Sketches of Life|Life Lived in Simplicity

Do you know who is the source of our blessings and prosperity? God is the source of our blessings and prosperity and we are the river where God’s blessings flow through. Once the blessings start to flow, you can even own restaurants lehigh valley. Can I hear an “Amen” to that?

We are exercising our faith right now. And we are very excited to see how God works through us. He has blessed everyone of us who put our trust in Him. It is up to us to claim His blessings.

Listen to Andrew Wommack’s teaching and you will understand what I am talking about.

God has been very good to us. Again He is our Jehovah Jireh. As you all know that my girls are taking piano lesson and their teacher informed us that we need to get them a piano for them to practice at home. She can even help us to get one on installment. We can’t afford to pay the down payment for a used car, what more for a piano. We told our children, for the time being to be contented with just a battery operated keyboard and pray, in due time God will bless them with a real piano.

Just last month, my girls told us that they can no longer practice on their 54 keys keyboard. Not enough keys! I told hubby about it and knowing our financial situation, I agreed with hubby when he told his children to imagine the keys are there when they practice.

God saw and God bless! My eldest BIL recently moved to the city from living in an estate bungalow. He decided to give away his old acoustic piano because it is big and heavy. He offered it to us and we said “Yes!” immediately. We need only pay for the transportation cost. Isn’t God good! From spending RM5-7k, we need only come out less than RM500.

Next in our prayer list is an 8 seaters or more MPV. The mpk mini laptop keyboard, maybe later if my children decided to study music production. Anyone wanna give away their MPV?

The Government said that one person can only hold 2 credit cards. I have 3! One of it is a forced to have when I applied for my homeloan. In the first place, I thought I have to hold on to that card as long as I still owe the bank but that is not deal after checking with the homeloan officer recently. Thank God! If not I will have to use the card for another 9 years! So, I know which card to cancel but I have to transfer my affordable term life insurance and my children’s education insurance to the other card.

One of my cousins wanted to study medicine but she did not get 4.0 in the recent STPM result. For a Malaysian Chinese, if you don’t get straight As, don’t hope to get any place in the local university to study medicine. Next option is to study in private medical colleges and that will cost quarter of a million ringgit for a degree. Thanks to Russia, you can study medicine for half the price and that is where my cousin is going in 5 months time; self sponsored though. I heard that she is going to use hers and her sibling’s education insurance to realise her dream of becoming a Pediatrician. That’s a good way since 2 of her siblings got full government scholarship studying in the local university here. If any of my children wants to study medicine, I don’t think their education insurance is enough to cover all the expenses, not even the wholesale life insurance that I got for myself. We need to sell our apartment then only can afford.

Thanks for the post, Nora Howe

I used to be a real estate broker, but I had to get another job when the real estate market crashed in 2008 I hadn’t sold a house in six months when I decided it was time to call it quits. I went from working for myself and making about $100,000 per year, to working in a cubicle and making $35,000. When I found my current job I felt lucky to have an income since things were getting so bad. Even though I was working, the kids and I had to get cutting back on many luxuries we were used to. It killed me when I had to sell our home and move into an apartment. The kids didn’t mind that so much, but they did mind that I could no longer afford to have cable TV. Once I got back on my feet and saved a little, getting that back for them was one of the first things on my agenda. I decided to get Directv through tvbydirect and the kids were so excited. I surprised them right before Christmas, and they were definitely happy with that gift!

Ever since hubby told me to really consider homeschooling our children by next year, I have been Googling about homeschooling programme, talked to my SIL who homeschool her 5 children, talked to her children about what they have learned, got some AOP books from my aunt who homeschool both her children, took a look at ACE workbooks and met with a mother who just started homeschool this year using the Sonlight and Noeo Science curriculum.

Meeting with some of these mothers motivated me to start homeschooling as soon as we could. But finance is the obstacle now. We need time to raise up the fund for it. We weren’t prepared earlier for homeschooling so we did not have any education saving for our children.

We wanted them to go through what we went through; government school then to local university with scholarship or government loan. We need not save for their education cost, just like how we got our degree.

Unfortunately, due to the deterioration of Malaysian education standard, we see the need to homeschool our children. We see the need to put character first before academic excellence in which the government school does not emphasize.

We are praying that God will bless us with more than enough to finance our children homeschooling needs.

It looks like I am not the only one declaring this year of the dragon to be a frugal year. My reasons for being more frugal this year is because there will be another addition to our family soon. Meaning more mouth to feed, more body to cloth and more books to buy. Talking about books, am actually looking at ereader reviews to see whether it can help me save more money than buying the physical books.

Apart from that, hubby plans to do a complete upgrade to his CC which will cost him at least 15k. Well, we need money to make more money. The business has been running for 5 years and it is high time we do some upgrading before the customers hop over to newer CC.

With the additional family member soon and the ruling that requires all passenger in the car to wear seat belt, we have to get an 8 seater vehicle sooner or later. We need to save for that too.

And we also plan to homeschool our children by 2013 which means we need USD! Time to save my Paypal money; no more buying things online. Hmm…maybe one more batch of cloth diapers.

And my children are growing up FAST! They eat more now. Less eating out then.

Oh no! It is the time of the year again. Not school holiday, not my birthday, not hubby’s birthday and not Christmas too. While all those requires money. This one requires more money! It is the time to renewal insurance policy. sop, sop, sop. There’s medical insurance, life insurance, education insurance, rv insurance etc. Thank God my cars insurance is somewhere in the middle of the year if not. No Christmas gift for anyone every year.

I thought once you are declared bankrupt you do not have to pay anymore debt. Well, I just came to know last Sunday that a bankrupt person has to pay RM50/month as long as he has income that is being bank-in into his account. The bank will automatically deduct his account balance every month. This saves the collection agency the trouble of chasing the bankrupt person for that RM50 every month. I heard from hubby that this will go on for 15-20 years!

Thanks to Wm Rowe

Today I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition and they were airing one of their stories about the debt crisis. I feel like NPR is taking over my brain, and they have really come to shape my understanding of our nation’s financial crisis. I have not lost my job or been significantly set back by the debt crisis, but constantly hearing about the effects of the debt crisis on our nation as a whole and on other’s people’s lives have really gotten me in mindset that I need to be spending as little money as possible. I decided that I needed to examine every aspect of my life and manage my spending as much as possible. I decided that one easy place to start saving was on internet. I went online and did some research and came across http://www.satelliteinternetbroadband.com/hughesnet/Arizona/M/Maricopa/. I found that I could get the internet I was used to for a better price and wouldn’t have to even pay for installation. I went ahead and signed up, and I honestly was proud of myself for beginning to take proactive steps to better manage my money.