When I am driving and an MPV passes by, I often hope that one day, I will drive one too. Not just drive one but own an MPV. As you all know, we are a family of 7 now. Soon, our sedan can no longer fit all of us unless we drive 2 cars when we go out. Knowing our financial status, we can never afford an MPV with the current unpredictable income. I should be grateful with whatever we have and I have made up my mind that we will travel in 2 cars when the children are older. I can drive what; don’t be so pampered lar. 
If we need to travel out of Melaka for a holiday, we will just rent an MPV. It is way cheaper than paying installment of RM1k per month for 7-9 years!
Yesterday, when fetching my 2nd daughter from her piano lesson, my eldest tag along. She took a peek inside the piano teacher’s house. She said, “Wow! Che Che Prisca is so rich, Mommy.” right infront of her and her dad. Yikes! Later in the car, she asked when can we be rich like them. I told her to pray about it. 
She then told me that she wants to study to become a doctor, earn a lot of money, give to mommy and daddy, buy a big house with swimming pool and a nice car. Kids and their dream.
Hubby on the other hand is quite optimist about this. He believes that one day God will bless us and we can afford to buy an MPV. Let’s wait and pray. I’ll tell you when our prayer has been answered.
Really, how to make more money? Especially in the month of February that has 28 days only and Chinese New Year too. This year I make more Angpow money because I have 5 children whereby most families have only 2-3 children. But then the “profit” is still not enough to cover for the 2 days lesser in this month of February and also we closed our business for 2.5 days for CNY.
I can’t help much this month with my sewing due to my confinement period. I have no time to write all the assignments given to me or sell horse tack online. On top of it, my kids’ blog is still suspended and my webhost is no where to be found. 
I want to make more money but I have no time for it. *sigh*
If you are married, you cannot escape from giving Angpow to the children during CNY unless you make yourself disappear when they come to visit lar. hehehe. If you have a few children, whatever you gave will come back to you because your children will receive Angpow too. As for me this year, I have 5 children and most of my relatives do not have many children. At the end of the day, we received tripled the amount we gave. Children are a blessing remember?
Anyway, do you take all your children’s Angpow, bank them into their bank account or buy something special for them? As for me, during previous CNY, all my children’s Angpow money went into their respective bank account. However, not this year though. We used RM300 to buy a new and bigger bicycle for my eldest because hubby often bring her cycling. She has to paddle more with her small bicycle to catch up with her daddy. The rest of the cash went into hubby’s business account because sales was very low this month and we do not have enough to cover for all the expenses incurred.
Sorry children! Daddy promised that when the sales pick up, he will return all your Angpow money. Then you all can buy for Mommy one of the compact digital cameras ok? Mommy need to take better and nicer picture of you all mah.
I just received statement from my apartments. Meaning, we need to send over our cash to them for maintenance fee and also to the home owners insurance companies for the fire insurance.
I don’t like end of the year and beginning of the year lar. Money always flows out more than money flowing in. Birthdays, Christmas, Insurance, Maintenance Fee, Kindy Books, School uniforms and shoes, and last but not least Chinese New Year.
When I was still working, at least I have one month bonus to bear some of those expenses. Now that I am a SAHM, everything has to depend on the business income. Business income for year end is often low and we are praying that January income would be able to “help” us out with all those expenses.
My previous tenant left me with a big sum of outstanding bills in which their deposit can’t cover. Their belonging that we confiscated from the apartment has no resale value. Most of them are spoiled and broken items. If they leave a samsung led, at least that can pay half of the electricity bill. Anyway, we learnt our lesson and monitor the electricity bill of our current tenant closely.
The new tenant is going to breach his contract. He is leaving end of this month instead of next year October. He did not pay last month’s electricity bill amounting more than RM500 and also did not pay this month’s rental. He thinks he can get away with it since we have his deposit. We are not going to give these foreign students any more face this time around. I wrote letter to TNB asking them to cut the electricity supply but that takes like forever for them to do!
So yesterday, hubby went to my apartment and get the apartment management’s help to remove the fuse from the power supply meter box and also cut the water supply. To cut the long story short, that made them pay both the rental and the bills. No more being a nice landlord anymore.
We finally have the green light to start repairing our kitchen roof. Hubby’s siblings have agreed to contribute to the cost of the repair but we will be paying more coz we are staying here. Initially we wanted to do some extension to the wet kitchen so that we can shift the dry kitchen to the wet kitchen so that we can convert that dry kitchen to another bedroom. Yup! 7 rooms in the house is still not enough for all of us! But after the contractor re-quote us, we need additional 2k for the extension which we do not have.
If I have the 2k, I would buy gold already! hehehe. Beginning of this week the gold price dropped slightly compared to the week before. I was looking high and low for some extra cash so that I can grab this opportunity to invest in gold. Thanks to my children’s savings, I managed to buy some gold when the price is low. Just a day after buying, the gold price increased by RM2/g. I make profit already if I sell. But then, the investment is for the future; for their higher education fees.
… we have no more BIG expenses to go after paying the TNB bills. I was thinking that if I have extra love from the advertiser this month, I plan to change my eldest girl’s mattress to better quality mattress; the fibre ones because her sister and brother spilled almost a bottle of Minyak Gamat on her mattress and she can’t stand the oily smell. Since that day, she is sleeping at the corner of her queen size bed to avoid the oily spot.
My plan has to be postponed when hubby told me that one of the air-conds in my apartment cannot be used anymore and we need to replace it. An air-cond plus installation will cost us another 1k! Since we are going to spend 1k for an air-cond that we cannot enjoy (it is for my tenant you see), we are going to throw in another 1k to get a new plasma air-cond that comes with air purifying system and auto clean for our room. The air-cond from our room will be sent to my apartment.
My task for this coming week is to hunt for the plasma air-cond and also credit card that offers 0% interest for a minimum of 12 months repayment. You think I got money to pay cash meh?
We decided to pay TNB in full. According to a blogger mommy, we can bring our case against TNB to consumer court but then we just don’t have the time to go through the hassle. Chances of getting our money back is very slim. A nobody like me against a public listed company?! Better take payday advance loan to pay up the bills. Furthermore, it is partly our fault for not monitoring the bill since TNB already provide the online services.
To those that have not open a gold investment savings account, I really urge you to do so when you have the extra cash or just transfer from your savings account to this gold account. The returns is way, way higher than fix deposit. Don’t believe me, go ask
United States Gold Bureau. Lots of people have invested with them; buying gold bullion, gold coins and even silvers.
I started investing in gold like 3 years ago. At that time, I purchased 1g at a price lower that RM100! The price of gold today is almost reaching RM140/g. Can you imagine how much will I profit if I sell my gold now? But I am not going to do that since those for for my children’s education fund; another 10 more years. I hope the price of gold will continue to increase.
This month we were left with a big “angpow” by my tenant, a foreign MMU student; it was a RM2.5k of unpaid electricity bills and RM50 of water bills (thank God the water bill is under the Apartment’s Management control. They cut the water supply after 3 months no payment from the tenant). The deposit with us is definitely insufficient to pay for the bills.
I wonder why TNB did not cut the electricity supply when no payment was made within that 3 months and the amount exceeded the deposit amount. I still remember when one of my BILs started living with us, our electricity bills shot up from merely RM50++ per month to almost RM200, TNB immediately increased the deposit amount.
I think arh, TNB purposely do that to certain housing area coz they know most are rented properties. So if the tenant does not pay, the landlord have to pay in order for them to rent it out to another tenant. TNB make money mah. Later I found out that there are other landlord that have to pay way much more than me! Almost 50K! TNB sleeping kah? Read it here: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?sec=nation&file=/2010/6/13/nation/6462448.
Due to this incident, I found out that we can actually check our electricity bill online at http://www.tnb.com.my/. First you have to sign up for their e-services than you can see your statement for the last 6 months including the place where payment was made. Am sure gonna monitor closely my apartment’s electricity from this month onwards.
