Loan for Business

The fish are coming in but my net is not big enough to catch them. I need to get a bigger net or else, I'll lose the fish to other fisherman. But I do not have money now to buy a bigger net. I can wait a month or two to save from my income but in a month or two, someone else could have catch those fish. So, I resorted to borrowing from my dad. With his money, I am able to purchase 5 more used computers which is good enough for gaming. can't afford to buy new computers yet but the day will come when it can be done. :)

Low Sales in December

In a cyber cafe business, we do not look forward for school holidays. Most people thought that we will have lots of gamers during the school holiday but they are wrong. During school holidays, they do not have pocket money for them to spend and also no homework or assignments to print. There goes our sales. Unfortunately, December is also a month where we spend a lot. Birthdays, family vacation, Christmas and back to school preparation. As of today, we are totally broke. Looking forward to next year for more blessings from Above. :)

Car Repair Cost

Let me tell you how much is the cost for the car repair. It is a whopping RM755! We never pay this much for a repair. We did pay for more than 1k but that was to change the whole engine and repaint my car to metallic silver. I almost choke my rice when hubby told me the repair cost. I see arh, the mechanic arh, just did trial and error only. Change this part, RM200...still cannot start. Change another part, RM200...still cannot start and then change another part, RM200...arh...can start. Those previous changed cannot undo/remove coz bought already mah. Yup, the mechanic buys the part as and when he wants to use it. Thanks to his "expertise" we have to pay RM755 for something that would just cost RM200. :(

Force Saving

Buying a car on credit is a force saving. If you want to save then buy a car in cash, in will never happen. Try your best to cut down expenses so that you can buy a car. Those are the words of advise uttered by my BILs. As much as I want to own a bigger and newer car, we just can't afford one yet. There is no way in cutting down our expenses. We are living on the minimum budget. I have reduced buying disposable diapers by cloth diapering my babies and saved on milk powder by fully breastfeeding my babies till they turn 2yo. We reduced on petrol by riding motorbike work (hubby). We buy small fish and once in a while chicken when the price is cheap. I hardly buy new clothes for my children because we received quite a lot of hand-me-downs clothing. I only go shopping for groceries. We do not have Astro and hardly watch TV at home. We hardly dine outside except on Sunday for lunch with a budget of less than RM30 for the whole family. Oh ya! With all those, we still do not have extra for saving. Sometimes we do not have enough to cover for our minimum monthly expenses. But God has been good, we never starve before. It is easier to force yourself to save if you have a fix income. When I was still working, I can budget my income every month to the last cents. I have savings. Once I resigned and depends on hubby's business income, I still have budget, that is as mentioned above. To spend as minimal as possible. Well, we believe, in due time God will help us fulfill our desire to won a bigger and newer car. He has never fail us before.

Preparing my mind for a simple and cheap birthday meal

This year we are extra tight financially especially towards the end of the year where the rainy season is here. Rain is no good for our business. Rain is no good for my birthday too. :( Knowing our financial status, I cannot ask for anything expensive. No wasting money for non essential stuff like facial therapy or foot reflexology which I used to get on my birthday in the previous years. I love beef especially beef steak. I did not have it on my last birthday. I think we were short of cash also then. I wanted to dine in a fine restaurant this year and have my beef steak (no money issue set aside, spend first, worry about money later :P) BUT hubby has to work on my birthday till after dinner time. Okay lar, I shall forgo my craving for beef steak. Not pregnant so no reason to fulfill that craving. I will ask for birthday supper then...2 pieces of roti canai kosong with a glass of teh tarik. No need to hear hubby grumble about the meal price after paying. :P Most importantly, it is the thought that counts and the company I'm with on my birthday. :D

When can I buy gold again?

When I started investing in gold, it was only about RM90++ per gram. That was the price in 2008, 4 years ago. As of today, the gold price is at RM170++ per gram. That is about 88% increased in 4 years time. I am sure those who read this will think that I am rich already. I am not coz, I sold most of them when we are short of cash. Too bad. If not I "fatt-tatt" now. The price of gold is quite high now. Even if I have some extra cash now, I won't buy. Waiting for the price to go lower than RM170. Will it?

How To Help a Poor Family

One of my church friends told me that she has been feeding her children fried eggs for the past 3 weeks. I really pity them. Her husband is a bankruptcy, working 2 jobs which pays very low for a family of 6. The first thing that came to my mind was I want to go groceries shopping to buy for them some veggie, fish and chicken. I will not use hubby's hard earn income, I will use the money I earned from Google Adsense, my emergency savings. I told hubby about my idea. He is against it! Which is not surprising. He asked, how long are you going to support them that way? It can't be just a one time thing. He suggested to help them earn more income for their family by giving them capital to start a food stall which my friend is good at if she has the capital. Let them generate their own income. Good idea. I will discuss about this with her this coming Sunday. :D

Very Minimal Profit

Last Sunday my family and I had lunch at hubby's internet cafe because he has some end of the month account that he needs to settle. So, I packed Nasi Lemak before church and went to his shop right after church. I got the chance to look into his income and expenses worksheet. To my surprise, his profit is very minimum; not enough for our minimum monthly expenses. His salary derives from the profit. There is a month where his profit is below RM50! And he never once told me about it. Now I know why during those "low income" month, we have to sell our gold to pay for our credit cards bill. He just told me that he do not have enough cash to roll. Arghhh! This makes me want to go back to work and earn my RM3k salary every month. But I can't. :( I have 6 kids now and the youngest is only 5mo. :(:(

What Do You Want To Eat?

One of the toughest questions for me to answer is when hubby asked me "What do you want to eat?" Why? I have expensive taste in food. Expensive to hubby but not to me coz I use to earn my own moolah and spending my money to eat food that I like which is quite pricey. So, when hubby asked me "What do you want to eat?" The food that comes to my mind are Beef steak, steamboat, Korean BBQ, Cheese Lobster with Beehoon, Chicken Mozzarella, Fish n Chips, Chicken Chop or even McD. Then really strikes, hubby is the one who is going to pay for the meal. So, I have to change channel to hawker stall's food. Sucks right? :( How I wish I am still earning more than 2k/mth again.

Financial Freedom = No freedom in Spending

To have financial freedom is to be free from any type of loans. We are heading towards that direction and it sucks, I tell you. Our family has expanded to 8 now but we still can't afford to buy a bigger vehicle, let it be an MPV or even a van. Because if we wanna follow the financial freedom rules...no loan, pay in cash! So we are stuck with our 2 old junks, in which one of them cannot start when the weather is cold, even after repair! My camera has broke down but hubby don't allow me to buy a new one because he needs to pay up his business loan first. Looks like my youngest baby won't have many baby picture. :( And I personally can't have the luxury of eating my favorite food. :(

Postponing Fullmoon Celebration

After I gave birth to my 6th child, we decided to have a fullmoon celebration since he is our last. Since MIL was not around on the day he turns 1 month old, we decided to postpone till MIL is back with us, that will be when he is already 2 months old. When he turned 2 months old, I am still not fit and I don't think I can cope with the food preparation and clean up so we decided to postpone the celebration till he turns 1 year old. Furthermore, we are on a very tight budget this month because hubby just upgraded his computers which cost more than 10k.

RM100/month to help banker brother

It is very tough to work as a banker these days. Even though you are not in the sales department, you still have to do some sales like credit card and insurance. If you don't meet the quota, either you will be demoted or terminated. That bad, huh?! This is what one of my BILs is facing right now. Since I stopped working, we dare not commit to buying any insurance. As and when we have some extra money, we will invest in gold for our future. But when the BIL came to us and plead our help, we have no choice but to help him and buy the insurance for our youngest at RM100/month. Thank God after 3 years, we can get back 50% of the amount paid and most probably we will cancel the policy by then.

Newborn Blessings

My newborn received another angpow today from the church we are attending. 2 of the full time church staff came to visit us just now. Thank God for the angpows received thus far. We are able to pay for my confinement food, petrol for my dad for sending and fetching my children to/from school and my mom's allowance for taking care of my 5 children 24/7! We still have a lil bit extra and we are going to bless our family members, church members and friends by having a simple fullmoon celebration this coming school holiday.

Save Money by not celebrating Anniversaries

Yesterday was our 11th Marriage Anniversary. We did not celebrate it like we usually do in the past years. Hubby opt work at his other CC so that his partner can go make more money with his other personal project. Of all the days, hubby chose to work on this day and the whole day and night for this instance. I wonder whether he purposely plan it this way so that he can escape spending money celebrating our anniversary. He has been very thrifty with his money lately. What to do, financial blessing has not been on our side lately. My plan to buy one of those Credit Card rfid blocking sleeves has to be postponed. Anyway, I hope that is not the real reason he does not want to celebrate this year's marriage anniversary.

Piano Class at only RM80 for 2 hours a week

We are so blessed to have a church member that offers private piano lesson. She even charges lower than the market rate. The normal rate is around RM80 for 45mins only. As for us, she is charging only RM80 for 2 hours; 1 hour per day. She told us that since they are small, she worried that they will forget if the lesson is once a week. I am not so sure how long we will get this gracious offer from her. As it is, we praise God for His blessing. :D

How To Save Money from Breakfast

Do you realise that breakfast is quite costly? Especially the Chinese breakfast. A plate of Chicken Rice is RM3.50, Wantan Mee is RM3.00 and even the plain fried noodle with taugeh only cost RM2.00. The Malay breakfast is cheaper. You can still get Nasi Lemak for RM1.00 and Roti Canai for RM0.80/piece BUT you have to buy 2 each to get the same value as those Chinese Breakfast. The cheapest is buy a loaf of bread and eat them with jam and butter. Takkan wanna eat sliced bread every day. There is another cheapest breakfast in town. This has been the breakfast for the poor and those with many children - LEMPENG. My MIL used to feed her 11 children lempeng every day for breakfast and now I am doing the same but not every day lar. Buy a kilo of flour at RM1.35; you can make more than 10 pcs of lempeng. I'll share how to make lempeng in my next post. ;)

Being Thrifty

Being thrifty is one of my New Year's resolutions. We are going to be a family of 8 and our expenses will increase further. Last year, every month is cukup-cukup makan and a few months we do not have enough income to cover all our expenses. Next year, our expenses will reduced slightly because we do not hire anymore maid and we have stopped sending our son to the private kindergarten. We will try to reduce on eating out because, 2 kids no longer share a plate of food. My 3 older children can finish a plate of noodle or rice all by themselves and also a waffle each after the meal! We will have a newborn by April but that won't be much of an additional cost because he/she will be fully breastfed and will be on cloth diapers too. I guess, we will only feel the pinch in 2013. That will be the year we plan to homeschool our girls. I am not so sure whether it will help reduce our monthly expenses or not. Homeschooling means I'll be paying for the textbook and workbook; in USD some more! Now, all is provided by the government. Whatever it is, this year I must learn to be more thrifty so that I can help hubby save for our children's education.

Need Extra Cash for CNY

Christmas is over. So does our budget. Due to the recent family gathering, we have spent the amount that we would usually spend for CNY. Now, we need to find extra cash to cover that up. If not, we might need to owe the credit card company again. :( Selling teflon hose can be a good idea but I do not have the time to drive from factory to factory to promote my product. Hubby is asking me to take order for pineapple tarts and start sewing bags again if there is an order. I am not so sure whether my back will allow me to sit for long hours. Even now, I am suffering from backache. I can't even carry my 11mo baby without feeling the pain. I pray that God will take away the backache soon. I really need to raise RM500 within a month.

Gear Box Repair

About 2 weeks ago, after sending my sister's kindy maid back to the kindergarten, hubby's car went jammed in the middle of the traffic light. The gear was jammed. Hubby can't even push the car. We hired a tow truck to tow it to the workshop. The repair of the gear box cost us RM550! After driving for a day, the gear is quite tight and hard to "go in". So we sent the car back to the workshop. While fixing it, all of a sudden the car couldn't ignite anymore. Later, we got a call from our mechanic to inform us that the starter is faulty. At the end of the day, we were charged another RM50 for the starter. The gear was smooth though but only for a day. The next day, it went back to square one. Hubby decided not to send back to the mechanic but to just get use to the gear until we have enough money to send the car to another mechanic.

Wealth Management

When we talk about wealth management, do you realise that wealth management is actually for people who has wealth in the first place? If you got no wealth, then there is nothing for to manage right?

I am still waiting for the day when I can actually hire professional like Missoula, MT wealth management group to manage my wealth and make me richer.

I really hope the day will come soon in which I do not have to worry of not having enough money to cover my monthly expenses. It has been 3 years now. Since the day I resigned to become a SAHM. Sometimes, I wish I can go back to work...