I think another good tip is to help each other out and save online when we shop. Big Crumbs let's us do that by shopping through Ebay and other retailers and earning cash back. It is a free program. Check it out! Especially beneficial during holidays!
http://www.bigcrumbs.com/crumbs/frontpage.jsp?r…

Welcome to the August 4, 2008 edition of Carnival of Everything Finance.We had over 100 really good articles submitted for this edition. Unfortunately I ……

There are 2 ways to remedy the inflation, namely:
1. save cost
2. increase revenue

Sometimes, you can save cost without sacrifying anything. Here is now I did it.

I applied to a petrol rebate credit card, to get the 2% rebate for petrol consumption, and 0.5% rebate on other consumptions with the card. The platinum credit card is free for life, so I don't need to pay anything for annual fee too.

Currently, there is a promotion event ongoing with that credit card. I purchased a book in MPH with it, and immediately got RM10 worth of MPH voucher, at the same time got a KFC voucher from Mid-Valley. By now, I think you should able to figure out that is a CIMB Petronas Platinum Mastercard. I have blogged something about free for life platinum credit card recently, please visit http://voyager8.blogspot.com to read the article.

After buying the book, I took my dinner in Secret Recipe, where there is a RM10 set promotion ongoing now. Normal price is about RM16++ to get the same thing.

Before this, I also applied for an auto-paybill service, which provides a rebate of RM4 per month for my telephone bill and Streamyx bill. I have enjoyed this rebate for about 2 years already.

So you've learnt from me some ways on how to save cost without sacrifying anything. If KC give me the book, then I also save the cost on the book, without sacrifying anything too. Now, talking about increase revenue.

To increase some pocket money, I signed up SociakSpark, a social networking community which brings both the bloggers and advertisers into the same place. Then, I made some US$20++ for posting a sponsored article in my blog.

The book I bought from MPH is for preparation to a professional exam. Once I pass the exam in the near future, I believe I'll be at a better ground for increment and promotion.

To learn more from me, feel free to visit my blog. I have shared my experience to save fuel and save electricity bill legally with some inexpensive gadgets. I have shared about great software which are free to use. I have shared about value-for-money products that I've bought and use. I have shared about latest promotion events in town. And many more… which consist the idea on how you can save cost but without sacrifying anything.

To be honest, your visits there might help me to gain a few cents from Google and Advertlet. That is a win-win condition, as you won't lose anything, and able to learn something from me, at the same time helping me to gain some revenue.

Thank you.

Instead of focus on the cost cutting, I am looking at other other area like improve my productivy, increase personal market value and knowledge. I believe all this self upgrade will become very useful when opportunities arrived.

How to achieve that?
Well.. The simple way is reading more books, documents.. NO neccessary you have to buy the book, you can borrow from friends or library. How about the Internet? full of resources. The beauty is it is FOC.
Some good books to recommned are :-
- The Four Agreements
- Secret
- Secret of the Millionaire Mind

Learn from boss, mentor, friends, rich people .. how they success in biz and life? There must be something unique about them that make them ahead from us.
Show them what you can do so when there is an opportunies, they may seek yr advice which may come with some tangible reward.

Last but not least, think positively.

Thks and good luck.

The classical economics definition of inflation is ' increase in the total stock of money'. Since we're using paper money and not gold and silver (like a century ago), there will always be inflation if there is more paper money being created. Actually, economic growth causes prices to FALL.

So, what we are seeing is 'rising prices'. Rising prices are caused by inflation from the central banks. This distinction has to be made, because when central banks create money, this money doesn't only cause prices of goods to increase.

During the 90's, this inflation pumped up the stock market–no one was complaining…In the housing bubble, it caused house prices to rise–again, if my house is worth more I don't complain.

With the stock market and real estate becoming less attractive, money flows and pumps up commodities (like food and oil). Now, this impacts everyone, and of course people are complaining.

How to solve inflation? Simple, reduce the money in circulation. In the early 80's Paul Volker raised the Fed funds rate to over 20%. The high interest rate took out the supply of dollars and placed in savings. Inflation dropped from 14% down to 1%. This caused a huge recession, but was necessary.

The inflation was bad then because the earlier 70s fed was too loose with money supply, and to solve it they needed the huge interest rate. The needed to do that then to finance the Vietnam war, and I think what is happening is similar (Iraq war).

We have been asked to cut down our cost, and change our life style.

For me, the most important is to change our mindset, the way we thinking.

As a example, a worker with RM 3,000 salary. Maybe, after all the expenses..he can save RM 300. But after the fuel hike, im sure it is very hard to maintain the same amount of saving.

- If we just change our 'lifestyle' by cutting down cost on travel, electricity,entertainment….for me this solution will useful for a temporary period.
- As time going, foods and many stuff price will raised. and we will end up with deficit.

Tips to remedy inflation

Idea :

- start from now, we must prepare ourself to venture into small business / part time career. Add another stream of income which can be accumulate on regular basis. ( i mean, if we stop to do the business for a short period, such as several month, the income is still coming )

- By tomorrow, start bring your drinking water when go for lunch, any meals. If we bring our own drinking, a day we can save about RM 3 ( 2 kali minum ), a month later, we can save about RM 90..then put the money into our investment-linked policy ( saving portion only ). the snow ball effect will taking place…saving for retirement.

What you have done to minimize the fuel hike impact?

- for me, just do more sales. eat healthy, replace our daily teh tarik, milo ais with air kosong sendiri..

- plan my journey properly, plan to combine several appointment in same day.

- i produce my own product, sell it for RM 10 each. Just use the profits to cover my fuel and working hours meals cost. No need deduct the travel cost from my main income.

Anything about inflation that affects your everyday life.

- i used to fill full tank 36 liter..about RM 70 now RM 97

- i will take this fuel hike as a lesson for myself. and use it as a good example to educate my propect the effect of inflation. everyone effected.

Ok. thanks .

An article on how inflation can affect your life. Also, a free giveaway: a book based on a 10-year study of 200,000 managers and employees. It shows you how the best managers use recognition to engage their people, retain talent and accelerate performa…

To fight the inflation and expensive petrol price, apart from earning more and investment, the easiest alternative and 0% risk is to save. I do savings regularly, but apparently we need to save efficiently instead of save what we able to. After I did thorough study and experienced them, I have written 3 posts on my blog to counter the expensive petrol price, http://ekimkee.blogspot.com/2008/06/18-tips-on-… and how to cut down our electricity bill, http://ekimkee.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-cut-… a well as how to save on your existing bills, http://ekimkee.blogspot.com/2008/06/what-bill-t…. I hope it is useful for all Malaysians especially those are heavy spending in petrol and electricity.

After the petrol price has significant hiked on early of last month, I starting to bring breakfast & lunch box to work, cut down tea time during office hours, going office/home late to avoid traffic jam, have dinner at home instead of enjoy outside, reduce suppers before sleep, going out for drinking session only at Friday or weekend evening, settle bills and entertainment online, text/voice chat with friends via messenger instead of call, record my daily expenses so I can keep track my daily spending.

To further minimize the impact of the inflation, I also do start blogging for side income, do some part time PC servicing/support for friends & relatives, invest into unit trusts, and open fixed deposit account for temporary money.

As a result, i can do projectionon how much i need to save p.m for a particular event like holiday, getting a new gadet etc.

So, i would say do not blame on the environment but looking at what we can do at our end, then you will be able to get out of a lot of unnecessary financial trouble(CC).

Bravo..to KCLAU for helding up this sites. It really open up our eyes, i like the topic on Rules 72.