Some Facts About Brazil’s Economy

The Growing Power of Brazil

First Published Date: August 19, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

Brazil is a very interesting country with a very bright future if many economists are to be believed. Brazil, while considered a developing country in the past, is now one of the most important economies on Earth.

Brazil has the eighth largest economy in the world in terms of nominal GDP, and it ranks ninth in terms of purchasing power parity. Among all of the South American nations, it has the largest economy, and it has one of the fastest growing economies on Earth, with a GDP growth rate of five percent. Naturally, many are predicting that within a few decades, Brazil will have one of the five largest economies on the planet.

In 2009, Brazil was the top country in terms of upwards evolution of competitiveness. It gained eight positions, and passed Russia for the first time in history. Brazil is also beginning to close the gap with India and China.

Much of Brazil’s fast growth is as a result of the changes made to the economy in the 1990s, which focused on fiscal sustainability and the opening of the economy, helping to boost how competitive the economy is in the world. Brazil, as a result, now has a much better environment for private-sector development.

Brazil’s economy is in a wide amount of sectors. The country builds submarines and aircraft, as well as smaller-end technologies. In addition, Brazil was the only country in the entire Southern Hemisphere to help in the construction of the International Space Station.

Exports within the country amount to $158.9 billion. The biggest export for the economy of Brazil is transport equipment, iron ore, soybeans, footwear, coffee, automobiles and their parts, and machinery. The main countries that Brazil exports to are the United States (14 percent), Argentina (8.9 percent), China (8.3 percent), Netherlands (5.3 percent), Germany (4.5 percent) and Japan (3.1 percent)

Brazil imported $136 billion in goods in 2009, with their main imports being machinery, electric and transport equipment, oil, chemical products, automotive parts and electronics. The largest importers into the country are the United States (14.9 percent), China (11 percent), Argentina (7.7 percent), Germany (6.9 percent), Japan (3.9 percent), Nigeria (3.9 percent) and South Korea (3.1 percent).

Brazil, while greatly improving its economy, still has some work to do. The country still has a great deal of poverty, and low wages, along with environmental problems. However, as the country continues to move into the future, it is certain that it will become a leader on Earth in many sectors. Brazil already leads the world in the use of ethanol gas, with a large percentage of its vehicles running on ethanol. In the coming decades, most economists believe that the United States will fade in economic power, while Brazil, China, India and the European Union will grow in economic power to become the economic centers of the world. For many looking for countries to invest in, Brazil is a place that cannot go wrong for the time being, even weathering the worldwide recession quite easily.

Personal Finance Guide for Kids Age-by-Age

Teaching Children about Money: Goals by Age

First Published Date : August 22, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

Did you know anything about personal finance when you were a kid? I did not, and I hadn’t the slightest idea of how money and finances worked at that time. I wish things were different then. I wish I was taught to prepare myself to face the real world financially. It’s not just me; most of us were not given any money lessons at an early age and at schools and universities. It is time to take lessons from our past. As parents, our goals should be to financially prepare our kids to face the money challenges that exist in the present world. Today, I will present a simple age-by-age personal finance guide for kids. To make things simple, I have broken down the learning time frame into 4 different parts: age 1 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 15, and 15 and beyond.

Personal Finance Guide For Kids: Age Up To 5

Kids start to show interest in money and coins at an early age. During this time frame, start teaching kids the basic concepts of money. Here are some ideas:

Introduce them to various coins and bills.

Teach them how different coins and bills add up to a greater bills and coins. For example, 5 pennies make a nickel, 5 Loonies (1 dollar coin) make a 5 dollar bill and so on.

Explain how money and society work. Money is something that we exchange to buy various products and services to take care of ourselves.

Teach where money comes from. We go to work to earn money and this makes us sacrifice our time at home with family.

Buy them a piggy bank and encourage them to save money by putting money in it whenever they have some in their hands.

Personal Finance Guide for Kids: Age 5 to 10

Explain that money is not endless. We need to make choices between products or toys; we can’t have it all, as money is not endless. If your kids ask for many things at a time, an exercise you can do is to give them an amount, such as $5 or $10, and tell them to pick the one they think would be the best.

Tell them we need money to buy food and take care of ourselves. We can’t spend all money as soon as we get it because if we do that, we will be in trouble in the future and won’t have anything to take care of ourselves.

Involve kids in family planning and finances. Ask your kids to participate actively in family meetings regarding future planning and money issues. For example, if you are going on a vacation, ask your kids to research the best deals within your budget or ask everyone, including the kids, for their suggestions on fulfilling goals of making major purchases and so on.

Do not give kids allowance without proper guidance. Help them to budget their allowances, especially a certain percentage (15 to 20%) going to their savings accounts.

Teach them how to pay for a purchase and how to count the change they are getting back from the cashier.

Teach kids the power of giving. Tell them that we are fortunate to live in one of the wealthiest countries on earth and not everyone is as fortunate as we are. Explain to them that we can live a more meaningful and joyous life by sharing and giving what we have to those who are less fortunate.

Explain how a bank works, what a credit card is and why it charges interest. 

Explain to them what a budget is and why it is important to stay within a budget. However, do not over-emphasize the budget at this time.

Personal Finance Guide for Kids: Age 10 to 15

It is time to put some concepts you taught your kids in the previous age segment into practice at this time.

Set up a real savings account at the bank. Teach your kids how to handle bank accounts. Teach them about credit cards and how they work. You can also set up a credit card for them with a lower limit. Here is an article to deal with credit cards for kids: Should We Give Credit Cards to Kids?

Help your kids with setting goals. Explain to them how to set up goals and show them how to reach goals by making plans. For example, if they want to buy a bicycle or a gadget, instead of financing the full cost ask them to finance half from their savings by setting up goals to save that much.

Kids should pay for their expenses such as movie tickets, cell phone bills, snacks, etc. themselves. The reason? Using their allowances to pay for stuff they need will make them realize that money is limited and if they waste money on something, they won’t have money to buy other things.

Ask them to exercise the power of giving. Even from their small allowance, they can donate to charities and to those who are less fortunate.

Kids should budget for their expenses at this point and should spend less than their earnings or allowances.

Kids should not be paid for doing regular household chores. However, you can pay them for special projects which are outside regular chores such as such mowing the lawn, cleaning the backyard, and so on.

Personal Finance Guide for Kids: Age 15 and Beyond

This is the most critical time of kids’ lives as they are on the verge of stepping a foot into the real world. Personal finance education should follow a slightly different path at this stage.

Start talking about more targeted personal finance teachings starting this point. Some of the examples are: Investing 101, debt management, credit cards, how financial markets and products work (Invest Now by A. Dawn is a recommended book to learn the basics of financial markets and products), and so on.

Some of the resources you can use for your kids can be found right here, written by your favourite personal finance author A. Dawn. The Personal Finance For Kids Section is just one to mention among a few of them here. There are tons more articles suitable for kids available for free on A Dawn Journal. Take your time to read them to enhance your knowledge on personal finance at your leisure by bookmarking this page.

Just because your kids have reached this age does not mean that you should stop talking about finances. Kids at this age need more financial advice and guidance than ever before. Have open discussions about money and finances whenever opportunity exists.

I have taken my time to write this article suitable “in general” for all kids. These guidelines or tips are not set in stone. It is recommended that, based your kids’ ability or interest, you may need to switch around these tips. For example, if you find your 7-year-old seems to be very interested in learning about finances, try using some tips from the 10 to 15 age group and observe how she reacts. It is the parents’ responsibility to secure their kids’ financial future by guiding them through a solid financial roadmap from their early days.

Kuala Lumpur Full-Day City Tour – Part 2

Malaysia Travel Blog: Discover Amazing Kuala Lumpur City Tour

Kuala Lumpur Travel Blog: Part 5

Kuala Lumpur Cocoa Boutique

My tour guide took me to the tour vehicle, which was a car. It appeared that I was the only one on the tour, which was not a bad thing. Our first stop was at the Cocoa Boutique, the largest chocolate boutique in Malaysia.

There were more than 300 varieties of chocolate or chocolate-made art works. Some of them were really big, like a big dragon made of chocolate.

The personal chocolate guide there gave me a tour of the store, providing details on the history of chocolate and even how some specialty chocolates were made. Everything seemed to be overpriced and I didn’t buy anything. That place was crowded even in the early morning.

National Mosque

The next itinerary on the list was the National Mosque. This place was huge. I had to enter my name and country of origin and remove my shoes before entering the mosque. All of a sudden a man came out of nowhere, running towards me and trying to tell me something. I eventually discerned that he was saying Justin Trudeau was a very, very good man. He saw Canada next my name and came running to me just to tell me that.

The National Mosque architecture reflects contemporary traditional Islamic art with the help of calligraphy, ornamentation, and other past and present art works.

The roof of the mosque was the most strikingly designed and unique. It looked like a multi-fold umbrella that symbolizes the aspirations of Malaysia as an independent nation. The minaret is 73 metres high (240 ft) and the main roof has a 16-pointed star. 15,000 people can pray in the mosque together and it is situated among 13 acres (53,000 m2) of gardens in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

Make Money Online - Roadmap of A Dot Com Mogul

Make Money Online – A Dawn Journal Book Review

First Published Date : August 28, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

Prelude

I received a signed copy of this book in the mail from John Chow sometime in May. However, it took me a while to finish reading it due to living a part-time dot com lifestyle on the weekend only along with a full-time 9-5 lifestyle. Today, I am writing this review on my new Acer 13.3 Aspire Timeline laptop in a Tim Horton at Danforth Ave. and Birchmount Rd. in Toronto, Canada.

What Is This Book About?

This is John Chow’s first book to give readers his lifetime insight on how to make money online in simple, plain English. This book is somewhat targeted to those who are novices in the world of online money making and entrepreneurship.

Dad’s Review of Make Money Online in Two Sentences

My dad, who is close to 80, is just learning how to use the Internet and opened his first email account last week. He finished reading Make Money Online within days of receiving it and gave me his super-short review in two sentences:

·   John talks very honest and candidly without holding anything back in this book.

·   Content is very important.

Do you think anyone else can do a better review than this?

Critical Characteristic You Need to Succeed: Passion

In the first 20 pages, John talks about how he got into blogging, the dot com crash of 2001, how Google rescued Internet entrepreneurship, and so on. Then, he talks about three critical elements you should have even before you start your online venture. These three essential elements are: Being passionate on your subject, having your own domain name, and keep updating often. Passion is the most important element which comes before anything else. The reason is, regardless of how serious you are on everything else, if you are not in love with your subject, you will give up one day.

Essential Blogging Tips

John provides ten essential blogging tips in chapter four. If you are willing to achieve online success, you should embrace and follow these time-tested tips vigorously. I am going to mention here the first five tips only:

   Be Personal

·   Write for readers, not for the search engines

·   Know your readers

·   Never rush your posts
·   Go with the flow

Content Is King

One full chapter is dedicated to content. In this chapter, you will find what is considered quality content and what is not. If you are reading this book review at this very moment, you are reading it because of its content, not for anything else. The whole world is looking for information online, i.e. content, and this hunger for content will only grow in the future. Follow John’s tips on content and you will be able to turn your no-traffic website into a high-traffic website, no doubt.

Some Important Highlights from Make Money Online

Here are some important highlights I must mention before giving you my conclusion:
– Blog on something you are passionate about. If you just blog for money (not being passionate on the subject), you will fail.
– Never stop learning. Be willing to take risks and try new things.
– Do not wait for things to happen someday. You need to have goals and a plan of action with timelines to realize your goals. Dreamers will always keep dreaming and will never realize their dreams because they do not have any solid action plans with a timeline.
– You need to be different to be successful. Readers have options to read other content on the same subject. Why would they read your content if you are not different and unique?
– Branding is very important. Strong branding already gives you a boost to become different, now concentrate on generating unique content.

What I Don’t Like

Considering that Make Money Online a book to help novice Internet entrepreneurs to make money online, its simple, easy-to-follow teachings and techniques flow throughout the book smoothly – except in chapter five – WordPress basics and chapter six – WordPress techniques and tools, where I got the feeling that it’s getting a little techi for regular readers and you need to have technical literacy to comprehend some of the stuff discussed.

What I Like

It’s simple and plain language and John’s candid-conversation-style writing. Readers will have this feeling (just after reading first few pages and as my dad mentioned) that everything that said here is coming from a person of authority on online money making and he is not withholding any information. His sole purpose of this book is to shed some light on the world of online money making and help those who are willing to give it a try.

My Take

If you are a regular A Dawn Journal reader, you know that I go by three simple and straightforward ratings for my book review: A Must Read, Worth Reading, and Do Not Read. For Make Money Online, I am assigning “A Must Read.” Even if you are not looking into Internet Entrepreneurship, you should still read this book as it takes you inside the mind of a great entrepreneur who showed us how to succeed with determination, courage, and hard work in the face of severe uncertainty. It will inspire you in your daily living.

Some Facts About Vietnam’s Economy

First Published Date : September 1, 2010 ADawnJournal.com

Vietnam: A Changing Country

When many people think about Vietnam, the one thing they think about is the Vietnam War. However, this country is much more than that and it has changed from that dark chapter in its past. Now, it is a very popular tourist destination and a place many Americans now go for a visit.

Vietnam is the eastern-most country on the Indochina Peninsula, located in Southeast Asia. It shares a border with China, Laos and Cambodia and it ranks as the 13th most populous country in the world with 86 million people. Vietnam was once part of China, but it fought for its independence and won it in 938. From that point on, various rulers controlled the country for almost 1,000 years before the French moved in and colonized it. They were pushed out in the mid-20th century, which eventually led to the Vietnam War, which the North Vietnam won in 1975, effectively unifying the country. Rather than fade away like North Korea, Vietnam instituted economic and political reforms and by 2000 it had opened up diplomatic relations with nearly all the countries on Earth. The hard work of the people of Vietnam and the government helped the country have one of the highest economic growth paces in the world, which allowed the country to join the World Trade Organization in 2007.

In terms of land size, Vietnam is larger than Italy and is nearly the size of Germany, which is something many people do not realize. The country has a varied landscape as well. There are many hills and forested mountains in the country. Only 20 percent of the country is actually considered to be flat land, while mountains make up 40 percent. Small hills make up another 40 percent. In that, 42 percent of the country is covered by tropical forest. Most of the mountains and highlands are in the north, while the south has lowlands and a view mountains. During the winter, which runs from November to April, monsoon winds hit the country and create a large amount of moisture falling in the country, which can cause severe flooding.

Going back to the economy of Vietnam, it has grown immensely after putting in economic reforms in the mid-1980s, even though the country is effectively communist. From 1990 to 1997, the country had about an eight percent annual growth in its GDP, and from 2005 it was seven percent, making it one of the fastest growing economies on the planet. During this same period of time, foreign investment in the country grew three-fold, and the domestic savings of the country grew four-times. Vietnam is investing heavily in information technology, making it a world leader and the country also has many oil reserves, something foreigners do not even realize. In fact, Vietnam is the third-largest oil producer in Southeast Asia, outputting 400,000 barrels a day. Vietnam is also a very open economy, trading and importing heavily. Two-way trade for the country amounts to 160 percent of its GDP, which is four times that of India and twice that of China. All of this has helped Vietnam lower the level of extreme poverty in the country significantly. Currently, Vietnam has a lower level of extreme poverty than India, China and the Philippines.

It is estimated that by 2025, Vietnam will have the 17th largest economy on the planet and by 2050, the country will be 70 percent the size of the United Kingdom economy. Vietnam is also the largest producer of black pepper and cashew nuts in the world, representing one-third of the global share of both of those products. They are the second largest producer of rice, and they export other products like fish, rubber, tea and coffee. All of this has helped lower the unemployment rate in Vietnam to only 2.9 percent, which is below the level of many industrialized nations.

Over the past few years, Vietnam has begun to rise up in the rankings of world countries. Here is a quick rundown of how it compares to other countries:

Vietnam ranks 39 out of 144 countries on the Global Peace Index.

Vietnam ranks 142 out of 157 countries on the Index of Economic Freedom.

Vietnam ranks 61 out of 111 countries on the Worldwide Quality of Life Index.

Vietnam ranks 155 out of 167 countries on the Worldwide Press Freedom Index.

Vietnam ranks 111 out of 163 countries on the Corruptions Perceptions Index.

Vietnam ranks 109 out of 177 countries on the Human Development Index.

Vietnam ranks 77 out of 125 countries on the Global Competitiveness Index.

As can be seen, some areas need to be improved but Vietnam has grown immensely on the world stage since the dark days of the Vietnam War.

Vietnam also has to improve its human rights record. In a 2004 report of Human Rights Practices, Vietnam’s record was rated as poor with a history of serious abuses. The government of the country has restrictions on freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association.

This is beginning to improve though and Vietnam is considered to be a friend and reliable partner of all countries within the international community and often takes part in international cooperation measures. Vietnam is a member of 63 international organizations including the WTO, La Francophonie, NAM, ASEAN and the United Nations. In addition the country is part of 650 non-governmental organizations.

Vietnam is not a perfect country, but it is an improving country. It is growing fast and in the 21st century it will become a world leader, helping to influence how the world progresses into the 22nd century based on its economic power that just continues to grow. If you are thinking of visiting Vietnam, then you are in for a treat. The people of the country are friendly, the weather is warm, the landscape is beautiful and the culture is rich and steeped heavily in history. It is certainly a country on the move and one that you should keep an eye on moving into the future.