Hack girls?

I just came across a story on Hack a Day where Yahoo hired some strippers for their Hack event in Taiwan just recently. Judging from the quick manner which an apology got posted and the response from, it sounds like Yahoo made an unpopular decision by hiring these strippers.

Is this just an over-reaction? Perhaps it is the environment that it is in. I have been to many trade shows and conferences, Cebit, E3, etc. and guess what, the booth hosts are they because 1) they look good and 2) by looking good, they attract people to the booths to talk about the products. They even use the same techniques on webpages, have you ever noticed that when you click onto the technical support page, they usually is a picture of a hot looking girl/guy smiling holding a phone.

Do get me wrong, I don't like the exploitation of women and events like the Hack is absolutely not the correct occasions for this.

I reckon the guys leaving the Hack will be yelling out Yahoo! OK, lets move on....

The cost of setting up to live in an another country

Relocating is always a significant event in anyone's life. It is ever more so if the relocation is to another continent. We recently start our relocation from Melbourne, Australia to Leichlingen, Germany. We are still in the relocating process, but are getting close to finalising it all.

The cost of the relocating is extremely astounding. Before we actually shifted, I did a budget on what I envisage we would needed to spend for the shift to be successful. Needless to say, I totally underestimate it. Some of the assumptions that I made during the formulation of the budget proved to be totally false.

The following are the major ticket items that we have encountered during the relocation.

Cost of renting a house. In Germany, the cost of renting a house is much, much higher than in Australia. The cost can be divided into two catergories, administrative and constructive. Overall, I estimate that it has cost close to about $20,000.

For the administrative, you will need to be paying for the real estate agent's commission (2 x monthly rent), the security bond (3 x monthly rent), the rent (1 month in advance). For a typical house, this is a total of about 6500 EUR.

For the constructive side, the houses in Germany is usually bare and it need to be kitted out with lighting and a kitchen. Yes, I mean the kitchen. This could easily cost up to 2000 to 3000 EUR.

Cost of transport. We managed to get a car, an old car but driveable and suitable for the family for about 5000 EUR. However, it is the incidental cost that caught us out. This includes the conversion of our Australian driving license to a German driving license, (1000 EUR for my wife and mine), the car taxes (400EUR for my diesel car), the insurance (400 EUR per year) and registrating it in the your town (100 EUR). It is certainly not cheap to own a car in Germany.

Cost of appropriate clothing. The winter in Germany is totally different to the winter in Melbourne. For the kids, they will need to "upgrade" their winter clothing. The clothing includes their shoes, coats and jackets, thermal underwears, hats and beanies, gloves and mittens, and the list goes on and on.

I think that we were fortunate that our relocation occurs in European summer. It just means that we can delay the cost of the appropriate clothing until the winter time.

Returning...

I have decided to restart this blog as I starting to feel the need to write. However, I have evolve this blog from a personal fianance blog to something that I can write about anything. I guess time will allow it bias it towards a certain theme.

In the meantime, I hope that you will join me on this ride...

I'm going for a spell....

It has been blast and now my time that I have available for writing articles for this blog is getting smaller and smaller. I am having too much fun with the kids and my wife. So I am taking a spell, or a break from writing any more articles.

I have a few thankyou to say before I close off.

For those who reads this cheaps as chips regularly, I thank you for readership.

For those who subscribes to cheap-as-chips via RSS or email, thank you for subscribing.

I hope that all that have ever read this blog has gain something out of it.

See you at another time in the future.

Hooray!! Cheap fuel!!!

Well, cheaper than a few weeks ago when the cost of petrol was about 150 cents per litre.

I pulled up to my local petrol station to get some petrol into the car, and I had a feeling that I haven't felt in a few years. It was like an old friend visiting and saying "Hello, I haven't see you a while. I hope that I can stay for a few months."

My service station was selling petrol at 102 cents per litre. This is the cheapest petrol I have purchased in the last few years.

Actually, there is not much point to this article except that strange deja vu feeling of living in an era where petrol was less than a dollar a litre. Hooray for cheap fuel!!.

Now where is that jerry can....

Talk About Debt

I recently received an email from Matt, the editor of TalkAboutDebt, bringing my attention to a UK based website call www.TalkAboutDebt.co.uk. I like the title as it encourage people who are in the debt to start talking about their problems. So I had a better look at it.

TalkAboutDebt is run by a group of bloggers who have, in the past, been in debt and are able to provide some dialogue about their debt experience.

It is good to talk about your problems as it allow the problems to be acknowledge and then for it to be tackled. TalkAboutDebt provides a forum, in their "Questions and Answers" page, which your debt problems can be discussed. By using the forum for the discussions, your anonymity is retained.

The thing to watch out for with TalkAboutDebt is that the advice provide is generally only useful for UK based debt.

It has a page where it lists a range of companies that are able to provide you with profession advice on getting out of debt. Most of the companies feature provide a free financial planning service to help you get out debt.

As with most information on the internet, beware of the information that you received, and double check it against another source. However, from what I can read information on TalkAboutDebt, it appears to be sensible and logical.

In summary, TalkAboutDebt provides another source of information, however, just beaware of the information that you received or read on it.

Fixing our interest rate - a retrospective

Back in February this year, we fixed our home loan interest rate for the the next four years. Now that we are coming up to the one year anniversary, and falling interest rate. It is interesting to find out if we have made the correct decision.

One of the things that fixed interest rate gave us was a peace of mind. Like the many mums and dads out there, I don't really have a clue on which way the interest rate is going. At the time when we fixed the interest rate, it was on the way up. Looking back on it, it pretty much hit the top and is starting to plateau. However, we missed about two interest rate increases. Furthermore, the fixed interest rate gave my wife and I a peace of mind and some certainty on what our monthly mortgage payment is going to.

Now that interest rates are on their way down, we are considering re-negotiating a new loan. However, among the fees that the new loan will incur is an re-establishment fee, which will be about $600 to $700 and mortgage insurance if the new loan amount is more than 80% of the loan (a few thousand dollars). A calculation will need to be made to determine how much will be save and the saving will begin when the fees are taken into account.

During the reconsideration of the new loan, we are not going to limit ourself to our current bank. Perhaps we should consult a mortgage broker to see if they can secure a loan with a low cost.

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Interest rate fixed