More Time, More Money

Not able to complete the task?
Not able to meet the target ?
Not having enough time?

There are many reasons for
not having enough time.
Procrastination is one of the
culprit that cause delay in
accomplishing a task. On the
other hand, too many tasks
to be taken care of and if a
person doesn't know how
to set priority accordingly will
eventually get stuck trying to
complete few tasks at the same
time.

There is a simple method how
to overcome this by using
to-do-list. All you need to do
is to write down all the tasks
in a piece of paper. Then
categorize each of the items by
asking yourself whether the
item belongs to
MUST DO (higher priority),
SHOULD DO and COULD DO.

Work according to the priority
set and the scale of the task.
Bear in mind not to have too
many big scale task on the same
time over the day. Mix with
those small scale tasks. Delegate
the tasks to share the
responsibility among members.

This list will enable you to make
proper planning the task versus
the time by attending to the most
important, most urgent task first.
It will ensure you to complete all
the tasks in a more efficient way.
As the efficiency improve, there
will be more time to explore for new
opportunity.

Value For Money

In my previous article, I did
mention about delegating
job to members, we can have
more time for other task.
From another aspect, we are
cultivate the ability to make
sound decision and judgement
on the needs for involvement
at the personal level.

It's important for an
individual to set a value for
their time. I am referring to
giving a price to yourself
(in terms of hour, day), benchmark
the task that you are going to
involve in with the value set. This
will help you to make decision
whether to leave it or to
involve in a task.

Besides salary, one should
consider their skills in certain
area. Let me explain by using
an example, say JC having a
problem with the water tank.
The tank is rusted and leaked.
He asked a plumber and the
plumber quoted him for 200
for a bypass and remove the
water tank in a day.

JC thought that it's not difficult
at all, he can do that. Although
JC is just an armature, JC might
not be able to finish the job in one day
but the most 2 days. Let's
assume JC is earning at
3200/month for his engineer job.
He is working for 8 hours/day
for 20 days/month.

By calculation, JC's charge is
20/hour or 160/day. Looking
at the charge rate , it is cheaper
for JC to do by himself.

What do you think?

Should JC leave it to the
plumber rather than taking his
own time dealing with the
problem? The plumber's charge
rate is 20% higher, but JC
might take even more time to
complete the task which
eventually bring the repair
cost higher.

In fact, JC should concentrate
on how to increase his value
based on the expertise and
skills rather than putting effort
to save small money. I learnt this
lesson from my father-in-law.
Focus on the activities that will
radically increase our salary by
making our self radically more
valuable at work.

Work Life Balance

It's going to be Monday again!
How good if I can have another
off day. I have this strong feeling
towards Monday especially on
Sunday night.

My current job is on 5:2 meaning
work for 5 days and off for 2 days.
I am targeting at 4:3 because I
wish to have more time for myself.
The fact is, there are only 24 hours
a day. Therefore we need a tool to
guide us how to utilize the the 24
hours a day.

To achieve this, I wrote down all
the activities and tasks for the
past one month. Categorized the
items in the list under work, social
life, exercise and personal time.
I tried to estimate time taken for
each activities weekly.

By having this information in hand,
I will have a rough idea on the time
taken for each activities, the activities
that consume most of my time (56 hours
sleep and 50 hours work), how to
achieve more time and what activities
need to be reduced?

Sometimes, we might overlook at the
time we spend in doing household
work, window shopping, watching
television etc. To have more time,
delegate the work to our family
member to share the load. For
example, wash the toilet, clean the
house, clean the ceramic filter etc.

Reduce the frequency and time taken
for shopping by accumulate things to
be purchased in a list.

Reduce the visit to bank by gathering
all the utility bills and pay online in
one shot.

By tracking the daily routine, I
managed to pin point to the activities
that take up most of my time, those
activities that can be further reduced.
Thus having more time for hobby,
self improvement and the most
important is work life balance

Manage Credit & Spend Wisely

This morning, I just received my latest
credit card statement from Citibank. To
my surprise, I don't have to pay a single
cent because I have zero expense last
month. This is a good news to me as I have
been paying debts for the pass one year.

I used to have more than 10 credit cards
two years ago. As a results, I overspent
and got stuck financially. I realized this
is a serious matter because my expenses is
much more higher than my net income.
Even additional income I earned through
working extra hours cannot help me to
solve the problem, not to mention about
savings.

The first thing I did is to cut down the
number of credit cards that I owned.

My considerations to keep the cards are:
1. No annual fees
2. great rewards system

I can have a better control on my credit
card expenses by owning 2~3 cards. On
top of that, by consolidating my spending
power, I am able to achieve my gift target
much more faster.

But then, we should factor in your personal
life style and hobbies in determining which
cards you want to keep. You will have more
options in certain situation. My observation
shows that most of the credit card company
focus in giving special discount for dinning.
But I like to travel and I used to travel back
to my home town Miri, Sarawak few times a
year. Therefore, I appreciate a card that can
give me the opportunity to win free flight or
discount on the air ticket.

As a cardmember, we should educate
ourselves how to use the credit wisely. If you
are interested for some financial literacy tips,
you can get more information from here.

Manage your credit and spend wisely.

Reading Habit For Improvement

Nowadays, with the facility of Internet,
people no longer rely on magazine and
newspaper. E-news, e-zines, ebooks are
easily obtain from the internet for free.
I subscribed to plenty of e-zines to upgrade
myself especially those related to my job.
Besides, I also pay attention to
self-improvement related sites such as
Early to rise (ETR).

It provides some tips in earning more
money, Internet business opportunity,
and personal message from
Michael Masterson. He has developed a
loyal following through his writings in ETR,
he has owned and run multi-million dollar
companies that were public/private,
onshore/overseas, local/international,
service/product.

If you like to improve yourself, do consider
Early-to-Rise. It focuses in giving advise on
health ,wealth and wise. Get free report on
how to build wealth and save money so you
can get rich here.

Personally, this e-zines has been beneficial to
me, I learn a lot and still learning for it.

Continue to read books to improve our self.

Improvement Start From Today

I read Personal Money (PM) every month.
I have to admit that not all the articles
are relevant to my needs. But some of
them are remarkably good.

This magazine has given me more
insides and ideas how to utilise my
money. The last issue of 2006, PM
talked about taxes and summarized
all the items eligible for tax deduction.
This is the good timing for us to renew
the magazine subscription, or getting
some books for self improvement at
the same time can claim for tax relief.
The most important thing is to do a
self assessment and review.

In their latest issue (January 2007),
PM focused on the investment topic.
This is the time where most of us
receive our bonus. It's the best timing
for us to allocate certain amount of
money for investment. Either invest in
mutual fund, shares or buying properties.
Start from somewhere.

New year, new resolution. Do some
planning, identify what do you want to
achieve this year. Find some reasons (why)
for you to pursue. By when you
should achieve the target? Finally, how
to achieve them by breaking down
the target into smaller items to be
carried daily. Do a periodical review
against the target. Always stay focus &
improve consistently.

Today is never too late.

Stay Focus And Improve

I have been working in a MNC company
for 6 years. However after so many years
of working, the same question always pop
out from my mind: what do you want to
achieve in your life? Have you achieve it?

Well, it's always my priority to seek for
improvement in various aspect of my life.
While i was still a design engineer, I
worked additional 2 hours to get more
money. Most of the times, I went back
to work on Saturday and Sunday to earn
more and to learn more. I managed to
earn additional 30% of my salary and
eventually my boss promoted me to
senior engineer earlier compare to my
other peers.

Soon I figure out that I need to find
ways to get the job done in a shorter
time. I tried to improve on the efficiency.
At the same time, I doubled my effort
in the development of LCD project.
Started off with the basic electronics,
company products, market survey
to product design. The project was a
success that finally brought me to
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan for
promotion and demo to customer.

I have been practising this method
all this while. Each day I will look
into my work and find ways to reduce
the time taken. Once I reached that, I
will be able to move on. I discover this
method has enable me to stay focus
and keep moving forward.

This might not be applicable exactly
to you, but as long as you stay focus
on what you are doing, always try to
improve the existing job, then you
should be able to achieve your target
on time if not sooner.