Somewhere over the rainbow…

LED

We have 2 hallways in our condo, and even if the place is small in total, there are a lot of florescent lights along the hallways. I’m thinking about switching the lighting to led to cut down on electric bill. We are paying more now as comparing to our old landed house because we use more air-conditioning and turning on more lights at the condo! Furthermore, the monthly maintenance fee is more expensive than our previous gated community.

Let me see if I can get a good pricing from BIL’s LED company.

Jobless

A lot of people are jobless due to the flood. I am not sure if I will be able to keep one of my staffs who went back to her home town after the flood hit our office, even if I totally understand why she did so. The area was badly flooded and her rented room is out of water and electricity. But the thing is, she didn’t tell me if she will come back to work again, or tried calling me. So, what am I supposed to do? Keeping the position for her?

A couple of malls, factories, banks and etc have closed down for weeks. So just imagine how many Janitor Jobs, skilled workers, professionals are not working now?

We bumped into our kids’ ex teachers from another school just now, and they can’t work due to the flood too. Being a foreign teachers, it all depends on the school if they will extend the contract, I guess.

Anyway, let’s hope that everything will be better after the flood.

Insurance Plan

One of the reasons why I’m still holding my insurance policy back in Malaysia is, it comes with an investment plan. Unlike some saving plans which only allow you to get the money after 55, this plan is more flexible to cash out the profit as long as there is a minimum balance left in the account. The money cash out can be used for emergency, or outsource to other investment funds, or being managed by Missoula, MT wealth management group. *ahem* How I wish. LOL!

Most of the insurance plans in Thailand are not that flexible, and it’s so expensive for expats. Argh… hubby better gets a new employer that covers for all of us!

Mmm…

I want a wish, can money falls down on me from the sky? That might make things easier to buy a condo here. Why are we buying one suddenly? That’s because our owner in Japan had finally gave signal that she’s selling the unit, and we will have 3 months to move out if she found a buyer. So, we better take this seriously.
As much as we can continue to rent a landed house with a nice garden with fountains and trees and flowers and grass in a gated community, but for how long are we going to pay for rent? So, the next solution will be getting a condo because foreigner very hard to buy a house, at least not under our own names.

But to get a loan for condo also not an easy task. So, unless we can pay all in cash, everything seems so complicated now. Mmm…

Broke

Money is never enough! I have just realized that I might need to attend a meeting and training with my supplier, but I can’t confirm yet all due to $$$ and costing. Sei moh, this week has to pay for kids’ ballet and piano, and then the registration fees and school fees at their new school, and then preparing for CNY. Wah lao leh… pokkai faster than making $$$.

Maybe I should start selling Herbalife la, other direct sales la, or even be an agent with cheapestautoinsurance.net.

Low exchange rate

I’ve recently cashed out from Paypal to buy some stuffs online, and oh boy, the USD exchange rate is really low now! I doubt I can even buy gold coin from the money I make from blogging, over a couple of months, if I don’t use it at all! Apart from the low exchange rate, there is not a lot of blogging job for me, for quite a long time already, so it’s not surprising that I won’t earn that much as before.

Anyway, I won’t cash out often, and maybe just for online shopping. I’ve been rather busy lately, and I seriously don’t have much time for shopping.

Keeping Coins

My kids love their piggy banks and they have a few at home. Most of the time, they will dig the coins from the car or those loose coins hubby places all around the house to keep them in their piggy banks. I would give them too if my purse is getting too heavy. I hardly use coins as I still can’t differentiate all the coins in Thailand.

If what they are storing up are gold coins, they should be quite rich now! I’m trying to instill this habit in the kids, and hopefully they know the importance of saving up. Too bad that we can’t set up personal accounts for them here, and they are still sharing a bank account back home. It would be great if they can bring their piggy banks to the bank!

Buying A House

I am not sure if we can buy a landed property here but if there is a way of doing so, I would certainly wish to have a bigger house, with a nice garden, and spacious rooms. It’s best to get a land and build our own house so that we can have the ideal design, but that will certainly cost a lot of money!

But there are Cheap Baths and affordable building materials around, if we spend some time looking for them. There are some enclosed communities that sell only land, and let you build your own house, if you wish. So, if we have the budget, that will be my dream come through.

Anyway, foreigners are only allowed to buy condominiums here, so getting a landed property will be quite impossible. That’s why most foreigners married Thai women, so that they can use their wives’ names to get the houses. Gee….too bad I’m not Thai. LOL!

There is another option by getting the house on company’s name. But that will have to wait until our business is growing stable first. It won’t be easy to run a business for the first few years, let alone in a foreign land. So, I’m really praying that we will strive and do well this year.

Angpao

My kids didn’t get a lot of angpao money this year since we only celebrated CNY among ourselves, and didn’t visit any relatives back home. Back then again, we don’t lose a lot of money on angpao too. LOL! The money can be saved for their next school fees payment, or maybe it’s time to buy gold bullion for them as keepsake. I’ve saved some gold for the kids, but not a lot. I wonder if I can get a safe deposit here? That will be easier for me, instead of using the one back home.

Hubby will back in the money later when he goes back this Friday. Yeap, I will be handling the kids on my own again. Sigh….