Better Invest In ASB If You Are Not A Risk Taker
Photo:zen
I have put some money, for the purpose of investing, into a unit trust fund where it concentrates an investment in China. At that times, I felt like — wow!! — Beijing at that time was going to hold the olympic games. There would be money pouring in like sambal belacan in the afternoon.
Well, I was a greedy bastard that I couldn’t care enough to follow the agent advice; this was a high risk investment. So, he couldn’t guarantee how big the magnitude of loss would be.
When there’s a high risk, there’s a high financial gain. That’s what I thought at that moment.
Jacquilyn wrote:
For those who are not risk takers and prefer the comfort of consistent returns can place their money in fixed deposits or in fixed-income instruments. That way, they know the exact returns from their investments no matter what is happening to the interest rate. The good news is fixed deposit rates will also go up giving the investor higher returns. However, bondholders will be negatively affected but will benefit those who buy in after the rate hike. The general advice is to keep yourself updated on local and world economic situation and adjust your investment portfolio when necessary to protect your money.
Here came the nightmare; the unit trust price per share plummeted from RM1.00 to RM0.20. I slapped myself in the head because I learned that the China economy was not doing very well despite the Olympic games — there’s a few natural disaster — that I could see my money flew away. Kaput.
I realized that I’m not the man who can dealing with the risk very wise. I could go mad, and stay mad for a long time if I experienced a financial loss.
I should stick with ASB then.
Saving Is Investing
Photo: o5com
Well, many of us didn’t realize that saving is actually investing. For me, saving is just a sum of money that I feel the need to keep it, rather than use it. Regardless whether I put it under the pillow or in a bank.
I never see my saving is some sort of investment vehicle, until I read this argument, which is make sense to me.
The thing is, they’re overlooking the fact that they’re already investing that money. Simply having cash in a savings account is an investment! Investing simply means that you’re utilizing a resource that you own or control with the intent of having that resource provide additional gains to you (or to someone else). Loaning $20 to a friend who is very thankful and promises to pay you back is an investment. You’re utilizing a resource you own or control (the $20) with the intent of having that resource provide additional gains to you or someone else (helping a friend through a pinch and perhaps accruing some social capital for yourself)
As simple as that. You choose to put your money on hold, when you have temptations to spend and spend, to achieve better financial goals.
Lend Money To Friends Without Ruining Friendship
Photo: maol
First thing, don’t expect you will get your money back when you lend your money to your friends. What April Dykman, staff writer of GetRichSlowly, wrote is hundred percent right. I have seen a lot of my friends are never getting their money back, or at least pay a third of the full amount – after you pursuing them like a madman.
For all my life, I never lend any money to a friend, I rather say, “No, I have no money” right now than see our relationship crumble and collapse in future.
Furthermore, the money problem will never get solved even after give loan to your friends.
Dykman wrote:
“Unfortunately, my friend continued to have money problems, and eventually she was evicted. Her boyfriend was fired from the job after a few weeks. While I feel for her, that’s the extent of how much I can help her — at least financially. I don’t regret our decision to help out, and though the money is gone, our friendship has remained intact, which was my primary concern when she asked for help.”
As for me, I only lend money only to my family and relatives – the only group of persons that I trust.
The Day That The Machine Ran Out Of Money
The day that salary pay day is the day the machine runs out of money. In my situation, 25th of every month.
When people tailing up to the nearest ATM to my office, I couldn’t deny that feel annoyed because the ATM always runs out of money when it’s my turn to withdraw my money. So I try to avoid the ATM on that particular day of every month. I don’t want to get any stress.
I believe most of the people regret when the day has come. They withdraw most of their sweat-and-tears-for-a-month money, and buy something expensive, so they can gain respect among friends, colleagues, and bosses.
Expensive and luxury things can give you status, pride, and social class. But what they cannot buy is your future money when you suppose to save some money for the old days to come.
It is called regretful day because that’s when the day people let the compulsive desire take over their day, where they should let their brain do their job at the moment the ATM withdraw their hard-earned money. They get into worse when the money dried up its well in the middle of the month.
How to avoid regretful day? We now should into the fundamental of managing the money, where you let the brain and the wisdom take a full charge as your financial keeper
- Create a budget. Writing budget on paper was the way that I used to do in Matrix Study. But it is still the most practical way to monitor the transaction process. As for whom thinks paper is quite conventional, you could always do on excel spreadsheet format.
- Automatic Saving Method. You may feel angry that you really need to use money this month. You have extra money but unfortunately the money has been automatically deducted from your account. I felt it that way too, but it also makes me feel like ‘paying myself first’ when I look into the balance of my account, 10 years from now.
- Runaway from the desire and temptation. I always stuck with the latest gadget, I can envision myself took out money the long term saving account to buy gadget. But I often try avoid that desire from buying the unnecessary.
- The Wish list. Always stick with it. If you have a wish list, just buy something that on the list only. If there are not in your checklist, then don’t buy it. If you don’t have wish list. Make one, because it will help you for not to buy something that you actually want.
Most of people, including me, trapped inside this habit. We would always buy things just to show off to everyone that I’m wealthy and I can afford anything I want. I think it’s OK if you want to do that as long as you can save a little money every month, and not to get regretful day.
Save a little in a day, Save a lot in a year
I sit on my sofa in my living hall, thinking back; what else can I do cut down my expenses. If I cut down too much, I’m afraid that I’m not living in a standard that can benefit myself and my family. After I realized the coins rattling around in your pocket can add up to big savings over time, I write all the activities which occur money. When I cut down a little things of what not necessary, I may save a little in a month, developing into a snowflake and gradually save big in a year, or two.
- Cut down ASTRO. How many hours did your family spend time in front of TV? Make your time to analyze back whether is it worth to watch HBO or buy DVD, watch football at home or Kedai Mamak, let your kids watch Playhouse Disney Channel or buy a copy kids educational DVD from a store. I spend the most of my time reading novels, browsing stuffs on internet, and writing blog. Cutting Astro is no big deal for me.
- Bald is the new style. Since I don’t know what to do with my hair as it doesn’t fit in any hairstyle trends, I cut it short. Really short that you can see my head skin from 200 meters. I bought automatic machine and cut my hair by myself (with a little help from my wife).
- Turn the lights off or change the lamp. A lot of people argues that at least one lamp remains active during the nights to scare away a house burglar. Fair enough, I found out that regular fluorescent light consumes 50 wattage. While CFL only uses 14 wattage where the output is as good as regular fluorescent light. So I changed the lamps, from regular to CFL one. That might save electricity a bit.
- Accelerates and Brake slowly. Pushing the pedal slowly and wait the momentum to build up patiently might cut down the petrol consumption when driving. If your car has an extra feature such as cruise mode, you should use it as to get better fuel-efficient benefit from constant speed
- Avoid stuck in a heavy traffic might saves you a lot. RM50 worth of petrol can advance my car from Kuala Lumpur to Gua Musang. But if I’m stuck in a traffic doing back and forth to work and home, the petrol consumption jumps, and I can only get 250 km for RM50 petrol.
- Only buy things when on sale. Here is my wife’s favorite point. I always tell her to buy things when they are on sale only. If she has a patience to wait until the end of the year, she would enjoy further price cut because that is when ‘the sales war’ begins.
- Change to wireless broadband. Try to analyze the usage of internet your houselhold. If you are the only person who actively using internet for browsing purpose, you should commit your loyalty to wireless broandband because they are far more cheaper than bloodsucking TMnet Streamyx. But if you are a download junkie and watch youtube all the time, like me, you shall not leave the Streamyx.
- Read online instead of newspaper. Some people says that reading newspaper is a bad and unproductive activities. For reading newspaper is a waste of money. Why pursue newspaper at the stand or Kedai Runcit since we have free and online newspaper. It’s about time we change.
There are lot of things around your room and your environment that can contribute to your determination of saving money. I rethink and rethink all activities that can be cut down its expense to help me to save one sen everyday. List down the activities that occur money help me to draw the first step of saving money.
Renovation Tips for New House
We are in the ‘moving to new house’ mode. Insya Allah, we will move in to the house early of May or end of April. Busy preparing this and that, busy looking for best quotations with the best quality, headache when money gone like water, busy thinking which one should done first and done later, bla..bla..blaaa. and not forgetting my EDD is just 1month away. Everything need to settle within this month. Fuhhhh..
A little bit about my new house; it’s not a new house actually, its a 2nd hand house. Its a intermediate double-storey house somewhere in Bangi. I heart Bangi for its serenity, facilities, quiet residential area, the people etc. Buying a 2nd hand house also cost you to spend much money even tho not as much as moving in to totally new house. Here i would like to share some house renovation tips for new house.
Please bear in mind that my house is 2nd hand house, not new house. So that, the renovations is not as much as new house.
Inspecting the house checklist
- When you buy a house,check the house completely, from roofing to flooring and inside out.
-
- Is there any furniture available for you left by house’s owner.
- Is there any big renovation need to be done (kitchen extension, roofing & plumbing problem, wiring or electrical work, tiling,)
- Is there a need of re-painting work to be done.
- Is there major home decoration needed
- Security of the house; grill, door knob
- Referring to point above, my case are :
-
- My house already has 3units of air-cond, shower heater, kitchen cabinet.
- Kitchen extension – No, roofing problem – No, plumbing problem – Minor, Wiring / electrical work- additional plug and fan, Tiling – minor,
- Re-painting work – Yes
- Home Decoration – Curtain railing need to be installed,
- Grill – sliding door and kitchen grill need to change to new ones. Reput sudah
- We change all door knob to new ones
Sketch and Plan
- After overall scan the house, you must had an idea what to do to your new house. However, before you start ;
-
- What is your budget .
- Listing what is your idea & plan about renovating your new house
- Find the contractor
- Home decorations.
- Referring to point above, my case are :
-
- We had a tight budget, so we need to prioritize what the most needed and important part to renovate 1st.
- Our list goes like this [1] Re-painting. [2] Tiling [3] Wiring for additional plug & fan [4] Grilling & Change the door knob [5] Plumbing [6] Curtain installation
- We use Indonesia workers as our contractor. He did toilet renovation for us last time and we are very satisfied with his workmanship. With the good service and reasonable price he offered us, we hired him again to do refurbishing work at our new house. However, he only supply service, and we need to buy ourself all the materials like paint, pipe, white cement for wall touch up, etc. He listed down what he wanted us to buy. Its ok with us, as i love to do all the survey and compare the price.. huhu
- At this moment, we don’t think house decoration is a MUST besides re-painting the house. The only thing that we considered that this time are painting and curtain. Furniture like sofa, dining table will be used what we had now, wall deco (frame, photo etc) will be done later on.
Dining Hall
Living Hall
Kitchen
Master Bedroom
Store
Backyard
Note : After done all the refurbished works, my house also looked like new house.. 
Bending The Expenses Of The Family
photo by: Rainbow Colorz
There are two options to get extra money. [1] Get it more by part-time jobs or businesses and [2] Bending the expenses of the family. Considering taking part-time job might consume our valued time and part-time business needs initial capital to setup. So we struck off the number [1] and we went for number [2]. All we had to do was to reduce our monthly expenses. It sounded simple. But when it came to implementation, it really got on our nerves.
First of all, we set a financial goal to save money, RM12000 in 18 month. As calculated, we had to save RM666.67 for 18 months and stopped doing unnecessary activities.Yes, I’d really hate to make a sudden halt to our holier-than-thou Macdonald enthusiasm, our movie DVDs cravings, and cheap-and-take-it-for-granted items of Pasar malam.
We had to make several sacrifices. No more weekend breakfast at On The Run. No more wasting RM10 on washing car at Car Auto Restoration. Don’t even think about buying your favorite Coca-Cola Canvas Poster at Bazaar Shah Alam. Say goodbye to your wishlist for 18 months.
During 18 month, we faced a lot of obstacles. Most of the weeks, we had budget blown out and unexpected expenses occurred all of a sudden. Our dapur broke, we need buy the new one. Our rooftop leaking, we have to wage someone to fix this. The sliding door which is our main entrance right now had a problem, we need replace the rail as well as the roller.
To cover the expenses, we were forced to use our own budgeted office allowance.(We set our own office allowance, portioned by every week. It felt like schoolboy who got pocket money from his parent, where he received RM10 every week and went to school every day. Apparently, this concept works well with us).
The most challenging part was when Amirul felt sick and his illness was quite serious. Well, meeting with doctor became more frequent and the illness still didn’t relieved. Eventually, we turned to child expert, which cost us dearly. Consequently, our planned budget had blown out and our employee medical benefit had reached the limit, it left us with no choice but to withdraw our savings that month. So we determined ourselves to save extra for the next month.
Most of the readers knew the concept of pay yourself first. We implemented the theory into practice. What we did was doing immediate transfer to our ASB account as soon we got our monthly salary credited so that we couldn’t even get to smell the money. That’s the priority step we’ve taken.
As a conclusion, we managed to reach our goal, the arrow hit the bull’s eye. Hence, it was difficult to swim across the river of daily temptations without getting caught by the strong flow. In a period of 18 months, it’s a little heartbreak just to watch things we want behind glass of boutique and not to buy it.
Read further of WikiHow: How to Save Money
Bending The Expenses Of The Family
photo by: Rainbow Colorz
There are two options to get extra money. [1] Get it more by part-time jobs or businesses and [2] Bending the expenses of the family. Considering taking part-time job might consume our valued time and part-time business needs initial capital to setup. So we struck off the number [1] and we went for number [2]. All we had to do was to reduce our monthly expenses. It sounded simple. But when it came to implementation, it really got on our nerves.
First of all, we set a financial goal to save money, RM12000 in 18 month. As calculated, we had to save RM666.67 for 18 months and stopped doing unnecessary activities.Yes, I’d really hate to make a sudden halt to our holier-than-thou Macdonald enthusiasm, our movie DVDs cravings, and cheap-and-take-it-for-granted items of Pasar malam.
We had to make several sacrifices. No more weekend breakfast at On The Run. No more wasting RM10 on washing car at Car Auto Restoration. Don’t even think about buying your favorite Coca-Cola Canvas Poster at Bazaar Shah Alam. Say goodbye to your wishlist for 18 months.
During 18 month, we faced a lot of obstacles. Most of the weeks, we had budget blown out and unexpected expenses occurred all of a sudden. Our dapur broke, we need buy the new one. Our rooftop leaking, we have to wage someone to fix this. The sliding door which is our main entrance right now had a problem, we need replace the rail as well as the roller.
To cover the expenses, we were forced to use our own budgeted office allowance.(We set our own office allowance, portioned by every week. It felt like schoolboy who got pocket money from his parent, where he received RM10 every week and went to school every day. Apparently, this concept works well with us).
The most challenging part was when Amirul felt sick and his illness was quite serious. Well, meeting with doctor became more frequent and the illness still didn’t relieved. Eventually, we turned to child expert, which cost us dearly. Consequently, our planned budget had blown out and our employee medical benefit had reached the limit, it left us with no choice but to withdraw our savings that month. So we determined ourselves to save extra for the next month.
Most of the readers knew the concept of pay yourself first. We implemented the theory into practice. What we did was doing immediate transfer to our ASB account as soon we got our monthly salary credited so that we couldn’t even get to smell the money. That’s the priority step we’ve taken.
As a conclusion, we managed to reach our goal, the arrow hit the bull’s eye. Hence, it was difficult to swim across the river of daily temptations without getting caught by the strong flow. In a period of 18 months, it’s a little heartbreak just to watch things we want behind glass of boutique and not to buy it.
Read further of WikiHow: How to Save Money
8 Financial Shocks For Newly Daddy
Photo By: Arsian Elver
I remembered when we welcomed Amirul to our life. To tell you the truth, I still having a difficulties to believe that I have a son. The idea of being a father for the first couple of months, was really terrible. Deep in my heart, I was not ready. I still a mindless boy who’s looking for attention from his father, although the sand of my time showed that my age would reach 30 in a few years.
Now I’m still adapting with that feeling, go on with my life and accept that Amirul is my son, he will and always be a major headache, a complexity of life. A burden. A financial burden in specific. In an instance, my life changed when my wife gave birth to Amirul. So with my financial budget and expenses. I had to change everything to suit Amirul’s need. Then I found out that the changes were really put me into the state of loss and disorientation. Feelings of helplessness and withdrawal cloaked my trembling body and I was so sure that I was having financial shocks at that moment.
It took one year to absorb the shocks, I had followed three easy steps to lighten me up;
[1] developed positive attitude toward financial changes,
[2] confronted against unpleasant feelings of financial frustration;
[3] discharged practical steps to react with our financial stress.
Here I put down the 8 Financial Shocks since I’ve become a father.
1. Diapers And the Consumable items related to it.
For the first few months, we bought an affordable brand of diapers such as Fiffy Basic and others but I couldn’t remember. When the price of major consumable items like rice, chicken, and petrol soared, like a disease, it also infected almost every brand of diapers. So we turned to genuine brand that exercised cheaper price; Tesco brand.(RM28.99 as at 31.12.2009) After doing analysis and calculation, we laid our loyalties to cloth diaper since it helped us to reduce our expenses tremendously.
2. Medical Expenses.
“Congratulation you have fully utilized your medical provision for this year– –now unfortunately we have to deduct the negative balance of RM272 that you owed us from your income this month” Well, that shocked me when I heard that. We managed to zero my wife’s family medical provision.
3. Childcare.
We pay Amirul’s babysitter for RM230 every month. We spent accumulated amount of RM2760 for 24 months. With our expected baby for this coming month of May, it doubles our expenses.
4. Formulated Milk Expenses.
Amirul drinks about 6 -7 bottles of milk every day and that average distributed the shock to my every cell. We bought 2-3 packs of Baby Milk a month, it cost about RM80.
5. Gadget
Lets list down Amirul’s gadget we have bought for the last 24 month.
#1. Cradle. Sold to a fellow friend [RM69.90]
#2. 2 Car Seat. One sold on Mudah.my [RM316 + RM250]
#3. 3 Strollers. One sold on Mudah.my [RM120 + RM200 + RM 260]
#4. Sit to Stand Walker. [RM195]
#5. Drawing Magnet. [RM120]
#6. Toys R uS Colored Pencil. [RM65.90]
#7. Manjaku Push Car. [RM89.90]
#8. Assorted Toys [RM 200++]
Looking back at our budget excel, it gave us shock that we overlooked at our reckless spending behavior on Amirul’s gadget.
6. Cloth and Shoes
We realized we spent a lot of money on cloth and shoes for the first 12 months. A shirt that we bought today can be worn for several months and then it couldn’t fit anymore. To save money, we bought oversize t-shirt and shoes so that Amirul can wear until he reaches 30 months old.
7. Life insurances
Of course, we have to review and upgrade our life insurance premium to overcome the expenses until Amirul reaches 21 years old. We have to do the math and set the fund on how much Amirul will received if something bad happened to us.
8. House
With desperate urging from my wife, I had made my decision to purchase double-storey house somewhere in Selangor because she claimed that our current house was inadequate to provide moderate space for our son and upcoming baby. Being agreeable and rational, I accepted her relevant reason.
To bring more money to our home, we tried to implement this steps,
#1. Shoveled our income for extra savings
#1. Shoveled our income for extra savings
#2. Adjusting our lifestyles
#3. Sell used items on eBay and Mudah.my
#4. Cooking our own Food
And we succeed.
One year of challenging career as a father, giving me a valuable lesson to learn; The money accelerated at speed pace like a river, flowing to the open sea of expenses. Regardless of everything I’ve wrote above, having a baby is the happiest moment of my life. Now I can define every colors that I see, musicalize every sound I hear, and pursue every ambitions I’ve dreamed of. Every second without Amirul is a scrap of metal junk, shining but meaningless.
8 Financial Shocks For Newly Daddy
Photo By: Arsian Elver
I remembered when we welcomed Amirul to our life. To tell you the truth, I still having a difficulties to believe that I have a son. The idea of being a father for the first couple of months, was really terrible. Deep in my heart, I was not ready. I still a mindless boy who’s looking for attention from his father, although the sand of my time showed that my age would reach 30 in a few years.
Now I’m still adapting with that feeling, go on with my life and accept that Amirul is my son, he will and always be a major headache, a complexity of life. A burden. A financial burden in specific. In an instance, my life changed when my wife gave birth to Amirul. So with my financial budget and expenses. I had to change everything to suit Amirul’s need. Then I found out that the changes were really put me into the state of loss and disorientation. Feelings of helplessness and withdrawal cloaked my trembling body and I was so sure that I was having financial shocks at that moment.
It took one year to absorb the shocks, I had followed three easy steps to lighten me up;
[1] developed positive attitude toward financial changes,
[2] confronted against unpleasant feelings of financial frustration;
[3] discharged practical steps to react with our financial stress.
Here I put down the 8 Financial Shocks since I’ve become a father.
1. Diapers And the Consumable items related to it.
For the first few months, we bought an affordable brand of diapers such as Fiffy Basic and others but I couldn’t remember. When the price of major consumable items like rice, chicken, and petrol soared, like a disease, it also infected almost every brand of diapers. So we turned to genuine brand that exercised cheaper price; Tesco brand.(RM28.99 as at 31.12.2009) After doing analysis and calculation, we laid our loyalties to cloth diaper since it helped us to reduce our expenses tremendously.
2. Medical Expenses.
“Congratulation you have fully utilized your medical provision for this year– –now unfortunately we have to deduct the negative balance of RM272 that you owed us from your income this month” Well, that shocked me when I heard that. We managed to zero my wife’s family medical provision.
3. Childcare.
We pay Amirul’s babysitter for RM230 every month. We spent accumulated amount of RM2760 for 24 months. With our expected baby for this coming month of May, it doubles our expenses.
4. Formulated Milk Expenses.
Amirul drinks about 6 -7 bottles of milk every day and that average distributed the shock to my every cell. We bought 2-3 packs of Baby Milk a month, it cost about RM80.
5. Gadget
Lets list down Amirul’s gadget we have bought for the last 24 month.
#1. Cradle. Sold to a fellow friend [RM69.90]
#2. 2 Car Seat. One sold on Mudah.my [RM316 + RM250]
#3. 3 Strollers. One sold on Mudah.my [RM120 + RM200 + RM 260]
#4. Sit to Stand Walker. [RM195]
#5. Drawing Magnet. [RM120]
#6. Toys R uS Colored Pencil. [RM65.90]
#7. Manjaku Push Car. [RM89.90]
#8. Assorted Toys [RM 200++]
Looking back at our budget excel, it gave us shock that we overlooked at our reckless spending behavior on Amirul’s gadget.
6. Cloth and Shoes
We realized we spent a lot of money on cloth and shoes for the first 12 months. A shirt that we bought today can be worn for several months and then it couldn’t fit anymore. To save money, we bought oversize t-shirt and shoes so that Amirul can wear until he reaches 30 months old.
7. Life insurances
Of course, we have to review and upgrade our life insurance premium to overcome the expenses until Amirul reaches 21 years old. We have to do the math and set the fund on how much Amirul will received if something bad happened to us.
8. House
With desperate urging from my wife, I had made my decision to purchase double-storey house somewhere in Selangor because she claimed that our current house was inadequate to provide moderate space for our son and upcoming baby. Being agreeable and rational, I accepted her relevant reason.
To bring more money to our home, we tried to implement this steps,
#1. Shoveled our income for extra savings
#1. Shoveled our income for extra savings
#2. Adjusting our lifestyles
#3. Sell used items on eBay and Mudah.my
#4. Cooking our own Food
And we succeed.
One year of challenging career as a father, giving me a valuable lesson to learn; The money accelerated at speed pace like a river, flowing to the open sea of expenses. Regardless of everything I’ve wrote above, having a baby is the happiest moment of my life. Now I can define every colors that I see, musicalize every sound I hear, and pursue every ambitions I’ve dreamed of. Every second without Amirul is a scrap of metal junk, shining but meaningless.
Your Money And Family Wrap Up
Photo By: unmitigatedword
Your money and family is a blog series that brings you into heavy contents about my experience being a new father who trying to juggle money and family matters, which both are the most vital element. It’s like a WiiFit Balance Board; on your left foot is money and on your right foot is your family. Failing to balance the need of the family, leads to more money followed by inevitable disaster of family institution. Failing to balance your money will let the enormous debt support your family lifestyle, and see yourself standing on the brink of destruction. Someday you can’t shoulder the weight of the debt and eventually your family feel the money shortage in sluggish mode.
Although you have heard ‘everything’s family’ phrase everywhere you go, as for my opinion, there are circumstances where money is more important than your family. Through my experience as a new father, there are times when you can’t distinguished between family need and want, and consequently you spending your money like crazy on unwanted things. I’ve experienced several mouth fights over money, heavy debating about what needs to be put on first priority, and excessive arguments about our child’s expenses against my beloved wife. It was so hard to reach mutual agreement between us but we managed to give a nod to each other in the end.
Here I wrapped up the your-money-and-family blog series:
Episode #1:Higher Education Savings
Episode #2:One-household-Two-Incomes Model
Episode #3:Private Vs Public Hospital
Episode #4:Hiring A Maid
Episode #5:How Cloth Diaper saves your money
Episode #6:Insurance
In conclusion, these 6 episodes are the story about my experience I’ve been through and the decisions that I’ve made. Managing a family as well as money is not an easy job but I will do my best to balance both of them. To Readers, suggest anything about your family and money topic, give me your seed of ideas and let me your grow your ideas. I will try to publish blog posts based on your relevant points.
Your Money And Family Wrap Up
Photo By: unmitigatedword
Your money and family is a blog series that brings you into heavy contents about my experience being a new father who trying to juggle money and family matters, which both are the most vital element. It’s like a WiiFit Balance Board; on your left foot is money and on your right foot is your family. Failing to balance the need of the family, leads to more money followed by inevitable disaster of family institution. Failing to balance your money will let the enormous debt support your family lifestyle, and see yourself standing on the brink of destruction. Someday you can’t shoulder the weight of the debt and eventually your family feel the money shortage in sluggish mode.
Although you have heard ‘everything’s family’ phrase everywhere you go, as for my opinion, there are circumstances where money is more important than your family. Through my experience as a new father, there are times when you can’t distinguished between family need and want, and consequently you spending your money like crazy on unwanted things. I’ve experienced several mouth fights over money, heavy debating about what needs to be put on first priority, and excessive arguments about our child’s expenses against my beloved wife. It was so hard to reach mutual agreement between us but we managed to give a nod to each other in the end.
Here I wrapped up the your-money-and-family blog series:
Episode #1:Higher Education Savings
Episode #2:One-household-Two-Incomes Model
Episode #3:Private Vs Public Hospital
Episode #4:Hiring A Maid
Episode #5:How Cloth Diaper saves your money
Episode #6:Insurance
In conclusion, these 6 episodes are the story about my experience I’ve been through and the decisions that I’ve made. Managing a family as well as money is not an easy job but I will do my best to balance both of them. To Readers, suggest anything about your family and money topic, give me your seed of ideas and let me your grow your ideas. I will try to publish blog posts based on your relevant points.
Nintendo Wii saved My Petrol Usage
There I just said it, Wii Nintendo saved my petrol usage. Playing Wii made me forget about outside world, that can make my money gone in a blink or in a fraction of seconds. Instead of collecting 90 kilometers on Saturday and Sunday, wasting my time to visit such popular malls like Midvalley, The Curve, Ikea, and KLCC, I play with Amirul by Wiimote in my hand; swinging, batting, tilting, and cooking. The Wiimote that can detect detailed movement in three dimension, gave us gaming addict which we could play Wii all day long without rest. But the price of the console is quite expensive. It was RM1299 including two Wiimote and Nunchuck plus 10 DVD games, bought it at The Curve after listening recommendation from my brother and several trusted friends, who told me that it was the cheapest price in KL.
It’s a huge expense for me. RM1299. I never bought a gaming console which cost that much. If I transformed that money into petrol RON95, I could enjoy filing petrol until full to my Saga fuel tank about 26 times. But I feel no guilty or regret buying that console because I thought as if it was an investment and it would give you returns in future but not in form of money.
My wife and I love to outing at several interesting places on weekend, mostly at shopping Mall. Midvalley or The Curve, if we got bored, we pushed our fuel pedal to KLCC. Weekend outing was our hobby. Our obligatory activity. I remember when my wife still carrying Amirul inside her womb, we went to three different places; Sunway Pyramid Mall, The Mines, and Jusco Balakong, and then my wife broke her waterbag, which resulting the birth of our first baby. Our weekend lifestyle was cost us a fortune. The upkeep was hurting our cash flow and we did notice that however, we refuse to change our lifestyle. We loved it. Ok, Let me do the math.
Calculation of Weekend Outing.
Shopping Items = RM50
Lunch and Dinner x 3 [MacDonald, Nandos, everything fast food]= RM50
Petrol + Toll + Parking Fee + Others = RM30
Total = RM 130
2.5 years = 52 weeks + 52 weeks + 26 weeks = 130 week X 130 = RM16,900
The outing had been going on about 2 and a half years which the accumulated expenses was RM16,900. The outing kept going on and on, until my wife pregnant a new baby and the purchasing of a new house. That two occurrence changed our lifestyle. Consequently, we need extra savings to pool our money, gather up 10% of purchasing value to pay deposit as well as money for maternity bill and expenses. To do that we have to stay home without going anywhere on weekend. The disposal of the family outing activity seemed necessary because it consumed our money, but we had replace our weekend with something that paid our interest. And that was Nintendo Wii.
How long this Nintendo enthusiasm last? I ask myself. Someday this toy will be abandoned. Just like we did to Dance Dance Revolution Game. But I think it may last up to three years. I hope this console will help me to save me more money in future.
Nintendo Wii saved My Petrol Usage
There I just said it, Wii Nintendo saved my petrol usage. Playing Wii made me forget about outside world, that can make my money gone in a blink or in a fraction of seconds. Instead of collecting 90 kilometers on Saturday and Sunday, wasting my time to visit such popular malls like Midvalley, The Curve, Ikea, and KLCC, I play with Amirul by Wiimote in my hand; swinging, batting, tilting, and cooking. The Wiimote that can detect detailed movement in three dimension, gave us gaming addict which we could play Wii all day long without rest. But the price of the console is quite expensive. It was RM1299 including two Wiimote and Nunchuck plus 10 DVD games, bought it at The Curve after listening recommendation from my brother and several trusted friends, who told me that it was the cheapest price in KL.
It’s a huge expense for me. RM1299. I never bought a gaming console which cost that much. If I transformed that money into petrol RON95, I could enjoy filing petrol until full to my Saga fuel tank about 26 times. But I feel no guilty or regret buying that console because I thought as if it was an investment and it would give you returns in future but not in form of money.
My wife and I love to outing at several interesting places on weekend, mostly at shopping Mall. Midvalley or The Curve, if we got bored, we pushed our fuel pedal to KLCC. Weekend outing was our hobby. Our obligatory activity. I remember when my wife still carrying Amirul inside her womb, we went to three different places; Sunway Pyramid Mall, The Mines, and Jusco Balakong, and then my wife broke her waterbag, which resulting the birth of our first baby. Our weekend lifestyle was cost us a fortune. The upkeep was hurting our cash flow and we did notice that however, we refuse to change our lifestyle. We loved it. Ok, Let me do the math.
Calculation of Weekend Outing.
Shopping Items = RM50
Lunch and Dinner x 3 [MacDonald, Nandos, everything fast food]= RM50
Petrol + Toll + Parking Fee + Others = RM30
Total = RM 130
2.5 years = 52 weeks + 52 weeks + 26 weeks = 130 week X 130 = RM16,900
The outing had been going on about 2 and a half years which the accumulated expenses was RM16,900. The outing kept going on and on, until my wife pregnant a new baby and the purchasing of a new house. That two occurrence changed our lifestyle. Consequently, we need extra savings to pool our money, gather up 10% of purchasing value to pay deposit as well as money for maternity bill and expenses. To do that we have to stay home without going anywhere on weekend. The disposal of the family outing activity seemed necessary because it consumed our money, but we had replace our weekend with something that paid our interest. And that was Nintendo Wii.
How long this Nintendo enthusiasm last? I ask myself. Someday this toy will be abandoned. Just like we did to Dance Dance Revolution Game. But I think it may last up to three years. I hope this console will help me to save me more money in future.
Your Money And Family: Insurance
photo by: tim heffernan
For fathers out there, you have to do the right thing, the very important decision when you were gifted with a child; Buy insurance.
Insurance is essential part of a family need. To live your life without coverage is like putting your family heart line on jeopardy, purposely. Since I have major in International Banking and I know what is insurance and its importance. (It was one of my major subject with 3-hour credit and of course, with an extremely lack of concentration and a deficiency of motivation, I had been rewarded a C grade)
Why I buy insurance?
Our life has its risk that we should look into that risk and manage it. That’s why insurance existed; to transfer the risk of a loss into something like guaranteed money.
When Amirul reached year 1, I still have not decided to buy insurance for our family because [1] I didn’t see insurance as a need at that moment. In fact, it’s really important to buy insurance especially Life Insurance when you have dependencies below you. Well, I guess I was not thinking straight that time. Plus, [2] I really hate the insurance agents (I just couldn’t get them out of my mind). I know very well about insurance like the back of my hand, but I have intolerable hatred against insurance agents.
Every time I see their eyes, I see my money. In my opinion, they are not sincerely helping me for choosing the right insurance for me, they just want my money. They’re so eager to share, grab my arm like a desperate beggar and promote how nice and attractive the coverage your family will get if you buy our insurance, or how small a monthly premium you have to commit, yet you get a large coverage which you can’t believe you eyes.
And then after a while, it was clear to me that I put my family life in danger if unpredictable accident happened to me. So I decided to give up my hatred and leveled with the agent. They are a few things that I have to stick up with my decision and I swore I would not let the insurance agents blackened my decisions:
#1 Buy Life Insurance For Me and My Wife, not for Amirul.
Life insurance is designated for providing a temporary income for beneficiaries. If something not good happened to my wife and I, Amirul should enjoy that privileges, a temporary income for him for several calculated years. Since Amirul is a toddler who has no son or dependencies, we decided not to buy life insurance for him. Are we really need extra income if something bad happened to Amirul? It’s like making a profit out of our misery. Pathetic and bad idea.
#2 Buy College Fund For Amirul, Which Has Critical Illness Coverage.
We decided to buy college fund that has covered critical illness. At least the risk of Amirul being attacked by major illness, reduced with a transfer of guaranteed money. We have a definite relief and if something happened regarding with Amirul’s health, with the help of insurance money, we were able to nail down the ever-increasing cost of medical expenses.
As I mentioned above, we cannot making profit out of our miserable life. It’s unethical. We should not treat insurance as revenue. The insurance agent, who never be on your side, will persuade you and turn you into believing that the insurance is really the profit maker. When you stuck with dead end, you should get help from someone with a neutral ground. A financial consultant. Or someone you know who equipped with sound financial knowledge.
Remember this; the reality in Malaysia is quite different with other developed countries like United States, where you can trust and make your insurance agent work for you like magic. The insurance agent is not your real financial consultant. When they talk, babble, and persuade to their prospects, there is only one main objective to pursue; to gain commission percentage which directly leads to company’s profit increase. –And there are no free 2010 diaries for both of us from them. Ahh, God! I really hate our insurance agent.
Arm yourself with proper knowledge about insurance will help you making a decision. [via alphamom].
Your Money And Family: Insurance
photo by: tim heffernan
For fathers out there, you have to do the right thing, the very important decision when you were gifted with a child; Buy insurance.
Insurance is essential part of a family need. To live your life without coverage is like putting your family heart line on jeopardy, purposely. Since I have major in International Banking and I know what is insurance and its importance. (It was one of my major subject with 3-hour credit and of course, with an extremely lack of concentration and a deficiency of motivation, I had been rewarded a C grade)
Why I buy insurance?
Our life has its risk that we should look into that risk and manage it. That’s why insurance existed; to transfer the risk of a loss into something like guaranteed money.
When Amirul reached year 1, I still have not decided to buy insurance for our family because [1] I didn’t see insurance as a need at that moment. In fact, it’s really important to buy insurance especially Life Insurance when you have dependencies below you. Well, I guess I was not thinking straight that time. Plus, [2] I really hate the insurance agents (I just couldn’t get them out of my mind). I know very well about insurance like the back of my hand, but I have intolerable hatred against insurance agents.
Every time I see their eyes, I see my money. In my opinion, they are not sincerely helping me for choosing the right insurance for me, they just want my money. They’re so eager to share, grab my arm like a desperate beggar and promote how nice and attractive the coverage your family will get if you buy our insurance, or how small a monthly premium you have to commit, yet you get a large coverage which you can’t believe you eyes.
And then after a while, it was clear to me that I put my family life in danger if unpredictable accident happened to me. So I decided to give up my hatred and leveled with the agent. They are a few things that I have to stick up with my decision and I swore I would not let the insurance agents blackened my decisions:
#1 Buy Life Insurance For Me and My Wife, not for Amirul.
Life insurance is designated for providing a temporary income for beneficiaries. If something not good happened to my wife and I, Amirul should enjoy that privileges, a temporary income for him for several calculated years. Since Amirul is a toddler who has no son or dependencies, we decided not to buy life insurance for him. Are we really need extra income if something bad happened to Amirul? It’s like making a profit out of our misery. Pathetic and bad idea.
#2 Buy College Fund For Amirul, Which Has Critical Illness Coverage.
We decided to buy college fund that has covered critical illness. At least the risk of Amirul being attacked by major illness, reduced with a transfer of guaranteed money. We have a definite relief and if something happened regarding with Amirul’s health, with the help of insurance money, we were able to nail down the ever-increasing cost of medical expenses.
As I mentioned above, we cannot making profit out of our miserable life. It’s unethical. We should not treat insurance as revenue. The insurance agent, who never be on your side, will persuade you and turn you into believing that the insurance is really the profit maker. When you stuck with dead end, you should get help from someone with a neutral ground. A financial consultant. Or someone you know who equipped with sound financial knowledge.
Remember this; the reality in Malaysia is quite different with other developed countries like United States, where you can trust and make your insurance agent work for you like magic. The insurance agent is not your real financial consultant. When they talk, babble, and persuade to their prospects, there is only one main objective to pursue; to gain commission percentage which directly leads to company’s profit increase. –And there are no free 2010 diaries for both of us from them. Ahh, God! I really hate our insurance agent.
Arm yourself with proper knowledge about insurance will help you making a decision. [via alphamom].
Your Money and Family: How Cloth Diaper saves your money
My family chose cloth diaper over disposable diaper because it saves us about RM1,809 in 3 years. It has been 2 years since we’re using cloth diapers on Amirul. We only spend RM30 on disposable diapers every month for Amirul when he’s at babysitter’s house.
Amirul never complains about cloth diapers since the cloth diaper comfort him in every way, even when he plays at playground, plus the cloth diapers have attractive colors which he feels so good when he’s wearing it. Did I ever tell you about how Amirul keep on smiling every time when wears Spongebob Cloth Diaper? Oh, the sweetest thing.
The cloth diaper never fail us.
Sure it really gave us real disappointment when it leaked every 2 nights at first. We had to change our bedsheets very often and we thought we did the right way. We blamed the cloth diapers, cursing when it happened because the cloth diaper didn’t do any good to us or our kid.
Yes, we were ignorant.
We knew nothing about how to wear cloth diaper the right way. Until we learned it from Suraya from Lunatots at Sara 2nd Birthday Bash at SaraKids Outlet at Shah Alam. Since then, Amirul sleeps comfortably with smile in his face every night. It really gives us a big relief in economical ways, so we can channel RM1,809 to Amirul Higher Education Fund.
Here’s our blog post about cloth diapers.
The Advantages of Cloth Diapers
What is cloth diapers
#2. Cloth Diapers for Dummies
#2. Cloth Diapers for Dummies
Our Stories
Although we love so much about cloth diaper, I almost fainted when I was told that we need RM1500++ to buy the cloth diapers. It’s a lot of money for the people like me and I was hesitated to withdraw the money from our savings. I kept telling to myself that this is an investment that promises you a high return. It worths every Ringgit.
Your Money and Family: How Cloth Diaper saves your money
My family chose cloth diaper over disposable diaper because it saves us about RM1,809 in 3 years. It has been 2 years since we’re using cloth diapers on Amirul. We only spend RM30 on disposable diapers every month for Amirul when he’s at babysitter’s house.
Amirul never complains about cloth diapers since the cloth diaper comfort him in every way, even when he plays at playground, plus the cloth diapers have attractive colors which he feels so good when he’s wearing it. Did I ever tell you about how Amirul keep on smiling every time when wears Spongebob Cloth Diaper? Oh, the sweetest thing.
The cloth diaper never fail us.
Sure it really gave us real disappointment when it leaked every 2 nights at first. We had to change our bedsheets very often and we thought we did the right way. We blamed the cloth diapers, cursing when it happened because the cloth diaper didn’t do any good to us or our kid.
Yes, we were ignorant.
We knew nothing about how to wear cloth diaper the right way. Until we learned it from Suraya from Lunatots at Sara 2nd Birthday Bash at SaraKids Outlet at Shah Alam. Since then, Amirul sleeps comfortably with smile in his face every night. It really gives us a big relief in economical ways, so we can channel RM1,809 to Amirul Higher Education Fund.
Here’s our blog post about cloth diapers.
The Advantages of Cloth Diapers
What is cloth diapers
#2. Cloth Diapers for Dummies
#2. Cloth Diapers for Dummies
Our Stories
Although we love so much about cloth diaper, I almost fainted when I was told that we need RM1500++ to buy the cloth diapers. It’s a lot of money for the people like me and I was hesitated to withdraw the money from our savings. I kept telling to myself that this is an investment that promises you a high return. It worths every Ringgit.
Your Money And Family: Hiring A Maid
There are two core tasks that functioning the jobs of housewives; (a) Daily Chorus: House cleaning and cooking and; (b) Look after the children such as babysitting the children as well as nurturing them a proper education while they at baby and toddler stage.
Both (a) and (b) are important to maintain at satisfaction level, my opinion is tendency to task (b) especially on education needs because good kids come from the good care of their parent or their guardians.
A trash compactor robot. A good candidate for housemaid
For instance, my friend who has 3 children, hired a housemaid to do only house cleaning, cooking, and clothes chores. Therefore, my friend’s wife responsibility is to focus on the children; give full attention to them, feed them with love and affections, and nurture them with education and learning. In other way, you can save tadika or kinder garden school fees and other supplementary lesson such as Little Caliph and Q-Dees.
That’s what every mum should do and we all wish to do that for our children, what becomes a barrier is our money.
Some of us can afford their daily expenses and manage to get some money for savings at the end of the month solely by husband’s or wife’s salary. But most of us cannot, so both spouse are forced to work to get more money and better savings.
Cost of Hiring a Maid
Initial or One-off payment: RM5000. (The cost may deductible from housemaid wages)
A Maid Wages plus renewal of permit and medical fitness for one year: RM 8000 (assuming that a maid wages is RM500/month)
Looking at Maid; from the perspective of money.
Hiring a maid reduces a lot of daily chores responsibility especially for working mother or mummy like my wife, because that tasks are delegated to maid. A lot of advantages for a big family who has 3 – 4 toddlers need to be taking care of, because the cost of Taska or daycare service is ranging from RM200 to RM300 per month for one child. My wife and I are planning to have maximum of four kids in our family. So the cost may occurs about RM1200 per per month. That’s RM 14,400 per year. Comparing between maid and Taska, there is difference amounting of RM6400 per year. Wow, what an advantage having a maid! that’s what I said, when I did the math.
Looking at Maid; from the perspective of productivity.
Mummy can do the relaxation activity after battling the boss or colleague at work and let the stress fly away. Because the maid will do the dinner. Mummy can watch her favorite TV Show Desperate Housewives while monitoring the maid bathing for Amirul. Mummy can concentrate on her favorite activity such as blogging because the maid do the housekeeping and drying clothes.
So mummy’s productivity is zero. All mummy has to do is sit back and relax. Let’s maid do all the work. That is great because mummy will not having a headache anymore to do a lot of things. She can concentrate on her work, so that her productivity at office will relatively increase.
Hiring a maid is sucks, we don’t believe in it. Regardless the advantages and goodness of hiring a maid, my wife and I don’t buy the idea. My wife will never say yes if I suggest to hire a maid.
“not even a thousand light years” or “you want to amirul to be like this” or “are you questioning about my competency as a good wife? Hey listen, I’m a supermum!!”. These are the answers every time I bring the subject to our conversation.
For good reasons, I agreed with her.
Reason#1 : We can do exercise.
And burn our calories by housekeeping, drying clothes, cooking and other housekeeping. I realized it makes sense because we don’t enough time for ourselves to exercise. By the time we reach home, it already 7.00 o’clock. Housekeeping and cooking are only activities we have.
Reason#2 : Maid don’t have ability to take of our children.
Fair enough and totally agree with that. My wife don’t have a confidence in maid to look after our offspring. If we have to bear the cost of daycare (Taska) or babysitter, then we have do to it. Our beliefs is beyond our money.
Reason#3: Another human living in our house.
My wife didn’t like the idea of a stranger living under one roof with us. Because she works for us, we have to give one room for her and share our utilities. She knew where our valuable items, keys to every door, and our routines. My wife just don’t trust someone who connected to us on that basis and live in our house.
With bad news about maid’s child abuse (amah/orang gaji) spreading all over Malaysia, To reduce my wife’s burden, I offered myself to assist her in doing daily chores. Tasks were delegated and I have to washing the dishes, cooking every Thursdays and Fridays, drying some of the clothes, cleaning the outside, do the groceries and other tasks which I can’t remember right now. But someday I guess, we will desperately need a help from a maid if things weren’t work well, which was agreed by my wife. But we will try as hard as we can to seek a part-time maid without her to live in our house, more like a domestic helper.