My Steemit Challenge: CTOS – Your Ugly Past that will Haunt You Financially Forever Until You Pay Up

in #money7 years ago

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?

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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 @orangila has shared with me before

  • 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

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Please click on the logo to read why I have this project of 1000 SBD at the first place.

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Thanks @littlenewthings for the heads up, be healthy in every aspects 😆

yes, because Malaysians and Malaysia expats LOVE TO EAT TOO MUCH. Haha
being healthy is a crucial need for us all.
so that we can steem on and have nice big burger from @danielwong 's BIG HUG Burger station!

Thanks for sharing! Really good heads up also to help me in the future.

yes. Must set aside, especially when you have to rely on uber everywhere.
Always plan well ahead.

Too many young fool ones salary in, salary out mentality.

KWSP can't really help us until we get a house or schooling at certified local U.

Oh my goodness my dear friend it sounds like you are going through a tough time. But you are strong and an amazing person, this is such an amazing platform and we are starting to ride the form of a wave and wow how big it will get, I am so happy to be riding this wave with you.

My dear friend @crazybgadventure, this is already coming to the end of my horror show part 1 haha.
You got to read my previous posts to see how it came to pass.

Thank you so much for your kind words and well wishing nonetheless. And I too hope that you are doing great! Oh, is your book finished for publishing?

I guess I am still too young to understand all these financial issue. I have heard of CTOS before, the rest I am a bit lost haha.

Good luck on your funding!

I too, was once young and foolish; so I hope you will listen to this old woman nagging you young'ns to always save aside for rainy days. haha.

Yes. CTOS is super strict. You cannot even get a car if your name is blacklisted / marked by CTOS.

I am praying hard Steemit will grow steadily upwards and less volatile. haha.

Thanks for stopping by

steem until we are all debt free!

Steem and plan. These 2 must come hand in hand otherwise we are going to be suck in this ugly cycle until our journey on Earth completes.

Thanks for stopping by @denion

Okay.. my next post after the Steemit event I attended yesterday will be about minimalism and I am going to tag you.. haha

haha. Sure! Send in the tips! You are the expert and I should learn too because my place is not big lol.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
Btw @orangila , some of us are going to Big Hug tomorrow for lunch, wanna join us?

Meeting up before @superoo7 flies off.

Hahaha... yeah, 2 decades of being a minimalist so it comes easy for me to write about

Yes, I am most definitely interested... but I cannot promise anything because I will be with 2 crazy friends who may party until sunrise...

Please let me know the exact time, like I said, if I can make it, I'll be there for sure.. also, payment made could be with Steem or SBD which I may not have enough of...

@orangila . We are meeting up there at about 1:30pm

Let us know if you can make it ya!

1:30pm is a good time for me.. will update you all tomorrow morning

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