How do one survive in this ever rising living cost world? We the K-Poh team went around the office and interviewed some of our friends. While some gave good advice and some gave ridiculous ones, we have listed the best of the crop.

1) Do not spend on items that are not a necessity.
– Yes my dears, as much as we love to spend even on the little bit of items, sometimes we tend to buy items that are not even used by us, thus wasting our hard earned money. No matter how cute or techy the item looks, think. Do you really need to buy it? What are the frequency of you using it every month? If the answer is no and 2% frequency usage, then you might as well ditch the idea and save your money for something else.

2) Use public transport to work.
– No doubt we hate to share our personal space with strangers, public transport is the best way to cut cost on your transport expenses. When we say public transport, we meant the buses. No taxis. Look at it this way, you only spend RM2.50 max on your tranport fee single trip to work instead of RM15 worth of petrol. You no need to worry about traffic jam cuz there is a driver to take care of that problem, unless you are running late for work.

You just have to wake up a bit earlier for work, walk further (good for losing extra weight ladies) and bring a foldable umbrella with you at all times. It’s easy and very save cost. Why do you think Le Vamp and Ninja Turtle manage to have a better bank account standing than any of us…

Or you can try to organise a car pool with your colleagues if you still insist on not taking the public transport.

3) Pack food from home. Forget ego and questioning looks cast at you when you walk into the cafeteria with a Ta-Pao food in your hand. They are just jealous not thinking about the idea sooner. Packing food from home not only save you large amount of money but it also tells your wife how much you love her cooking.

4) Use fan at home instead of air-con no matter how much tempting it looks. A fan only takes up a little of your electricity bill compared to air-con. Turn off all those unecessary lights and appliances when not in use.

That seems to be the only logical ideas that graced our minds right now. However should we find any more good ideas, we will be sure to update this category.

With the ever rising fuel price especially since the government has increased the price of fuel since they couldn’t afford anymore outrageous fuel subsidy in fear of draining the government coffers, workers have been scouring high and low for part time jobs and opting for more OT jobs. Can’t blame since with the fuel hike, all the items even the groceries have increased their selling cost to cover their increasing expenses.

While most of the workers in Ra Tree have been seen burning their evening and late-nights pouring out on their jobs just to get their OT and extra income, others have been sharing their experience in making some sideline cash via online. Le Vamp is partly to be blamed since she has been in this industry for donkey years and when word was out that she has been making money out of her hobby which most of us thought as her normal work routine, Le Vamp became an instant celebrity.

Poor Le Vamp finally admitted to her extra income to her starving and intimidating colleagues. Most of them can be seen having question marks in their eyes as she told them about how blogging can make money. How could anyone make any dollars from just yapping and gossiping their nonsense on a website?

Well surprisingly the system works almost like writing an article for a publisher. The only difference is that while writers get paid hundreds for an article, bloggers get paid a small amount per article depending on the PR of the website or blog. And instead of seeing the paycheck, bloggers are paid via PayPal and electronic online payment system that connects directly to your mastercard or visa card account to either debit or credit amounts from/ to the account.

While it make sense to some of her colleagues, most were still left clueless of the information given. It’s not surprising since Le Vamp has always interacted with technical terms instead of the usual human language. Poor greedy souls…

Anyway colleagues, please take note that whatever sideline jobs you are undertaking, as long as it doesn’t affect the company and your working output, you can continue. We don’t want to lose anyone of you due to your greed. Cheers!

We were reading our daily news today, during our free and no work hours (it’s Saturday and we love our privileges granted by the big boss) and we thought to share with everyone in the office this particular little gossip.

In LA Times, a court has judged that it is NOT OK to read employees emails and text messages (SMS) without the consent of the employee. So we the employees knows that it’s the company that is paying for the bill. We totally appreciate it. But there are times when personal respect and privacy over-rules the ownership of the bills paying and therefore we would love it if our boss do not open up our emails or sms and read them.

Thankfully our big boss has been so considerate that we have never faced that problem before. Imagine all those weird and EHEM messages sent to our friends and our spouses and unknowingly, our boss has been snooping behind our back.. *shudders*

Scary thought… Very scary thought!

Perhaps we should plan another one of those whacked out birthday bash for him this year. Hehehe…