Count yourself lucky that you are still able to keep your job. It is time to review your spending pattern and reduce your expenses as the worst is yet to come.



Lifestyle changes: Examine your lifestyle. Are you still going one a spending spree?

No more impulsive buying and refrain from purchasing non-essential items. Don't renew the gym membership. Cancel those subscriptions that you don't have the time to read. Instead of going to the movies buy DVDs and watch at home. Terminate you connection to Astro and watch TV programmes instead.

Food: Instead of eating out you still can buy your favorite breakfast food and eat a home. Eat more often at home because home-cooked food is healthier and costs less.

Health: Give up smoking and drinking. Drink water instead of carbonated drinks Maintain good health to avoid incurring medical expenses.

Utility Bills: Make it a good habit to switch off all electrical appliances when not in use. Use energy saving light bulbs. Install a shower head to take bath. Turn on the air-conditioner and the fan during the early hours of the night and then turn off the air-conditioner and allow the fan to circulate the air n the room. Make sure that there are no leaky faucets at home.

Your House: Make minor repairs before they become major ones.

Credit cards: Keep only those cards without annual fees. Use your cards only to take advantage of savings. For example: petrol purchases you use CIMB-PETRONAS card and you use Citibank Giant card for grocery shopping at Giant.

Shopping: Buy house brand instead of popular brands at cheaper prices and the quality is more or less the same.

Books: For story books loan from the library instead of buying new ones because you read only once.

Big ticket items: When you need to replace expensive household items get zero interest installment plan from your credit cards so that you can spread the payments up to 12 months or more. By doing so you monthly budget will not be impacted and there is no additional cost to you.

When you are careful in your spending you will soon develop into a thrifty habit.

When you have taken steps to trim your expense, it is also prudent to look for additional income sources to offset rising cost of living and to save more for rainy days. When you reduce your expenses and supplement your income at the same time you are taking a two-pronged approach to financial freedom. In Chinese there is a saying: 开源节流 (Kai yuan jie liu). It literally means opening up more incoming water sources and reduce the out flow of water.

What can you do to bring home additional income? You can consider the following:

Writing: Be a writer and send your articles to major newspapers or magazines. You can also create a blog at blogger.com to write unique and original articles regularly and collect earnings from AdSense.

Teaching: Provide tuition in English. As you know the standard of English has gone to the dogs. You can use your language skills to make extra bucks.

Financial services: If this is your cup of tea you can be a financial planner or an agent selling insurance products or unit trusts.

DJ: You can turn your passion to good use when music is in your blood. You can be a part-time DJ at one of the local entertainment outlets

Photography: When you are good at taking photographs become a freelance photographer to make some money by helping others to capture those precious moments at wedding, functions, birthday parties or even commercial gigs.

Event Organizer: Be a party planner and organize annul staff party for companies, company outings, wedding and functions.

Your spouse: Your wife may be good at cooking certain dishes, cakes or desserts. She can starts a small stall and sell those items for half a day.

She can also take care of infants or children during the day for working couples. She can also be a fashion designer if she has a flair for it.

Part-time accounting: Help small businesses to keep their books for a fee.

The list is endless. Think of something you enjoy doing and turn it into a lucrative source of additional income.