Where has price change hit the hardest? An example from the biggest economy in the world

Where has price change hit the hardest? An example from the biggest economy in the world

If someone were to ask me what is the largest expense every month…

Right at the top would be home mortgage installment. I have sold the past 3 properties I stayed in before and I should be renting out the 4th property I stayed very soon and I have to continue paying for the current place I stay (Gamuda Gardens) for a very long time to come. We can also include all the extra things we buy for the home etc and we can call all these as “Housing.”

After this huge number, the next one would be child Care / anything which is children related would be at the second place. Then, the third could be Food and Beverage. My Proton Persona (manual) is fully paid for 10 years ago while my wife’s Alza is in the 2nd year. So, I only pay instalment for Alza today and this is why the car installment is smaller than F&B. How is this compared to the situation in the US? Take a look at the below on how price changes have affected them.

Many things are cheaper today versus year 2000

Once upon a time, my brother-in-law bought a LED TV of 32 inch for RM3,800. These days, a 40 inch LED TV would be below RM1,000 and if you do not care about the brand, it could be even cheaper. 32 inch looks very small. In other words, when we are talking about buying a new TV, the price has fallen and it has fallen a lot as per the image above.

Computer Software is also cheaper, I mean even the price of a new laptop is cheaper today than 5 years ago. Ok, maybe except for MacBook but every other brand is definitely cheaper and yet more powerful too. This is followed by Toys. Actually, for this, I do think one major reason is also because instead of building it, importing from cheaper countries meant that toys are becoming cheaper too. Next would be cellphone services. We do not need to pay through our nose for broadband services these days. That’s a plus definitely.

Car prices are also rising even if it’s also affected by the ever cheaper EVs from China too. Gone are the days when we could have Segment C cars for below RM100,000. These days, Segment B cars would start from RM80,000 all the way to just below RM100,000. We are talking about non-national brand models such as Toyota Vios or Honda City.

Strive to reduce expenses so that we have higher salary and not higher expenses

No one knows when we may be faced with unforeseen medical expenses. That’s why it’s best to have medical insurance to protect from unforeseen circumstances too. If cost of education is getting higher and we somehow still prefer overseas branded degrees versus local ones (I personally think local private universities are good), here are some potential choices too:

US qualification? Arizona State University degree? Complete it fully in Malaysia here.

UK qualifications here in Malaysia? Nottingham University, Heriot-Watt University, Reading University, Southampton University and Newcastle University Medicine Malaysia.

Australia qualifications within Malaysia? Monash University Curtin University Swinburne University of Technology. University of Wollongong and also degrees which can be completed in Malaysia as part of the local private university programs too like Victoria University in Sunway College.

Reduce F&B expenses. It really does not have to be RM20 per meal including drinks. It could really just be a simple chicken rice and drink plain water and suddenly, instead of RM600 for lunch for 30 days, we can reduce this to half or lower too. This is just one meal, if we do the same for all three meals; reduce the expenses, we can see a huge savings chunk by the end of the year too.

Time to reduce the need too buy some cars to save petrol lah. National brands are perfectly fine. Even the new Proton Saga is now powered by a 1.5 litre engine and all the bells and whistles too. Price? Less than half of the lower spec Japanese Segment B car today. This is also why it was announced that Proton Saga (latest model) has achieved 70,000 orders to date.

Just decide and take actions, else just need to earn by far higher than everyone else and suddenly all these expenses would be within our control too.

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