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Floods,spam texts and retirement areconcerns for all, Colin Bloodworth writes

Whether UK
Or Indonesia. I
Financial
Issues Persist -Ihave iust returned h m a few days inI

thev'nited ICingdom.was there k ychance of escaping from the kind of
financial woes that exist in Indonesia?
No way! The news media was full of
the same topics that preoccupy us here
and served as a reminder that we cannot
afford to neglect these issues,whereverwe live.
#arting--Indonesia is no stranger to flooding andthose of us who have Lived for some timein Jakarta will recall the year when overhalf the city was flooded and the airport
was cut off for several days.
In the UK many areas stretchingfrom
the southwest to the northeastsufh-ed
unprecedented Boocllngasa result of daysof unabated rain. One of the concerns'
voiced was that househoHersin newly
flooded areasmight notbe able to 6nd
insurance againstfloodinginthe future.
So I guess the moral is, if you can get
insurancenow, do not fail to do so. The
same appliesto any form of insurance,includinglifeand medical. Ifs too late toapply tSnce you havesigns of a serious
illness. Even if you show no SymptOInS
the insurance companies' medical
experts may determineyou had a preexisting condition.
BurcknedWithkonst

Clearlymany people in the UK are And
not just loans for houses or cars, which
ire too exgensive for the average personto buy with cash, but also high interest
loansjust to make ends meet These are
generally takenup by people who least
can afford to repay the extortionateratesof interest,resulting in a downward spiralto misery.
governThe latter is what the ~ritish
ment is seekingto control, and it
join'
the good Company of Germany, Canada,
Australia and the United States. all ofwhich have placed caps on the rates thatloan companiescan charge

In the absence of such controls in Indonesia it is left to theindividual to resist borrowing
money at outrageousrates. The
credit card companiesarebad
enough but I hesitateto ask
what rates are chargedby aU
the "kindly"loan companies
who offer their services,particularly byway of spam text
messages.

Haw muchdolhob4mesmges-pin

On the subject of spam messages,Indonesian mobile
phone owners are not alone in the world.
You maythink it costsyou nothingto readand delete but have you werput avalue
to the time you waste on them?You will
also have to pay for them if you rrceive
themvia roamingwhen travelingabroad.
You may be tempted to request yourremoval h m the sender's database oreven reply abusively.Unfortunately thiswill onlv coniirm to the sender that vour
number:is active and it could be sold on toother spammers!If they didn't get hold of
your number thisway in the 6rst place
the chances are that yours is just one ofthousands of random numbersthey try.
The only way to deal with spamis toignore and delete Yes,spam textmessages are a nuisance in the UK too But thedWerence is that they are illegal and thelaw can clamp down on them. Last week
a firm called Tetrus Telecomswas fined
440,000 pounds (almost Rp 7billion, or$730,000) for sendingout large numbersof spam text messages. Any chance we
can W similartreatment of this nuisame hIndonesia?

I'Andffnally,ahndlhrtopk
Assumingwe livelongenough, everyone
is faced with retirement at some point.
Western countries like the UK havehelped prepare people for it for decades.
Big companies have traditionally provided generous pension schemes thatenabled workers to retire on a given percentage of their tlnal salaries.
But somethinghas gone badly wrong.
A headline in one daily newspaper last
week read "Britain's corporatestars facepension time bomb." The calculationsto
fund pensions were made in an era of highreturns h m the financial markets. The
last decade has seen a collapse in these
returns resultingin bigcompanies like BP,
Shell,Rio Tinto,British Airways and Unilever beiiburdened by commitments ofbillions of pounds to pensions fallingunder the old regime of definedbenefits.
No suchissue in Indonesia
where pension funding is a relatively new concept But it b areminder to all thatneither
governments nor companies
can be relied upon to provide
forus completelyin retirement It is an issue everyone
needs to take on board yesterday at the latest!
... . . ...... ......... .. . .. . . .
Colin Bloodworth,director of PPI
Indonesia,hasspent over 20 years
in Indonesia.If you haveany
cwstlonson this or a related
subject you can contact the writerat indonesia@ppi-advisory.com