Preparing for recession

How can you prepare for recession?

1. Keep your job. If you don't like your job, tell yourself, you just need to bite through the recession.

2. Increase income stream. You can blog, proof read, edit content, pick up more freelance jobs to decrease your debts.

3. Budget. We tend to have a mentality of "i-am-okie-as-long-as there-is-leftover-for-this-month-income'. We don't really budget our cashflow. Create one now and cut off unnecessary expenses.

4. Call up your bank to reduce interest rates if you have a property. If you bought a property 3 years back, your loan interest can be as high as 7% per annum. As banks are getting competitive now, some banks are even offering a 4.8 % per annum interest rate for the entire loan tenure. If you are still tied to a 5-year locking period loan, write to your bank to reduce your interest, a penny saved is a penny earned!

5. If your housing loan is free from locking period, REFINANCE it! HSBC offers you very competitive package now!

6. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Never always count on a single source. Diversified your investment, sources of income or even you business deals.

7. Start saving in high interest yield banks! Standard Chartered Bank offers you very competitive Flexi Deposit rates through e$aver Account !

8. Balance transfer your credit card loan to a lower interest rate bank if you have any card loan!

9. Recycle. Always purchase refill packs and use both sides of your paper. ;)

10. Indulge in small ways. Admit it, we will go crazy if saving like mad without indulging ourselves once a while. Indulge yourself in small ways. For me a Perrier with lemon after a days work makes my day!

11.Always look for vouchers. Credit cards and membership card provides hefty discounts for dining and retail. Always browse the websites for latest promotion. Why pay more for the same thing?

12.Buy and Sell in Lelong.com or Ebay. Your jacket is too small? Thinking of throwing it ? Convert it to cash! If you are thinking of purchasing a new gadget, tr to search it at auction sites. For a month or two old gadget,you can even get a 30-40% discount for the same thing.

13.Diversified your investment. Hedge your wealth. I will talk more about hedging in future. Many people do not know what to do before a recession even they anticipated it. Hedge your funds! Try investing in gold, you can open a GOLD account in Maybank, Public Bank or Ambank. Since gold price was tagging at USD600/oz few months back, I have been asking my friends to invest in gold, now it is near USD1000/oz!

14. Beware of REITS. If you invest in REITS. Pull out when recession is coming. You never know what can happen to properties during a recession. It much better to keep liquid cash.

Hedging is an interesting game. I will talk more about hedging in the next few posts. Believe me, if you play it right, you can even thrive during a recession!