lower your taxes, give away books

April is nearing the end. Are you being a good Malaysian? Have you filed in your tax forms?

Among other things, we can lower our taxes - or at least get back our pre-paid PCBs, by buying books (and magazines). You can get tax deduction by claiming up to RM1,000 expenditure on books and magazines. That's a big sum, and could lower by quite an amount from your taxable income. When it comes to taxes, a ringgit is a hefty sum, isn't it?

Even if you don't enjoy reading books, once in a while you'd buy a copy or two of magazines to kill time while waiting for someone, school books for your children, yada yada yada...

Or, you could buy books as gifts. C'mon, you do give away presents to someone, right? While it may be nice to buy those small things your loved ones have been hinting on you all-year, giving away books would work for you, too. It's a win-win thingy. You'll not only enrich someone's life (great people reads, and leads), you'll also be doing yourself a favour. Everyone would be happy, because of you.

Err... here's a list of books that I want this year. Well, at least one of them.

http://www.bike-maintenance.com/maintenance-books.htm

Make my day. Save the receipt(s) for next April (and make your day, then).

Hexagon Pi-Water Filter from Cosway

Naza and I bought the unit from Cosway for our home in Seri Alam, and I (who else?) installed it the day after.

The unit is fairly of a moderate size. Not too big (compared to the other Cosway 6-stage purifier). Just nice for our really basic kitchen sink unit in our really small kithcen. It was very easy to set up (no lengthy installation instructions booklet as well), and I drank the first cup only 5 minutes from the start of installation. Well, not literally the first cup coming out of the filter. Initially the water was a bit blackened - probably from the charcoal?

I tested the water for presence of chlorine by using the tester supplied together with the unit. No reaction - a good sign. The thing that blew me way was the distinctively sweet taste of the filtered water. Also, the flow coming out of the filter is quite high - perhaps because of the simple piping route and also the large contact area of the ceramic filter.

At an offer price of RM295 (RRP RM395), we're happy with it. Expect the price of replacement cartridge to be at about RM100, for a recommended usage of about a year. Well, if you install a pre-filter, that period between replacements would be extended.

Get in touch with me if you'd like to own the experience.

handphone bills - reducing trend

my handphone bills - with supplementary line for Naza - is with a nice reducing trend now.
(data collected is from april 2006 until sept 2008 - 30 months)

monthly usage:
april 2006 - aug 2007: sporadic, but on average rm125
sept 2007 - july 2008: steadily rm105
aug 2008: around rm95
sept 2008: rm84

from rm125 to rm84 - a reduction of rm41 a month on average.
how do we managed to do that?
there are two parts of it.

one part is maxis' package.
during the steady rm105 period, we took advantage of the rm50 + rm50 package.
starting august 2008, we switched to the rm50 + rm30 package when it's launched.

before sept 2007, we didn't sign up to any package. hence, the sporadic amount on the bills.

the other part that is crucial on the savings: action
one fine day in aug 2007, i sat down quietly and collected data from bills that i paid so far.
i made out the trend of calls made (minutes of use per month) for around a year.
also, i gathered info from maxis on the available package - in equivalent minutes.
i compared the usage and also the available package that would cater for our usage.
not only that, i also considered other telco's packages - digi and celcom.
it turned out that we could shave rm20 per month with maxis' rm50 + rm50 package.
so we signed up to the package.

mind you that between nov 06 and jan 08 i was away in kl. so, it was more usage than usual.
even so, the bills from sept 07 (50+50 package starts) to jan 08 were at a steady rm105 mark.
which means, we were still under-utilising our handphone bill package.

again, in aug 08 i signed up with a new deal from maxis: rm50 + rm30 package.
aug 08 was the transition period - that's why the bill was rm95.

i was a bit anxious on what the amount on the bill would be for sept 08.
turned out that the bill amount is rm84.
wow! a further reduction of another rm21 per month.
hopefully the overall trend will stay like this - reducing.
i'll revisit again in the next 6 months, perhaps. meanwhile, i'll monitor closely each month on the bill. i sure hope that it will remain constant for at least a year.

that's it. all it takes are data crunching, and most importantly: action.

and now, how shall i tackle the TM phone bill?

Let's Get Rich!

PendapatanLumayan.Com - Naskah Mengandungi Khazanah Rahsia Terulung Bagaimana Mencipta Wang Atas Angin Di Bocorkan Secara Tiba-Tiba Untuk Anda!

The link above is interesting.
Sure. It has all the right words to get people to visit the website - lumayan, rahsia, wang.



I got it from my Gmail inbox ad header this morning.
I'm not a big believer of this easy peasey get rich quick thingy.
Anyway, I went with it just to see what he's offering.

As usual, it's a lengthy page.
From beginning to the end, luring people to buy the ebook of his so-called technique to buy his set of tools to get rich fast.

Ah, and there's a Disclaimer page too - with normal size font.

Taken from the Disclaimer page:

MANY FACTORS WILL BE IMPORTANT IN DETERMINING YOUR ACTUAL RESULTS AND NO GUARANTEES ARE MADE THAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE RESULTS SIMILAR TO OURS OR ANYBODY ELSES, IN FACT NO GUARANTEES ARE MADE THAT YOU WILL ACHIEVE ANY RESULTS FROM OUR IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES IN OUR MATERIAL.

Huh? 'Nuff said. I'm investing my RM50 elsewhere.

BTW, check this out: Azizi Ali's thoughts