My computer crashed 3 days ago. This computer has served me well for almost 6 years now. This was the first computer I bought with my own money. Feels a little sad to have to let go of this PC. Fortunately, I have been expecting to buy a new PC since last year, so I have set aside some money for this day.

I bought a new computer yesterday. It cost me less than RM1,900. The day before, I went around several shops collecting their price lists. I even went online to download their price lists to compare. In the end, I decided to buy from this shop because the items are cheaper compared to other shops. I reckon I save about RM80.

It is a norm for PC retailers to add a charge of around 2% if paying by credit card. So I paid cash. See how handy it is to have cash ready for emergency purchases? I would have been charged this 2% if I had to put this on my credit card.

My previous PC cost almost double this amount. This prompted me to think that advances in technology improve features of consumer electronics while at the same time bringing prices down. Isn’t this wonderful?

Firstly, women are paid less than their male counterparts. Employers reasoned that women are given paid maternity leave and they tend to focus more on their families. This sometimes interrupt their work.

Now, when it comes to retrenchment, it seems that women are the first to be retrenched. Though women makes up only 35% of the country’s workforce, however women make up half of the workers retrenched during this economic crisis.

Malaysia is still a long way from being an “equal opportunity employer”.

The latest victim of the financial crisis is Trump. No, not Donald Trump. It’s the Trump casinos filing for bankruptcy.

The Trump casinos filed for bankruptcy after Donald Trump resigned as Chairman of the board. He was reported as being frustrated that bond holders and their allies on the board rebuffed his effort to buy the company private. Why didn’t he tell the board “You’re fired!”

All these while I thought the gambling business is a sure win business. The gambling odds favor the house. It beats me as to why the Trump casinos had to file bankruptcy.

I was reading a book on personal finance when one line suddenly caught my eye. “Rich people always insist on getting a receipt and checking them.” I couldn’t agree more. Let me share a personal experience.

There was this healthy snack that was on sale. It was cheap and I decided to buy 13 packs of the snack. There were many flavors and so I selected a few flavors. The cashier scanned all the 13 packs. I paid the price as displayed by the cash register.

I was on my way walking out of the store when I scanned the receipt. There were about 7 or 8 packs sold at normal price. I quickly went back to the cashier to highlight the error. The cashier checked with the supervisor and they confirmed that I should have been billed the sale price.

It wasn’t the mistake of the cashier because she scanned all the 13 packs and the price was taken from the IT database. It was the backend support’s oversight for not updating the sale price for all the flavors. Apparently they missed out this flavor when updating the sale price in their database.

Mistakes like this do happen. And this is why it is always a good habit to check your receipts.

I couldn’t get myself to agree with this columnist who wrote that we shouldn’t talk ourselves into a recession. He wrote that the we should continue spending instead of lessen our spending. And that we shouldn’t talk about recession at all, for if we talk about it then it will become a self-fulfilled prophecy.

During uncertain times like this when the economy slows down, and people start losing their jobs, it is a normal reaction for people to protect themselves. It is very natural for people to save more money for rainy days ahead. Is the columnist who wrote that we should keep spending suggesting that we keep putting more debt onto our credit cards? Open up your eyes and see what excessive credit and debt did to USA.

As for discussing and talking about recession amongst ourselves, no we are not talking ourselves into a recession. We are merely reminding ourselves and our loved ones of a possibility of recession and plan ahead accordingly.

The government is afraid of the economy worsening, hence the government encourages us to spend more. Well, you can be patriotic and go on a spending spree. However, when you are old, broke and crying, who will cry with you? Certainly not the government nor your friends who diligently saved their money over the years.