Future Financial Woes @ 2

Going into a potential financial crisis due to sovereign debts (countries not able to service their loans) characterized by the convergence of monetary, financial, economic, social, political and strategic crises in spring 2012, there are questions that everybody here in Malaysia,- individuals, company, and countries needs to ask him- or herself.  Because, please remember, there is a whole bunch of " young people" out there, for whom a crisis is new.  

The last time a financial crisis was in the news circa 2008-2009 – Asians did not suffer much more than a scare and possible interest rate increases.

Asia actually lead the world out of the Global credit crunch. Year on year since then many asian tiger economies had prospered and are charging ahead worldwide with more export and manufacturing sales.

The Malaysian government reduced interest rates since then that allowed more young people to upgrade their lifestyles using the mortgage loans and credit card debts have doubled since 2008.

Since then, many new young people have also joined the work force, who had never experienced any form of Financial breakdown/ crisis before. All of these young people have access to easier credit than the generation before them.

For them, the question will be - how to handle this?

This is new - what to do?

Well, for all of you, here are a couple of questions that might be of interest, to prepare yourself for the future inflation/crisis:

1.) What kind of activities are you going to continue?

 Where is your focus, and how do you want to go through any potential upheaval in your personal life or companies operations?

2.) What kind of activities are you going to stop?

It is easy to do a lot of unrelated stuff and expenditure, when the economy booms. Have a review - Which one of these activities did bring some returns? Which one did not? Stop those and, again, focus.

3.) What are you going to do lesser of?

Don't stop everything, but there is stuff that you need to do lesser of in order to succeed/ move onwards.

4.) What are you going to do more of?

Are you getting prepared for life after a crisis caused by hyper inflated price increases? In some cases wages may increase but so will costs associated to business and cost of living.

May be you can think of activities you need to do to be ready - get your workforce ready. Do you want to do more focused training? In a globalized  future world with en-roaching IT knowledge outsourcing more and more jobs, the best way to safe guard your future is learn how to use the new tools to create new prospects to further yourself.

5.) What resources do you need to succeed?

There have been crisis before. May be you need advisors to get over with it in the smartest way possible. May be you need a different "type" of people. Find them now.

6.) What baggage do you drop?

May be there is deadwood in your organization?

Are there lifestyle choices you can change to save costs?

Drop it and save the money for better times. Conditions are almost ripe for a tipping point to arise in our financial system. When such a tipping point occurs, you should expect wild volatility in the markets and be prepared for things to be moving far too quickly to react to with any sort of precision or grace.

That's why it's best to be pre-positioned in your financial, physical, and emotional preparations, so that when the next bout of extreme volatility exerts itself, little to no immediate action is needed on your part during the tumult.

Ride out the chaos in safety and confidence.
Be a support to those less prepared within your family and community. And take advantage of the luxury few will have to plan your next steps carefully, once the corrective forces clear much of the current uncertainty out of the markets. Doing so will set you up better than most to prosper in the aftermath.

It is all about focus and having clear plans and objectives at hand.

Also, think of fallback plans. What do you do if all else fails?

What will you do, after the crisis, if all else succeeds?

As things always change it’s best to be forewarned.