As much as I love reading books, the hobbies now switch to reading blogs. Reading entertainment magazines is not so entertaining anymore cos blogs gives you juicier story. Oh no need soap opera drama also. All is covered in the blogs. Isn’t that wonderful?
Anyway, last week I read an article from here. Well it’s on economic of love. I couldn’t agree more on her. You see besides investing money, I do invest on love too. Do you know it is more profitable?
When I first met hubby, it was on a financial talk. Yeah he’s on A* MLM and that time we are still in uni. I didn’t know him tho even we are actually a course mate. Until that day…and this friend of mine monitored by him ramblings on A* MLM. Moi of course never believe on such easy money. OK I know MLM need some works, hard work! But the concept for me it’s the same applied if I do any business or even if I do the current job. The key is you like your job and you become expert on it. Furthermore, I don’t feel that is the right things to do. However they manage to convince me to go for their meetings and pay for it, but I get even not convinced. So..that is how I first met him.
Hubby is hurm, I don’t know, he claims he is a hot stuff in uni. He’s a computer geek, people thought he is smart, he looks smart tho and he wears socks. Who wears socks during uni time? Most of the time people wears sandals or flip flop. Basically my housemate that time all admire him because he is genius (according to them) and I keep on telling my friend Zir…iewww are you going to get his socks off from him when he’s home later. Thinking that haha he probably will be the guy who’s going to have the wife to do everything for him.
Well few months later….we graduated, we went for a gala dinner and I start to meet him again. Somehow each time I met him, I get this dub dab on my heart. Mind you that time I actually dating someone else . He likes to smile so I guess that make my heart warm or something. I don’t know how, we actually hooked up on ym. Then we start to meet each other. First meet up is with my friend Liza and him. I have a SAP training course in KL. So being me, yeah I love to treat people. We had dinner at Mc D Central Market.
We just love each other company that we meet even often. That time I already driving a decent car (of course my dad’s car but it’s practically mine). He on the other hand still uses his motor kapcai. Usually I will fetch him at his house (see who’s fetching who) and we will go out just spending time talking with each other. Well this guy, even tho I have drove all the way to fetch him, most of the time we will take turn paying the meals or even worse, he will go Dutch with me. All my life this is the first time a guy suggest going Dutch. You know for a girl like me ( being perasan ) this treatment and his motor kapcai doesn’t do much justice. However he has something that other guys don’t have that I don’t mind investing first :) He’s funny, some one that you can talk hours with on most of the topics. Attentive, smart …really smart I feel that time. Such a sweet talker, yeah everything he talks will make sense. Well sometime you just knew it that he’s worth it. So I go on with him. I told him I like him, I have a boyfriend, if you like, marry me. And he said OK. So we get married.
Marriage is where everything you invested is being tested. Yeah he actually was investing on me as well. He’s not really a good listener, but he tried to listen and be attentive to me. Oh he such a grumpy young man haha. The first few years were hard though. We try to give and take. He knows how I dislike on going Dutch. I know that he needs some ‘alone’ time. They are things that he changed for me and I changed for him. They are things that couldn’t be change and we try to adapt to it. And we are still learning to compliment and invest on each other. All these actually helps on our ownself growth, career and family wise. I really am think that where ever we are now and what ever we achieve is because of the investment that we have done in our relationship.
I don’t know if whatever I wrote will make any sense to you. But if you wonder, no I don’t need to take his socks off from him: D.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Boring
Blog hopping can be addictive, so do online shopping. I don’t know what I have been doing for the past few days. No I don’t have any assignment yet so I am a bit free to do what I want. I try to do reading and try the new technologies. But damn it sucks…cos they are nothing much that can motivate me unless I am in a real project. So ya….people keep on telling me enjoy the space that you have. Or few of my friends said “ ada keje pun susah takde keje pun susah” hehe. How true is that! I think have nothing to do is worst than have much thing to do..sigh.
Anyway as hubby away, I keep on making myself busy. I went for shopping last weekend, bought 2 spanking new shoes. No …not nine west hehe. I watch movie last nite….with my sis and bro and I drag my lil boy as well. He sure have fun tho…even like..ma takut …ma jom balik… I also busy trying to arrange for a group outing. Which I didn’t get any respond yet!! Hey….are you guys going or not??? If not I’ll plan for only me and hubby get away. What else…hurm promoting my belibarang website. Yeah …if you plan to buy any kuih raya…goto http://belibarang.com they are some selection of delicious kuih raya. Mind you is a bit pricey. But that is the prices that I get from the supplier. The cookies are nice and the decoration is unique. Try it first :)
They are some good news as well. 2 of my good friends are pregnant!!! How good is that?? I can’t reveal their name yet. But I am damn happy for them. I just get excited when people are pregnant or getting married. Especially thinking about getting pregnant alone can make me happy :)
Hurm what else??? I am bored. HELP.
Anyway as hubby away, I keep on making myself busy. I went for shopping last weekend, bought 2 spanking new shoes. No …not nine west hehe. I watch movie last nite….with my sis and bro and I drag my lil boy as well. He sure have fun tho…even like..ma takut …ma jom balik… I also busy trying to arrange for a group outing. Which I didn’t get any respond yet!! Hey….are you guys going or not??? If not I’ll plan for only me and hubby get away. What else…hurm promoting my belibarang website. Yeah …if you plan to buy any kuih raya…goto http://belibarang.com they are some selection of delicious kuih raya. Mind you is a bit pricey. But that is the prices that I get from the supplier. The cookies are nice and the decoration is unique. Try it first :)
They are some good news as well. 2 of my good friends are pregnant!!! How good is that?? I can’t reveal their name yet. But I am damn happy for them. I just get excited when people are pregnant or getting married. Especially thinking about getting pregnant alone can make me happy :)
Hurm what else??? I am bored. HELP.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Let's do our math
Hubby and I are very obsessed with our financial planning. It’s started when we first get married where we have this sort of simple balance sheet. We put all of our salary/claims/allowances at one side and what need to be paid/save at the other side. We then get the balance that we usually will keep on top of the additional savings that we have. We purchase insurance for ourselves, education insurance plan for the kids, we put some amount in ASB, hubby has been investing towards his company share, I have been investing via unit trust and we also bought a few assets.
The strategy actually does make wonders. Hubby for instance, has a few loans when I am married to him. The major one was his study loan and that has been settled within few years as he is persistently paying the debt every month. They are one other debt, which was not supposed to be bear by him. This is where when in his Uni time he registers the phone under his name. And some bugger has used up the phone up to 5k. End up that he need to bear the cost. He can choose not to pay, but we feel that we need to clear all debts. It will affect us sooner or later….and I personally believe God will bless us with more prosperity if we clear our debt. So he’s been paying faithfully 50 bucks each month and recently he has increased to 100 for each month. They are left for a thousand or so to be settled soon.
Back on the spreadsheet, we have projected on how much the fuel and tolls cost for work travel also weekend outing. We calculate how much do we need to spend for lunches (range), groceries and misc. Those we categorized it under transportation and monthly expenses. When we projected basically we are trying to meet the target. With that, it makes me and hubby carefully plan where we eat and what we spend on. That has reduced tremendously on unnecessary spending. Imagine the impulse to eat at fancy restaurant, drink at starbucks or you know especially for ME, to buy all those shoes, handbags, cute little cloths for the kids, toys and many more. The list could be endless. So how do we manage our lust towards the material and the needs to save for our rainy day?
The spreadsheet basically has become our best guideline on how is our current life situation. For the first few years when we earn peanuts and trying to stabilize, life has been very difficult. I mean base on the calculation, we definitely couldn’t do the little luxury. Remember how I blog about all the difficulties that we had for our first few years.
The anniversary, birthday, we do not celebrate in lush. My kid’s wear if it’s branded it must be a present from someone ;). We go through it, not that we don’t afford to buy or just splurge, we think that saving and investing is more important.
As we growth through our career, we actually increase a little bit of our monthly expense. But of course we increase the savings too. I note that we work hard and we should get the rewards. We do reward ourselves, when we think we are worth to be rewarded. But we don’t over do it.
I just meet my unit trust agent. Doing some calculation on how much saving we need to have for our retirement. Factoring the inflation and all, 5k per mon is where I can just live. 5k is not a lot ya...look at our current goods price, what it will be for the next 20 years? 10k per mon if I want to live comfortably. And factoring that the life span will be longer due to the better finding on our medical, imagine we live until 75 years old. Let’s do the math.
Retire at 55 and we live until 75 (example). 20 years to live.
10k * 12 month * 20 years to live after retirement = 24000000
Can you count how many zeros behind the 24? It’s 2.4 million ok!. Can we achieve that? You do your own math ;).
ps: email me if you want to see how our monthly budget spreadsheet looks like
The strategy actually does make wonders. Hubby for instance, has a few loans when I am married to him. The major one was his study loan and that has been settled within few years as he is persistently paying the debt every month. They are one other debt, which was not supposed to be bear by him. This is where when in his Uni time he registers the phone under his name. And some bugger has used up the phone up to 5k. End up that he need to bear the cost. He can choose not to pay, but we feel that we need to clear all debts. It will affect us sooner or later….and I personally believe God will bless us with more prosperity if we clear our debt. So he’s been paying faithfully 50 bucks each month and recently he has increased to 100 for each month. They are left for a thousand or so to be settled soon.
Back on the spreadsheet, we have projected on how much the fuel and tolls cost for work travel also weekend outing. We calculate how much do we need to spend for lunches (range), groceries and misc. Those we categorized it under transportation and monthly expenses. When we projected basically we are trying to meet the target. With that, it makes me and hubby carefully plan where we eat and what we spend on. That has reduced tremendously on unnecessary spending. Imagine the impulse to eat at fancy restaurant, drink at starbucks or you know especially for ME, to buy all those shoes, handbags, cute little cloths for the kids, toys and many more. The list could be endless. So how do we manage our lust towards the material and the needs to save for our rainy day?
The spreadsheet basically has become our best guideline on how is our current life situation. For the first few years when we earn peanuts and trying to stabilize, life has been very difficult. I mean base on the calculation, we definitely couldn’t do the little luxury. Remember how I blog about all the difficulties that we had for our first few years.
The anniversary, birthday, we do not celebrate in lush. My kid’s wear if it’s branded it must be a present from someone ;). We go through it, not that we don’t afford to buy or just splurge, we think that saving and investing is more important.
As we growth through our career, we actually increase a little bit of our monthly expense. But of course we increase the savings too. I note that we work hard and we should get the rewards. We do reward ourselves, when we think we are worth to be rewarded. But we don’t over do it.
I just meet my unit trust agent. Doing some calculation on how much saving we need to have for our retirement. Factoring the inflation and all, 5k per mon is where I can just live. 5k is not a lot ya...look at our current goods price, what it will be for the next 20 years? 10k per mon if I want to live comfortably. And factoring that the life span will be longer due to the better finding on our medical, imagine we live until 75 years old. Let’s do the math.
Retire at 55 and we live until 75 (example). 20 years to live.
10k * 12 month * 20 years to live after retirement = 24000000
Can you count how many zeros behind the 24? It’s 2.4 million ok!. Can we achieve that? You do your own math ;).
ps: email me if you want to see how our monthly budget spreadsheet looks like
Monday, July 7, 2008
My weekend
Remember I blogged a while ago. On how lucky I am when the kids can sleep by themselves in their own room. Not anymore. Ever since we are back in KL, kids have been sleeping in our room. Eventho they have their own bed. Somehow our bed is nicer than theirs. They will comfortably come over to our bed; even the small one will say ‘naik naik’ and asked me to pull him up.
As hubby is a way, I have put the safety guard on my bed and let both kids sleep with me. But of course I will get a back pain. My two cheeky monkeys don’t know how to sleep still. They will make a 360 degree turn and start to kick me if I don’t make way for them to turn. Last 2 nights they were making sounds and as I open my eyes, one of them is already on top of the others. This morning I told abang that you guys have turn to become a transformer lately during sleeping. Excitedly he asked me, mama nampak ke ?....hehe yeap mama nampak hahahaha. Then both of them start to make their action..dengan tangan2 woosh sana sini. Ok ok…I just have to live with my 2 boys’ action drama.
On the other note, life is a bit boring without hubby. After sending hubbs to the airport on Saturday we went back home and had a little nap. Then we get ready to have our dinner outside cos my mum too lazy to cook. Me cooking? I am naturally lazy haha. We had dinner at Andalas Corner. The food was good but the service was very slow. Just after we finish our dinner, Fawwaz made his own drama. He’s doing his big job and when he does it he wants to go home like now. So he’s been screaming and crying and walking straight out from the restaurant. He just walked by himself and expects us to go with him. So funny I figure, so off we went back home. That night he didn’t sleep well, not sure if he missed his daddy but he is a cranky boy that night.
Sunday, we were lazing around at home. After lunch we all try to get a nap. Abang get pretty boring, he doesn’t really get a nap during day. So he’s been bugging me to go out. Keep on waking me up…ma can we go out. Ma let’s go out…and I keep on saying …10 mins. And he will come back by saying ma dah lama dah ni ….ok ok…I woke up and I’m thinking to bring him to watch movie. As we go out I saw the main road is on a massive traffic jam. Decided not to be part of the jam, so we drove around the kampong area. We stopped by at warung abc, had our abc and quality time chatting with my 4 years boy.
That’s my weekend. How bout yours?
As hubby is a way, I have put the safety guard on my bed and let both kids sleep with me. But of course I will get a back pain. My two cheeky monkeys don’t know how to sleep still. They will make a 360 degree turn and start to kick me if I don’t make way for them to turn. Last 2 nights they were making sounds and as I open my eyes, one of them is already on top of the others. This morning I told abang that you guys have turn to become a transformer lately during sleeping. Excitedly he asked me, mama nampak ke ?....hehe yeap mama nampak hahahaha. Then both of them start to make their action..dengan tangan2 woosh sana sini. Ok ok…I just have to live with my 2 boys’ action drama.
On the other note, life is a bit boring without hubby. After sending hubbs to the airport on Saturday we went back home and had a little nap. Then we get ready to have our dinner outside cos my mum too lazy to cook. Me cooking? I am naturally lazy haha. We had dinner at Andalas Corner. The food was good but the service was very slow. Just after we finish our dinner, Fawwaz made his own drama. He’s doing his big job and when he does it he wants to go home like now. So he’s been screaming and crying and walking straight out from the restaurant. He just walked by himself and expects us to go with him. So funny I figure, so off we went back home. That night he didn’t sleep well, not sure if he missed his daddy but he is a cranky boy that night.
Sunday, we were lazing around at home. After lunch we all try to get a nap. Abang get pretty boring, he doesn’t really get a nap during day. So he’s been bugging me to go out. Keep on waking me up…ma can we go out. Ma let’s go out…and I keep on saying …10 mins. And he will come back by saying ma dah lama dah ni ….ok ok…I woke up and I’m thinking to bring him to watch movie. As we go out I saw the main road is on a massive traffic jam. Decided not to be part of the jam, so we drove around the kampong area. We stopped by at warung abc, had our abc and quality time chatting with my 4 years boy.
That’s my weekend. How bout yours?
Friday, July 4, 2008
Smell the roses
I am no longer in lovey dovey mood. Tell me one thing why we asian people work our ass out and don’t even have a time to take a step back and appreciate our current life.
I recall on the way back from kiwi land a few months ago. We met my father old friend, Uncle Michael. He’s a New Zealander, probably aged around 60 plus but he looks healthy, happy and energetic. We had a long chat with him and he gives us a few piece of advice. One of it he mentioned that in every moment of our life we should take our time to look at our lives and appreciates things that revolved around us. Look at yourself, he said. You are young with two kids, and you have travelled which not everybody got the chance to travel. You still have parents that are healthy and alive that you can love. Just put a pause and remember that how lucky we are and appreciate every moment.
They other thought that comes from him are on young parents with kids. He felt that world is losing the chain. With people refuse to get married early and have kids in their young age. When we have kids at age 35 or even 40, the kids will hardly had a chance to know their grandparents or their grandparent probably too old to play with their grandchildren. Parents will actually provide, nurture them and discipline the kids. But a grandparent is where the child will get to learn about values of life and of course spoilt them. Which I think is true. You see as a parent myself, we are sometimes clueless on how to go with our child. But grandparents always there with a better reasoning teaching them on how to stop and again appreciate their life. As parents you want them to learn, be perfect, be good and so on so forth. My parents will actually take their time to explain in depth, bring my child to do gardening, get to know flowers, grasses, birds, fishes and many more. They can spoilt the kids at one time but they can also be firmed whenever require. Uncle Michael added, and because that we are losing the chain, that is why kids nowadays become what they become. Rude, clueless, no manners, don’t know what to do with their life and many more. They are nobody to ask them to stop and embrace their life and learn the value of life. We as parents are too busy to work to provide them and we also forget to teach them the values!
Last advice that we received is when we commenting on the workmanship of the people and end up to why Asian like to work day and night. I called it work our butts of. Uncle Michael own his company and he thought that people who need extra hours to work is inefficient. They are time where his new employee ask his permission to bring back some of the magazines (relates to work) home so that he can do some reading. Uncle Michael told him tomorrow morning you come to the office and take 1 hour to do his reading. For him if the reading relates to the work and it can make his employee more knowledgeable, do it during working hours. When you are at home, makes time with family and of course for yourself. I wish that every bosses are like that. But maybe most of the bosses or company owners value the work life balance. Just the boss wannabe or employee wannabe crack their butts off to show that they are some goodie or whatever not.
This long post is due to this. Hubby is supposed to go for 3 weeks (that now happened to be 4 weeks actually) outstation. He’s flying out on Saturday and the trip has just been confirmed last monday (within this week). Due to the hectic or must I say poor management, they have to work day and night. Hubby goes out 630 or 730 in the morning and reaches home around 930 or latest by 11 and sometime 12 at night. I have expected this cos KL project with KL people that are very kiasu, you can see people work really late at night. I don’t know maybe these people don’t have life or whatever not but everyday working late? Something must be wrong with you and your personal life. That is my personal comment. So having said that, he has been working his butt off that he forget to smell the roses, today I suppose when you need to fly the following day and expected to work on Sunday cos Dubai works on Sunday. Should it be more human to let the employee to take today off or at least half day at management call? But what I know the management question why should u take half day (not even a day off) since week after next you will be off on Friday (when u in Dubai and Dubai is off on Monday). This bugger let me tell you, next week these people they are no longer at home and their families are way back here. They are people with small children that the child looking forward for weekend to spend time with their parents. So if you thought of sending these people to travel on Saturday itself can you do extra thinking?
Not to mention that this so called big firm that having everything in place, they didn’t allow claiming according to the policy. Instead claim actual. Actual is fine …but imagine actual in food only. And probably taxi. How about phone calls or hotel internet? Cos in the policy this already being stated that claimable. You know, people who have family would like to give a phone call to their family. Is a long distance call mind you and I don’t think we should use our salary for that cos this is actually a business trip. It should be covered and considering you are a big firm and not company cap ayam. And furthermore, from the policy it’s stated that it claimable!. Ok ok I may spilled to much detail but I am frustrated with how things handled here and why we asian want to be treated this way. I know for the fact if it’s mat saleh, they will not get this kinda treatment. After 5 they will just go home, any outstanding they will cover tomorrow. If they need to work their butts off they ensure that they get paid well. They can’t finish their job they will divert that job. If they don’t know they get more expertise to come in.
This morning hubby wakes up a bit late..maybe he’s tired. He had to rush to work. It’s about 815 where both our child has woke up. The second one hardly sees his daddy that he cried out loud just to get his daddy attention. But daddy has to move…work is waiting. People there is impatient, cold blooded don’t have life (that is what mummy though). Daddy skipped his breakfast and drove fast to the office. I wonder if something bad happened (god forbid) but if really something bad happened, wouldn’t it be worth to stop and smell the roses?
I recall on the way back from kiwi land a few months ago. We met my father old friend, Uncle Michael. He’s a New Zealander, probably aged around 60 plus but he looks healthy, happy and energetic. We had a long chat with him and he gives us a few piece of advice. One of it he mentioned that in every moment of our life we should take our time to look at our lives and appreciates things that revolved around us. Look at yourself, he said. You are young with two kids, and you have travelled which not everybody got the chance to travel. You still have parents that are healthy and alive that you can love. Just put a pause and remember that how lucky we are and appreciate every moment.
They other thought that comes from him are on young parents with kids. He felt that world is losing the chain. With people refuse to get married early and have kids in their young age. When we have kids at age 35 or even 40, the kids will hardly had a chance to know their grandparents or their grandparent probably too old to play with their grandchildren. Parents will actually provide, nurture them and discipline the kids. But a grandparent is where the child will get to learn about values of life and of course spoilt them. Which I think is true. You see as a parent myself, we are sometimes clueless on how to go with our child. But grandparents always there with a better reasoning teaching them on how to stop and again appreciate their life. As parents you want them to learn, be perfect, be good and so on so forth. My parents will actually take their time to explain in depth, bring my child to do gardening, get to know flowers, grasses, birds, fishes and many more. They can spoilt the kids at one time but they can also be firmed whenever require. Uncle Michael added, and because that we are losing the chain, that is why kids nowadays become what they become. Rude, clueless, no manners, don’t know what to do with their life and many more. They are nobody to ask them to stop and embrace their life and learn the value of life. We as parents are too busy to work to provide them and we also forget to teach them the values!
Last advice that we received is when we commenting on the workmanship of the people and end up to why Asian like to work day and night. I called it work our butts of. Uncle Michael own his company and he thought that people who need extra hours to work is inefficient. They are time where his new employee ask his permission to bring back some of the magazines (relates to work) home so that he can do some reading. Uncle Michael told him tomorrow morning you come to the office and take 1 hour to do his reading. For him if the reading relates to the work and it can make his employee more knowledgeable, do it during working hours. When you are at home, makes time with family and of course for yourself. I wish that every bosses are like that. But maybe most of the bosses or company owners value the work life balance. Just the boss wannabe or employee wannabe crack their butts off to show that they are some goodie or whatever not.
This long post is due to this. Hubby is supposed to go for 3 weeks (that now happened to be 4 weeks actually) outstation. He’s flying out on Saturday and the trip has just been confirmed last monday (within this week). Due to the hectic or must I say poor management, they have to work day and night. Hubby goes out 630 or 730 in the morning and reaches home around 930 or latest by 11 and sometime 12 at night. I have expected this cos KL project with KL people that are very kiasu, you can see people work really late at night. I don’t know maybe these people don’t have life or whatever not but everyday working late? Something must be wrong with you and your personal life. That is my personal comment. So having said that, he has been working his butt off that he forget to smell the roses, today I suppose when you need to fly the following day and expected to work on Sunday cos Dubai works on Sunday. Should it be more human to let the employee to take today off or at least half day at management call? But what I know the management question why should u take half day (not even a day off) since week after next you will be off on Friday (when u in Dubai and Dubai is off on Monday). This bugger let me tell you, next week these people they are no longer at home and their families are way back here. They are people with small children that the child looking forward for weekend to spend time with their parents. So if you thought of sending these people to travel on Saturday itself can you do extra thinking?
Not to mention that this so called big firm that having everything in place, they didn’t allow claiming according to the policy. Instead claim actual. Actual is fine …but imagine actual in food only. And probably taxi. How about phone calls or hotel internet? Cos in the policy this already being stated that claimable. You know, people who have family would like to give a phone call to their family. Is a long distance call mind you and I don’t think we should use our salary for that cos this is actually a business trip. It should be covered and considering you are a big firm and not company cap ayam. And furthermore, from the policy it’s stated that it claimable!. Ok ok I may spilled to much detail but I am frustrated with how things handled here and why we asian want to be treated this way. I know for the fact if it’s mat saleh, they will not get this kinda treatment. After 5 they will just go home, any outstanding they will cover tomorrow. If they need to work their butts off they ensure that they get paid well. They can’t finish their job they will divert that job. If they don’t know they get more expertise to come in.
This morning hubby wakes up a bit late..maybe he’s tired. He had to rush to work. It’s about 815 where both our child has woke up. The second one hardly sees his daddy that he cried out loud just to get his daddy attention. But daddy has to move…work is waiting. People there is impatient, cold blooded don’t have life (that is what mummy though). Daddy skipped his breakfast and drove fast to the office. I wonder if something bad happened (god forbid) but if really something bad happened, wouldn’t it be worth to stop and smell the roses?
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