Business Plan to Help Lower Income to Cope

Today's newspaper heading...Business Plan To Help Lower Income To Cope. No doubt the intention is noble but I hope a proper plan for execution is in place. I am curious what will happen if the plan was go ahead. What will happen to the existing hawkers at night market, pasar tani and the likes? I'm sure they are currently at the lower income blacket but with more licenses given to government servants and other corporate company's lower income staff, this will create more competitions. Good competition is healthy but how much is good? While we may try to help the civil servants and permanent job group, what happen to the existing hawkers at street corners, pasar malam, near the office blocks? They have no permanent job and selling kuih or nasi lemak is their main source of income. They don't have a permanent work, when they close for a day, they lost a day's income. What is the government's plan to help the existing hawkers and petty traders?

Civil servants or lower-wages permanent job group still have to pay income tax. Will the net profit (minus the tax, rental etc) still sufficient to help them cope with the rising cost of living? It will be great if governement reduce income tax for workers. Currently, a rough salary of RM2600 and above is subject to income tax. It's much for goverment look into revise the income tax blacket and its percentages. That will increase our monthly net salary. In a year, it will help a long way.I'm sure most of us will be happy (if not all) because it's fair to all.

Fuel And Electricity Increase...What's Next?

Just I was trying to sink in the reality that the price hike of rice will affect my eating out at restaurants and lunch during working days, I am now having to cope with news on Wednesday of fuel hike. That was not enough, I found out of the electricity increase of 18% on Thursday.

On Wednesday evening, my friend told me that the fuel is up 0.78 cent per lit, and outside my office I can see stratches of long queue along the street leading to the petrol station. The queue started around 5pm but it became worse after 7pm. There was jammed everywhere in the city specially areas with petrol stations. Stations that normally has poor business experienced a jackpot that day.

My friend and I went home around 7.30pm that day and we were caught in the massive jamm. Temper rised as the queue became longer and the HONK...HONK...is constantly heard while we are in the car. We had to passed by a petrol station just a block away from the office and it took us half and hour to u-turn away from the petrol station. It normally takes only 5 minutes for us to make the u-turn. We had to wait for the 4th green traffic light because during the first 3 green light, the queue was until the yellow box and there were no space for us to make u-turn. After that, we tried to avoid all streets that have petrol stations. I reached home 2 hours later than my usual time and my friend only reached home around 11pm, with empty stomach.

The next day, my friend told him that we, Malaysian are nice people. If it's our neighbouring country, there might be riot of people burning petrol stations. We, Malaysian, despite the fuel rise tsunami, we still civilise people. We whin and worry but we still behave like human. I hope our government would appreciate that we are still peace loving people. Therefore, government shouldn't take advantage of our peace loving nature as it may change.

On that same day, I found out that residential electricity will be up by 18% and commercial by 26%. However, our GOVERNMENT said household who;s monthly bill below 200kwh or RM43 won't be affected. According to GOVERNMENT again, 59% of Penansular Malaysia household use below 200kwh per month in their monthly bill. 200KWH is RM43. Now, I've done my small survey because I work in a GLC company where we have the grade system such as semi-skill, non-skill, multi-skill level non executive levels. From my survey to 30+ people as they are under my department, non of them have electric bill less than RM70 per month! This are people who earns less than RM1800 per month after working for over 10 years! My question is where does our GOVERNEMENT comes up with the figure of 59% of Penansular Malaysia household spend less then RM43 or 200kwh in electric bill?? I spend about RM120 per month on electricity bills. I have an aircon, 2 fans, fridge and washing machine. I use energy save bulb for the whole house. I don't waste electricity as I'm already having poor purchasing power since the last 3 years.

In order to have only RM43 on electricity bill, they don't has a fridge, washing machine, electric cattle and aircon at home. At the lighting, they don't on more than 1 light at any time. How do I know, because an empty house without tenant will have monthly electric bill of RM7+. So, I don't believe our GOVERNMENT! PERIOD!!. STOP TREATING YOUR RAKYAT STUPIDLY. I'M NOT STUPID.

Besides that, Bank Negara said our inflation is only 3%. Please make is transparent the result of the 3%. Most companies in Malaysia, be it local or multi-national, make their yearly employee salary adjustment or increment based on the Bank Negara announcement. Most published CPI mentioned that our inflation is around 20%! Without reflecting actual CPI by the GOVENMENT, the rising of fuel, rice, electricity will worsen RAKYAT purchasing power and affordablity. Currently, our yearly increment can't even cover the yearly rising cost of living. We are 17% short than what we should get to achieve an optimum cost of living.

I hope GOVERNMENT realise that rakyat are getting angry. Those who never bother about politic like myself are now speaking up. There are millions like me. I know understand why Thai and Indonesian are so brave to match on a street protest. Anger is the answer.

Unpacking And Furniture Hunt

It has been 2 months now since I moved out from my old place. Since that time, I haven't finish unpack my boxes. This is mainly because I haven't enough finance to purchase furniture yet. I guess I'm like the rest of the newbies who just moved into a house. This is the first time having to save for furniture. Previously, all my rented place are fully furnished so there was no need for me to purchase any furniture.

Selecting and planning for furniture to buy is a headache too. I want the best for my house and ended up confuse what I want to buy. It's also style verses budget. Headache...I'm planning to put the responsibilities of decoration in the hand of Ikea's consultant. Maybe I should go check out this weekend. So far, all product I bought from Ikea over the years stay true to their quality and promises. Unlike one local furniture store with the tagline: Let our price speak for itself...I think.

Cavenzi product is relatively cheap but not the quality. Some of the wood product such as their bedroom set can be moldy after a few months. My sister bought a bedroom set early last year and after 6 months, molds starts to appear is the clothes closet were closed. It was a sliding door closet so now she has to keep the door partially opened. I'm not talking about a bit of mold but all the walls of the closet are full of molds. Even now, my sister doesn't fill comfortable to put her clothes in the closet due to the molds. This is money wasted and she felt cheated. Now, this get me thinking whether I should buy my cabinets at Cavenzi. My advice is ask for 6 months refund for your furniture. If anything should happen to your furniture, it will appear within 6 months.

I'm kind of interested with Macy's product and I hope someone can tell me their quality though. I don't want to spend so much for a poor quality product.