Prerfecting the art of canny investments

Prerfecting the art of canny investments

JAKARTA (JP): When Mrs. Dahlan bought yet another antique
Chinese earthenware jug, the rest of the family protested. But
she didn't feel she had made a mistake, nor did she think she had
wasted her money.

"It's not just another jug, thank you very much. It's
investasi," she argued hotly. "In two years' time, its price will
double or even triple."

Unluckily, a few days later, her investment fell into pieces.
Not that China had canceled its plan to attack Taiwan, causing a
slump in the Hong Kong stock market and prices of anything made
in China to drop. No! The precious jug simply fell from the
shelf.

The jug was nicely displayed on one of the shelves in the
corner of the living room. Cemplon, the family cat, thought it
was put there for her and her four kittens to utilize in their
game of hide and seek while everybody was out.

"It was just a bad investment," said Mrs. Dahlan, trying to
hide her disappointment. "It happens, you know. Even Donald Trump
experienced one. No big deal."

Investment, or investasi in Indonesian, means property or
another possession acquired for future benefits. It has been a
very popular word for a decade. People do not buy things because
they need them. They spend money mostly as a form of investment.

"Investment in carpets. Why not?" said an article in this
paper a while ago. People do not buy expensive carpets merely for
the purpose of covering their floors. There is a business motive
behind it.

Property is said to be the most profitable form of investment.
The price of a house or a condominium could escalate by 100
percent in just one year. Imagine how much you can rake in if you
buy five houses at the price of, say, Rp 100 million.

But, as Mrs. Dahlan says, bad investments happen. Margo is one
of my friends who invested all the money he had, plus a large
amount of a bank loan, on a piece of land to build a bungalow in
Puncak. He had calculated the profit before purchasing the plot.
Then suddenly, the local administration decided to stop issuing
new building permits because Puncak must be returned to its old
state: a water catchment area for Jakarta.

For the last 10 years, for the purpose of investment,
Jakartans have been building a great number of houses and
bungalows in Puncak. So many of them you would think an exodus
was going on. This has caused environmental hazards. Hills have
been deforested, paddy fields have been converted into swimming
pools, trees have been replaced with grass on golf courses, and
rainwater flows directly to the rivers, eventually causing floods
in Jakarta -- the kind of floods that not even Noah could
imagine.

Although it was somehow too late, the government at last
realized that Puncak must be conserved. Buildings without permits
have been demolished and issuance of new building permits has
stopped. That left Margo with a broken heart. In this kind of
situation, nobody would be interested in buying his land, what
with the government's intention to restore the area, while Margo
has to pay installments to the bank.

Thankfully, Mrs. Dahlan and my wife are household "investors".

"You'll thank yourself for buying this when its price goes up
by 200 percent," they keep saying every time they buy an
expensive item.

One day when we desperately needed money to repair the house,
I thought it was the perfect time to reap the profit from what my
wife had invested in so far. I wanted her to sell the crystal
lamp, whose price was said to have rocketed tenfold. After all,
that's what investments are for.

But I was surprised to hear what she said.

"Are you crazy? That lamp looks so good there. It's in perfect
harmony with the antiques, the carpets and the drapery."

So much for future profits.

-- Carl Chairul