Photo: The Star
1. First of all, the price of a chicken isn’t going to decrease at all. In fact, . The Star Newspaper reported that May inflation rate is up to 1.7% compared to last year. This is a bad news for dad, especially a young dad like me, who struggles with limited money against his kids expense, loans, utilities, and all. Another percent of inflation is another headache to bear. The good news is, the inflation rate over the last five years is in consistent move but we don’t how long it will last.
We should be worried because average salary increase has shown the downward trend from 94 – 2007. There’s no way we can beat the economy with the salary. What we can do is, we can beat them with our expenses and demands. When both of them — especially our demands — are decreasing in the market. The market will go down its price.
2. Understand the basic micro economy. Micro economy is a study of how to we manage our unlimited want with limited resources. Also, micro economy studies demands and supplies curves in a market. You see, if there’s a demand in a market, there will be a supply. If the demand is increasing, the line will be shifting, forcing the price to go upward along the line of supply. There’s a video to make you understand.
Same as if happened the demand becomes decreasing, the price will follow downward, produce the surplus in the market. Let’s take an example of selling price of chicken. Hypothetically, 1 kilogram of a chicken is RM6.50. If no one demand a chicken in a certain period of time, the seller will surely lower the price as they afraid their chickens will be rotted. Surplus.
3. Live within your mean. Assuming everyone is a fresh graduate employee, and our salary is RM2000 on average. Don’t you think it’s a mathematically illogical if our expenses is RM2900 every months? You can over-expenses by doing simple things. Swipe. Yes. Credit card is haunting everyone nowadays. I admit I can’t live without credit card, but I’m the process of learning how not to use it wisely. Right now, I fail. I swipe every time I like something that I couldn’t afford. My best suggestion is to cut the credit card in half, which is so hard to do it.
4. Look for a deal. You want to save your money and your life, live with your means. You already have enough debt, spreading disease behind your back. But I want to having diner lavishly, or wearing lucrative clothes once in a while!! Just look for a deal, like groupon, dealmates, and the list go on and on. Sometimes buying used items may fulfilled your satisfaction, provided you’re willing extend your deep research on that used item.
5. Buy in bulk. This is good. Having a giant supermarket player like Tesco, Giant, Econsave, and Carrefour in our country gives benefits to consumers. Although, it may gives bad luck to small businesses and retailers, but as long as the cheap price is in consumer side, we as consumers couldn’t complain. As the big players wage a war on price, we should be careful. Sometimes the giant supermarkets put the lowest price on chicken but spike the highest price on diapers. You’ll realize that you’ll be here to buy chicken and there to buy diapers. But it’s worthwhile doing that, if you buy them in bulk.
6. DIY. If you have the time at your side, you may want to learn DIY and save every sen instead. There’s a good article you want to read: 25 DIYs men to should know. I have experienced a case where a plumber charged me RM300 for his service, only to discover that he just replaced the damaged floating ball inside our water tank on the rooftop with the new one. Ops, there goes my money.
7. Maintain your car. Do service your car on schedule. For all I know, you have to change oil for every 3000 to 5000 kilometers, depending on what kind of oil you use, or every three months, whichever comes first. Second, keep your tire inflated. Here’s what I’ve got from popularmechanics.com
A single tire that’s underinflated by 10 psi costs about 3.3 percent of your fuel economy. So to keep the numbers round for the sake of our discussion, let’s say four tires underinflated by that same amount would increase our fuel consumption by around 10 percent.
Imagine if you have a national car, Proton Waja which can hold 60 liters on full tank and you have under inflated tires all these time, you may waste a good 6-liter petrol that can extend our ride about 66 kilometers, presumably.
Photo: NapaConsultant
8. Eat poorly. Malaysians are getting fatter and fatter everyday. It’s because we’re served with fancy restaurants that can reach within our wallet. They left us satisfaction in our taste but not in our desire. We just can’t get enough. The money goes out and the weights come in.
9. Lower your standard of living. If you’re live like you’re an ambassador but your salary is telling you that you’re a nice good looking office boy, you have to be worried about how to sustain your luxury life for the next five years or so. Things will not be the same. Inflation is getting higher and higher. RM10 right now is not as much value as it will be for the next ten years. If you don’t start to build up your wealthiness at your young age, you will be just like me. Living a life from paycheck to paycheck.
10. Plan ahead. This is what I always fail. It easier to plan in my mind than to put up on a piece of paper for what I’m going to do for the next three to five years. Well, it is easy to plan inside your head and it’s easy to forget, as well. We’re not getting younger,
11. Start a new, cheap hobby. One way to stop your money flowing like a river is you have to find a new hobby that cost very little or nothing at all. But we all know that we have to spend a few ringgits on initial. Well, you have to buy equipment at first if you want to do something. As for me, I figured out that I like musical instrument. So, I have to spend on buying guitar. It’s substantial for the first buying, but cheap in a long run. You have to worry about strings if they started to get weary. No idea how to get a hobby? Here is another 67+ cheap ones.
12. Read what matters. Open your mind. Knowledge is power. Reading is one of many ways to gain knowledge. Reading can open your mind, and unlock your narrow notions about anything. Read news, blog, article, and forum about personal finance makes you financially wiser. Thus, it saves you from troubles.
13. Conclusion. I just want to tell you that we can beat the price. We are consumers of today, and we should tell all the sellers, who’s trying to set the price high abusively, that we are the boss. We decide what the price is going to be. We will tell the inflation rate that you can’t beat us. We have our savings and investment to protect our money.
