I bought my Canon G6 in SM’s Cyberzone in 2005. Since I was drooling over the EOS 350D at that time, I thought the G6 for P45,000 was already a money-smart compromise. It has video capability too, the rationalizing part of me said. When we took our new digital baby home, we took pictures of even the most ordinary things like doorknobs, light fixtures and fingernails ☺. My 10-year old kid, especially. It felt like a really good buy.

Boy, was I dead wrong. I learned last week that this camera shop called 24K on Hidalgo sold the little rugrat for P17,000 that same year! Original. With warranties and all. I wanted to weep! Rod, the friendly attendant who was referred to me by Edwin Redrino, a really talented professional photographer, was actually concerned for me.

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Guys, we have a Frugal Week hangover =). Here is another post on more frugal living tips, courtesy of our editorial partner MoneySense, the first and only personal finance magazine in the country.

As I said in a previous post, there are expensive things that help save money in the long-term. A good education, books, health care, vacations (even simple ones when money is tight) should be in our budget even if they are expensive.

Our article from MoneySense this week written by Ruth Floresca adds some more to the list:

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If credit cards were horses, I would be crucified by animal lovers the way I’ve been repeating again and again that credit card bills should be paid in full every month. Banks don’t like me very much when I say this, and in fact a friend who is also a banker told me (very nicely but with a hint of acid hehe) that she would like to turn over my account on a silver platter to a competing bank.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my credit cards. I get free tickets to Butuan and Boracay every other year. I get cash rebates too. I manage my cash flows more easily and I don’t rush to payment centers anymore when Meralco says it’s time to pay up. If I could pay parking fees at the mall with my credit card, I would. But as much as I love those shiny plastic things, I hate paying interest more.

Think of this, if you have a P30,000 balance in your credit card and this has been going on for a year, you could have saved at least P12,600 just by paying interest the balance in full. And just to keep it simple, that computation is on straight interest, not even compounded interest. Imagine how many pairs of shoes you can buy with that! (Greedy laughter)

A reader, Peter, alerted me that SM City North Edsa has a recycle drive going on. Check out how to turn your trash into cash! Ahh…errr…don’t come anymore if you’re from Cavite unless you have a big truck of trash hehe.

My 2-year old son was hospitalized again last week and it got me thinking about whether it makes good sense to get a health card.

When my husband and I decided to enroll the entire family into his company’s health program, we did it mostly for our peace of mind and not based on some proof from an Excel worksheet that it will eventually pay off. Unless you know how often your children are going to get sick, I don’t see any way of finding out exactly if the P1,500 per month expense for all our health cards will be worth it.

Based on simple computations for 2007, it appears that getting a health card worked for us – at least for last year. Consider the figures:

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What do you do with your broken down refrigerators, air conditioning systems, electric fans, television sets and other appliances around the house?

Do people still get them fixed or is it too much of a bother?

My 10-year old television set, for example, finally broke down and I asked a neighborhood electrician to come to my home to fix it. I paid P1,500 and after a few weeks, it broke down again! I asked another electrician to fix it and he billed me P300 and it worked for one more year.

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For the past three years, I’ve been paying P126 per week for each kind of newspaper delivered to my doorstep. That’s P6,552 per year, P13,104 yearly on two newspaper subscriptions. Aside from that, I buy Forbes, Fortune and The Economist from the newsstand when I like the cover.

Lately, I realized that I can save more than 40 percent by subscribing directly from these companies instead of buying from the neighborhood delivery boy (in my case delivery lola) or getting my copy while waiting for my turn at the cashier in the grocery or the bookstore. Even better, I can save 100 percent by reading articles online via their websites or subscribing to their RSS.

I work for an online media publication so that was, of course, a duh moment! My rationalization was that the adverts are news for me too, so I did need the hardcopy of the newspaper. Plus, I wanted my 13-year old daughter to talk intelligently about GDP, inflation and what’s going on with San Miguel Corp. as well as the newest stuff from Pugad Baboy without having to spend too much unmonitored time on the Internet.
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