The "Credit Crunch"

The credit crunch cake

UK is suffering from the "Credit Crunch" right now. Living cost shot up left right and centre. Banks kept increasing their interest rates despite the Bank of England lowering theirs to just 5%. UK had a good 10 years run of cheap mortgages, low food prices and strong currency under the Blair Labour management at no:10. Maybe it was a coincident (that the world economy headed south) but since Mr. Brown took over, things hasn't been looking great at all. The poor recent local election result for labour (worst in 40 years) represented how the residence really feel about his style of management. Let's just hope he can prove that he's actually full of beans and could pull through.

Closer to home.....or rather my home, we are definitely feeling the pinch!!!:

Fuel price shot up to £1.11 per litre. As a consequence of this, cost of food items increased as well (Unlike Malaysia, it's an open market system here and prices of staples are not regulated by the government) For example, a bag of ordinary 500g spaghetti shot up from 38p to now 78p-I thought it was a misprint of price tag at one point, £1.99 for a 1 kg packet of organic sweet potatoes (aproximately 3 bigish sized ones), £1.49 for a bag of spinach, £1.80 per kg of Basmati rice (used to be just under £1 per kg)-at a Costco here last week, we saw a Chinese couple that loaded up their MPV with 30 bags of Thai fragrant rice that was under just a little bit of discount, as if we were gonna expect war for the coming few months. My driving lesson hourly charge increased by £1.50 ( so did the test fee, yes I failed and had to retake again...boohoo) and the list goes on and on...

Being a single income family now, we are taking measures to cut unnecessary expenditures;

1) We've cut down on unnecessary mindless sightseeing driving. Instead, we go for long walks in the parks or neighbourhood- No, we are not green, it's the petrol price.

2) I bake my first cake after Tobey arrived.

3) We are on a lookout for cheaper Pampers Baby-dry all the time, and cut down the use of wipes.

4) We are planning to somehow plant our own sweet potatoes without making our garden look like an allotment space which would in turn pull down our resale price of this house.

5) We constantly compare unit prices of our staples - ask me how much a kg of streaky pork and I can quote you the price of at least 2 supermarket off my head...kekeke

6) We eat out much less.

7) We are constantly making sure that we are not being ripped off in our utility bills.

Geez...Life on a budget is no fun to say the least. But we are getting fitter from all the walks and fresh air. Plus, knowing that we are doing something in response to the southbound economy somewhat makes us feel "in control".

Hmm...taking all this into consideration, it further reinforces my take that the standard of living is indeed much better in Malaysia.