Extracted from Ridzwan.com

Fixation for Installments

Boy: I went to a friend's place in the evening. He has a big radiogram!


Boy: It would be fun if we were to have a radiogram... We could listen to a lot of records!
Father: Radiograms are expensive. We can't afford it.

Yes, those were the days indeed.

The cartoon above is taken from Town Boy, a nostalgic work about life in the 50s by acclaimed Malaysian cartoonist Lat. I decided to immortalise it here for it reminds me of a scene we seldom see today. A scene long ago when Malay men were noble heads of the household who did not expose their families to debt and installments.

If this cartoon were to depict the life of a typical Malay family today, it would have most probably ended with the dad taking out an installment plan on that radiogram.

Yes, there has been plenty of jokes about Malays and installments.

There were rumours going around not too long ago that salespeople at furniture and appliance shops were instructed to hide price tags whenever they see a Malay customer walking in. They were told to display an installment plan instead.

At first I thought that this was just another one of those tales to beguile the Malay community. Such a policy of displaying installment plans for Malays, but normal prices for other races would be downright discrimination. Surely this humiliating story is nothing but just a rumour?

Well guess what.


All ads taken from Berita Harian and Straits Times, 2nd March 2008

Examine the prices on these ads carefully. One set is taken from a Malay paper while the exact same ads, with exactly the same products, are taken from an English paper.

The Installment Culture

Taking up loans is now such a way of life for the Malay community that even businesses are realising this disconcerting anomaly and have catered their marketing messages accordingly.

I'm not sure about you, but I find the situation above extremely humiliating. No one can deny that the habit is spreading like cancer in the Malay community. From cars, to furniture, to jewellery and even wedding expenses. Installments are now the norm rather than the exception. And some are even very proud of it.

Flip the Malay paper today and you will find numerous advertisements for $1-deposit cars, buy-now-pay-later gold bracelets and $12-a-month mobile phones. Amusingly, there is also a letter in the forum pages by one Osman Ibrahim who is suggesting that the Government implement an installment plan for the lost Identity Card fee.

Indeed the signs are clear for those who wish to see.

The Storm Ahead

A community heavily laden with debt is a community at the edge of trouble. Being surrounded by loans and installments increases your chances of being a financial delinquent. All it takes is just one emergency or an unforeseen circumstance such as an accident, retrenchment or disease before your whole world comes crashing down. Things may look rosy today, but many in the Malay community has never thought about the weather tomorrow when taking on that car loan.

And it does not take a genius to tell you that being a financial delinquent would mean being a liability to society. A breadwinner struggling to settle the compoundingly mounting debts around him would most likely not be able to fulfill his family's financial obligations.

Marriages have been torn apart and families have been broken due to financial delinquencies. In a community facing a host of social problems, financial delinquents are just adding on to the statistics. The future is a scary thought indeed. Sadly many do not see this yet.

Action Now

Stay out of debt and spread this message. This culture of taking out installments for things that we cannot yet afford has to stop. Double-standard advertisements is the clearest sign yet that this fixation for installments is a plague that our community has to overcome. There is nothing honourable in owning something you have not yet paid for - be it a $60,000 car, a $16,000 grand wedding or a $600 bracelet.

It is much more noble to live within you means, than to live a life of debt.