received many junk mails offering credit cards with so many ‘benefits’. I have got an offer of credit card from some stores too. They said that I will get some points when I use their credit card to shop in their stores. Fortunately… I am not tempted to apply for new credit cards. Unlike some people who are proud of having so many different credit cards in their wallets; I feel comfortable having only one credit card.

When I lived in Indonesia, Germany and Singapore, I used credit card mostly for Internet transaction. I usually used debit card more often than credit card. Why don’t I use debit card in Canada too? Good question…. I don’t why Canadian banks have very “stupid” policy. They limit the number of our transactions per month, for example my bank gives me the limit of 10 transactions per month. Once I exceed the number of transactions, the bank will charge me some transaction fee. There are some banks that offer unlimited transactions but they charge very high monthly fees. I would say this is stupid policy because I have never paid monthly fee for my banks, except in Canada. Usually they give me interest, rather than charging so many fees. That’s why I have to use credit card here if I don’t want to pay “stupid” fees from my bank.

Since I don’t like using credit card, I have to find a way so that I don’t feel “guilty” when buying something. I have found a trick that works for me. Here is the trick: I always put some amount of money in my credit card account. Instead of I owe the bank, now the bank owes me. Basically I am actually using it as debit card. Unfortunately I don’t get interest for doing that….

I have one suggestion for all of you who have credit cards: DO NOT use credit card (if possible). It is really not a good habit….

After living in Canada for about 4 months, I realized that building credit history is very important here. What is credit history? It is a record of our credit activities, for example how much money we have borrowed, how punctual we pay our credit, have we ever declared bankruptcy, etc. There are several agencies, like Equifax, Trans Union and Experian, which monitor our credit activities and give our data to the lenders. The lenders then will decide how much credit they want to give to us and how much interest rate we have to pay.

How do they get our credit record? Many ways… Credit card usage is one example. They monitor how we use our credit card. Phone bill is another example. They will record how punctual we pay the bill. If we borrow money, then it will definitely be tracked by them. Isn’t that scary? There is “someone” out there watching our shopping habits.

Personally, I don’t like to apply for credit. When I was a kid, my mother always told me, never apply for credit. Try your best to buy everything using your own money. Well… buying a house is an exception. The price of a house is getting higher and higher. What I mean here is buying things other than house, for instance car, furniture, television, fridge, etc. If we cannot afford something, simply don’t buy it. American people are more interesting, they use credit card to buy everything, including food, groceries, gasoline and many other things.

In my humble opinion, the idea of credit card is not good. We borrow money to buy something and then we pay them “next time”. Sometimes we are surprise seeing the number in our credit card bill. Debit card is much better than credit card. You still use a “card” to buy something, but now you use your own money. I don’t know why debit card is not popular in North America. They have debit card system already, but somehow people don’t use it. Worse of all, I have debit card in Canada, but I (almost) never use it. Why? Because my bank will charge me if I use it more than the allowed limit (10 transactions per month). Of course I can pay some amount of money to get “unlimited transactions”, but why should I do that.

Before coming to North America, I used credit card very rarely. I used it for online transaction only although I have been using PayPal for quite a while now. I feel much “safer” buying something using debit card. I can see the money is taken out from my account right away. No need to afraid of interest rate. A friend of mine, who is Canadian, was very surprise when he visited a shop in Germany and he could not use credit card. He had to pay using cash or debit card. Interesting, huh?

Since I need credit history, I have been using credit card extensively these days. Last time, when I applied for credit card, my bank asked my credit history, which I didn’t have because I was new in this country. I have showed them my credit card in Germany, but they said they could not accept it. What happened then? They rejected my credit card application. Now let’s thing logically…. I was new in the country, so I won’t have credit history (of course, even kids know that). I would like to start building a credit history, that’s why I applied for credit card. But I cannot apply credit card because I need credit history. Which comes first, egg or chicken?

What I don’t understand, why they didn’t check my portfolio, for instance. Isn’t it sufficient to check my portfolio in the last 1 - 2 years? It should give them an overview about my financial situation. Fortunately, after rejecting my application, they called me back. They asked about my job. I explained to them about my job, how long I have been working with my current company, how much my salary, etc, etc…. Ok, finally they were willing to approve it, but they need my phone bill for the last 3 months. What? Didn’t I tell them that I was still new in the country? How could I have 3 months phone bill? Once again, which comes first, chicken or egg?