It’s Time for Damage Control

Living in developed countries, money is the first thing that keeps you and your family out of poverty. The costs of living in Brunei indeed increase sharply. Some shops taking advantage of this situation trying to scam and even department store fake the discount prices on goods. Because of this, most my Malay friends are on high alert and even create Excel documents comparing prices nowadays to protect themselves getting cheated. Well, not a bad idea, and I am following their footsteps too.

The company I work with may be slowly doing good recovery but my salary remained the same for two years now after % reduction. The good thing is I continue to keep the job and receive my salary on time so it was a plus to allow me clearing the car loan until this final year in January. I am now feeling more relieved and less stressful. However, my spending habit is still number one concern, so I decided to keep tracks every payment and withdrawing money from the banks in order to find out the total amount left every end of the month.

I’m not going to lie. This is not enough, so I decided looked into a better option to save by:

Cooking Your Own Foods
Probably the reason I am getting older and interested to start learning to eat healthier foods. Cooking your own did help me to save more and balance out for fruits. Of course, I am aiming to improve health sake especially fights against my biggest ulcer enemy that plague in my mouth almost every month whenever I accidentally bite and injure. It now takes longer to heal and had to suffer the pain for two weeks. This is not good at all. It's a sign to your body to eat fruits more than ever.

Postponing PC Upgrade
Thanks to the Cryptocurrency asshole jacking up the graphics cards price around the world. The selling price is just too ridiculously high, so I decided to postpone until next year. Man, it did take me months from last year to save the budget and almost go forward with the upgrade.

To be honest, I am happy with the setback. The discovery of the Spectre and Meltdown security problem really hit the global IT security hard and personally, I’m not a fan of flashing BIOS for the motherboard and a bit sensitive on Cybersecurity. My early plan was to purchase both AMD Ryzen processor and MSI motherboard locally but because this involved flashing the BIOS yourself in order to get patch above global security issues. I had to double check with the local shop if they willing to warranty for those DIY builders or the technicians will be the one taking the risk. Otherwise, you will be sucking the cost yourself when they denied the warranty claim. Another truth about local shops business behavior, they are the worst and becomes a jerk when it comes to warranty after sales.

For now, I will be migrating the current Windows 7 to Linux. The security update really slows down the old rig so its time for the switching lighter memory resources since nowadays I am more of surfing the internet and watching TV series than playing games. Actually, I played mobile games the most these days and the heart is telling me to get Nintendo Switch.

Plastic Kits and Toys
Lego has announced the end of Nexo Knights theme which is bad news as I really love the sets. For the good news, I get to slow down mode chasing all the remaining set and the last released sets in the market. I also have more time focusing sourcing army packs, custom mod and different parts from Bricklink to build my own idea armies factions. Almost ready to start custom building but I need few more stuff and waiting for the right time snatching discount price for the large set of the local stores.

As for plastic kits, creating a spreadsheet to record the original selling price and compare the after discount is advisable. HLJ is the reason I started. Everyone knows they are very great online shops to drop by. But the implementation of the bonus credit point system and include together with the discount items are questionable. I actually did discover few times during the sales, some discount items they listed as the original price with additional bonus credit points only. It just doesn’t make sense for me personally. Are they doing sales or just want us to accept bonus credit point for our next purchase? There are even undervalued items I felt like a trap to lure us to add to the cart. I strongly advise you guys open a spreadsheet and start adding for price comparison sake.