to move or not to move...that is the question

So my landlord wants to increase the rent. Argh. We've been here two years; moving in during the GFC when prices were kept low. Plus we're a little out of Central so the rent's not too high, however as the new MTR will reach us soon rents are starting to creep up.

To see what else I could get for my money (rent is $17,500 now, landlady wants to increase to $19,000) first I had a bash at the online real estate websites (fail) and then spoke with two different agents. With their help I'm now aware that nicer (i.e. renovated) apartments identical to mine in the same apartment building are going for $18,500+. Ok, so she's not being totally unreasonable however our flat is not renovated; our bathrooms are pretty hideous, as is the kitchen.

Now initially we thought we should move - why pay $19k for an unrenovated flat when we can pay the same for a renovated one? My apartment complex is pretty old and no-frills (you step out of the lift onto my floor and it looks like you're in some dirty industrial complex - manky white tiles and ugly lighting...weird cooking smells). So I thought for my $$ I should splash out on swanky 'gweilo' digs with the whole gym/pool shenanegans. Boy was I disappointed. The complexes close enough to Central, in my price range, were 'all looks no substance'. Beautiful fittings but such a terrible layout with zero storage. I have a LOT of clutter...storage is pretty high on my list.

As if my frustration wasn't bad enough but its summer here and sweltering. So I'm losing patience fast, treking around in the stinking heat only to be disappointed again and again. And I do what any self respecting person would do...I quit. That's it, white flag, I'm going to stay put. The cost of moving is too expensive (removals + one months rent as fee to the agent + 2 months rent as bond) plus the 2nd agent told me now is just not a good time in the market for tenants to be negotiating.

Fine. We're staying. But, we were able to negotiate a little. We took a quick video of a nicer flat in our building, same layout only renovated, renting for $18,500. After showing the landlady, she agree to reduce our rent to $18,500. That's a saving of $6,000 a year so not to shabby.

And for the fun part. Because our place is still not renovated, My solution - I will spend one month's rent jazzing the place up so it feels like a new home!

Which brings me to announce my new challenge - Jazzing up a HK apartment for $19k. A big challenge on a small budget but let's see how we go.

First item in the 'Jazzercise' - $26 spent at Japan Home to buy a lid organiser for the kitchen. Yes, this is petty but my kitchen is so small its a joke and the lids falling on my head has been driving me nuts forever.

TWFT: Singapore GST

Saving on Singapore GST

Great news for tourists to Singapore - thanks to their Tourist Refund Scheme (TRS) you can receive a refund of the GST you paid while shopping during your stay.

Not all stores in Singapore participate, and you need to spend a minimum of S$100 per day at that store, and the goods can't be consumable within Singapore (i.e. your hotel or a meal) to be eligible, but it's a great scheme regardless.

Here's the details:

~ carry your passport when shopping as the store clerk will need to sight it when you make your purchases

~ once eligible (spent enough) the participating store will give you your TRS receipt in an envelop (it's REALLY long and will be separate to your normal purchase receipt)

~ when you fly out of Singapore you have 2 opportunities to claim at the airport
1. For goods packed in you Check-in luggage, take your TRS receipt + the goods you purchased to the GST Customs table in the departure hall, or
2. Once checked in take your TRS receipt + the purchased goods to the GST Customs table near the departure gates (it's near the Duty Free shops)

I got a little confused at this point so learn from my bumblings...

~ Show the Customs officer your

• passport
• flight ticket
• goods
• purchase receipt 
• TRS receipt

They'll then stamp the TRS

~ Now you have a choice of 2 counters - look at the envelop your TRS receipt came in, it'll have a company logo (i.e Global Refund OR Premier Tax Free) [I didn't notice this and went to the wrong counter...opps]

~ The clerk at the counter will just need to see your stamped TRS receipt and will then give you the option to have your GST reimbursed as Cash or direct to your Credit Card

And you're done! If there's not to big a queue you should be in and out in 15 minutes - with enough time to spend your change at Duty Free before departure :) [I stocked up on some Bombay Gin, tasty]

Fancy feast

When I lived in Australia I didn't think very highly of a Buffet - to me they were a cheap way for restaurants to churn customers with substandard food (Sizzler). Made me think of pigs at a trough asking for selmanela poisoning...nice.

Hong Kong, as always, flips Buffet on its head and takes it to a whole new level. All the top hotels produce an amazing variety of buffet choices, and the quality always amazes me (nothing like Sizzler).

I've stumbled upon this great website, Foodeasy, which lists all the latest buffets and specials - perfect for wowing visitors or when your feeling a little greedy (oink oink).

http://www.foodeasy.com/hongkongrestaurant/hotel-buffet.php

TWFT: Kindle

I have bought a Kindle!

What's a Kindle? A Kindle is an electronic book reader - you download books directly from Amazon.com and then store and read them on the Kindle. Its not an ipad, you can't check your email, it's for people who just really love their books. You can type notes, look up unknown words in a dictionary or wikipedia - lots of fun booky stuff.

So how can spending USD$180 be a money saving tip?! To be honest, this post could really just be my way of justifying my purchase (all the other girls in book group have one. And they love theirs...funnily enough I bought mine right after the last book group hehe). Anyway, here's my rationale.

Each book you purchase on the Kindle is about 30% cheaper than buying the physical book. This is probably because the publisher is saving on paper, printing, transport...all those things.

So let's say you read one book per month and each book is USD$20 - you spend $240 per year on books. If you bought those books on a Kindle you would spend only $168, which means you save $72 per year. OK, given I've just bought the Kindle, if we include the purchase cost it'll take me almost 16 months before I'm ahead, but after that I'll save save save!

The financial downside of a Kindle is - you can't borrow someone else's 'book' (which would be free) and you can't sell a read book.

Plus, as the Kindle is hooked up to your credit card the danger to go 'shopping' at Amazon is always there. I've made myself promise - no new book can be bought until the current one is read. Two weeks in and the promise has been kept (ask me in 6 months...).

Fine, so maybe the Kindle isn't the most awesome money saving tip, but you are saving the planet from producing books each year. This alone has to be a HUGE saving of global resources!

image from www.amazon.com

trust and fear

Today's blog is more of a rant. I don't have any immediate solutions for this huge problem but as an industry, financial services really needs to start working on regaining faith and trust.

For research I read a lot of articles on personal finance. One of the things that has struck me recently is how fearful people are, and how the trust for those in the financial planning/institutions has really been decimated. Any blog post about investing will be commented on numerous times by every-day investors frozen by fear. They not only no longer believe the so-call experts, they don't know who to believe and trust.

What to do?! People want to get ahead, to earn more on their hard-earned savings than a bank account can provide...but the fear of losing it all to dodgy advisers/companies is freezing people into inaction.

The past 2 years have really seen the financial services industry fall into a very sorry state of affairs. Maddoff in the US, Storm Financial in Australia, banks falling over in the UK, the share market dropping by insane double digits, financial firms bankrupting left right and centre.

Who is to blame? Greedy financiers out to squeeze every last penny from consumers? Greedy banks for not stress-testing their policies? Regulators for not protecting consumers from shonky operators? Consumers for either being too greedy for high returns or too ignorant of risks? How can we prevent this from happening again?

Prevent is always better than cure and while I think there's no immediate cure to this ill, we should use education to make sure consumers become more financially savvy to prevent being fooled a second time.

Educating kids in school about spending, savings, debt and investment is a great start. Educating adults about what is a realistic return for a level of risk can help check the greed-led decisions. Empowering consumers with financial literacy knowledge will give them the courage to ask questions of those they put their trust in (and dollars with).

I'm loving the work of the Australian Financial Literacy Foundation and their website Understanding Money. The sooner this sort of information becomes a compulsory subject in schools the better.

Financial Planners and Institutions need to step up to the plate - stop biting the hand that feeds you! The focus needs to be less on immediate revenue from ripping off a few consumers, and more on providing transparent advice in a simple to understand language to build long-term relationships with customers. Financial Planning needs to be seen as a professional equal to that of Accounting and Law - by charging fees in the same way (rather than commissions) and demanding tertiary qualifications of its practitioners. Institutions need to be better regulated and more clearly disclose their fees - get rid of the mountains of gobbly-gook in Disclosure Statements!

Sigh. Rant over.

reduce the rent? or fix the ad?

Our property settled on May 26th so time for a tenant. The agent put it up on the web for rent at $510 per week...and we waited...and waited...and waited.

After one week he told us the bad weather in Sydney was affecting the property market and we needed to drop the price to $490. As you can imagine I was totally unimpressed. But I had to take his word for it - isn't he the professional? I'm over here in HK so what would I know about fair rental values? So the price was lowered.

Two weeks later and still no interest and now he's saying to drop it to $460! I exploded. Countless filthy emails were composed (and deleted) along the lines of how can he call himself a professional and then ask us to drop our price by 10% in less than a month?! The rest of the Sydney market was increasing so why weren't we?! What rubbish methodology did he use to come up with $510 in the first place?!!! (Ok,  b r e a t h e )

After calming down I decided to look at the online ad to see if it held any clues. Real Estate websites are paramount in Australia; they're probably the most important property marketing tool.

Imagine my horror when I saw our advert - OMG it was rubbish! Dreadful! Dull, ugly photos and a short non-descriptive blurb that ignores all the key features. And excuse me but what is a LUG?  No wonder people weren't interested. The properties advertised either side of ours had over 200 views each - mine had only TEN in the same time! And my property was the one with the ocean views and it was closest to the beach.

In a fit I rewrote the ad and forwarded my version to him, demanding he replace it immediately (in the nicest possible way, of course). Then I very cheekily quoted the weather report and told him it would be sunny for the next 2 days so he'd better get out and take new pics :)

To his credit he changed the text immediately and one day later we had 45 hits! Vindication!! 400% increase in views (my boy sarcastically pointed this out to the agent haha).

Three days later with both new pics and new text we were up to 75 hits. Ha! Bad weather my butt. More like lazy real estate agent.

This is the sad reality of property ownership - there's no such thing as set and forget.

Lesson learned - lazy agents try to drop the price as a first (easy) measure. Instead, make sure your property is being promoted properly to show off its best features first! It could earn you $$$ more in income.

change

About 12 months ago I started to feel a growing disquiet within...something just wasn't right and I didn't feel completely satisfied with my role (financial planner). This came about for a number of reasons but one in particular was the role's lack of creativity. Trying to speak to my manager about not liking my job in the midst of a global recession seemed like career suicide so I kept it under my hat for a while. Instead, my focus was trying to work out what it was I really wanted to do and what it would take to get there.

Straight out of high school I'd originally studied journalism, and then dabbled in marketing for about 4 years. This was where I felt my heart was wanting to go. There's definitely scope to combine marketing and financial planning, it was just a matter of convincing the boss. The first few conversations didn't go so well. She couldn't understand why anyone would want to change roles when they were doing well in the one they had. Lucky for me the existing marketing person's interest in her role soon expired and a vacancy was created.

So now I've started my new journey in finance marketing/corporate relations. This role comes with management responsibilities so I'm re-learning all those skills too. In the past my previous staff were all a good 10 years younger than me. This time its a whole different kettle of fish with one being about 15 years older and the other the same age.

Given my expanding interests I'm going to expand the themes in my blog...I guess I'm using this as  a personal scrapbook of-sorts to dump great ideas that I've come across in areas of marketing, HR and finance too. Even if no one besides me ever reads this, at least I can use it as my own reference tool :)

Here's to new challenges and opportunities.