ပိန္ခ်င္လြန္းလို.

အခုတေလာ က်မ ေတာ္ေတာ္ အလုပ္ရွုပ္ေနပါတယ္။ ရွုပ္မွာေပါ႔။ အရွုပ္ေတြ လုပ္ေနတာကိုး။ က်မ အသက္ ဒီ ၂၀၀၉ မွာ ေငြရတုပါ။ ဒါေပမဲ႔ ဒီအရြယ္ၾကီးအထိ ေရမကူးတတ္ေသးလို႔ ဒီနွစ္ဦးပိုင္းမွာ ေရကူးသင္တန္းသြားတက္ပါတယ္။ မိန္းကေလး သီးသန္႔ ဆရာမ သင္တာမွာ အခုွဆိုရင္ေရထဲၿပဳတ္က်ရင္ ပန္းေတာ္၀င္ခ်က္ခ်င္းမေသနုိင္ေတာ႔ပါဘူး။၁၅ မိ္နစ္ေလာက္အထိေတာ႔ လာကယ္မဲ႔သူကို ယက္ကန္ယက္ကန္ နဲ႕ေစာင္႕လုိ႕ရပါျပီ။ ျပီးခဲ႕တဲ႔အပတ္က က်မဆရာမကသူ႕သမီး ၄ႏွစ္သမီးေလးကုိေခၚလာပါတယ္။
က်မတုိ႕အားလုံးအံ႕အားသင္႕ရပါတယ္။ ဆရာမကုိ အိမ္ေထာင္ရွိတယ္လုိ႕ထင္မထားလုိ႕ပါ။ စကားလဲမစပ္မိေတာ႕မေျပာျဖစ္ၾကပါဘူး။ ဆရာမက ကုိယ္လုံးကုိယ္ေပါက္ အခ်ဳိးက်ေတာ႕အိမ္ေထာင္သည္ကေလးအေမလုိ႕မထင္ၾကပါဘူး။

ဒါနဲ႕တေယာက္တေပါက ္ဆရာမကုိ၀ုိင္းေျပာေနၾကတုန္း ဆရာမက က်မကုိေမးပါတယ္။၀ိတ္ဘယ္ေလာက္
ရွိသလဲတဲ႕..။ေအာ္..ဒုကၡ ရွက္ပါတယ္ဆိုေနမွ က်မ လဲ မေၿဖခ်င္ ေၿဖခ်င္ နဲ႔ ၆၈ ကီလို လို႔ေၿဖ လိုက္ရပါတယ္။
ဟုတ္တယ္ေလ.. က်မက အရုိးအဆစ္ၾကီးမားၿပီး ထြားၾကိဳင္းသူပါ။ မညွာမတာေၿပာရရင္ေတာ႔ ၀ တယ္ေပါ႔ရွင္။

ဆရာမက ဆက္ေၿပာပါတယ္။ ဒီသမီးေလးကို ေမြးၿပီးစက သူက ၇၂ ကီလို တဲ႔။ ဘုရား .. ဘုရား.. အဲဒါ သူေန႔တိုင္းေရကုူး တာ ၆၀ ပတ္တဲ႔။ အိပ္ထ မတင္ အခါ ၁၀၀ ပါတြဲ လုပ္တယ္တဲ႔။ ၂လ ပဲ လုပ္ရတယ္။ အခု ဒီခႏၶာကိုယ္ ၿဖစ္သြားတယ္တဲ႔။ အခု သူ႔ ၀ိတ္က ၅၀ ကီလို တဲ႔။

အားက်လိုက္တာ။ ပန္းေတာ္၀င္တို႔စိတ္ထဲက ၾကိတ္ၿပီး ငါလဲလုပ္မယ္ဟဲ႔ေပါ႔။ အမယ္ေလးေလး.. အေၿပာလြယ္သေလာက္အလုပ္ခက္တယ္ဆိုတာ ဒါပဲေနမွာ။ ေရွးလူၾကီးေတြ အားအားယားယား ေၿပာခဲ႔တာမဟုတ္ဘူး။ က်မမွာ အေခါက္ ၆၀ မေၿပာနဲ႔ ၆ ေခါက္ေလာက္ကူးမယ္စိတ္ကူးထားတာ။ ၂ ေခါက္ေလာက္ကူးၿပီး ေတာ္ေတာ္ေမာေနၿပီ။ အေၾကာတက္ခ်င္သလိုလိုဘာလိုလို.. ဆရာမကေၿပာပါတယ္။ ေၿဖးေၿဖးကူး နားနားၿပီးကူးတဲ႔။ ဘယ္ရမလဲ။ တနည္းမဟန္တနည္းၾကံေပါ႔။ ေရအမ်ားၾကီးမကူးနုိင္ရင္ အိပ္ထမတင္လုပ္။ ဆရာမက မွာထားပါေသးတယ္။ အၾကိမ္ ၅၀ ဆက္တိုက္ကို ၂ ခါခြဲလုပ္တဲ႔။ က်မ အၾကိမ္၂၀မွာ တခါစီ နားရပါတယ္။ ၂ရက္ေလာက္လုပ္ၿပီး အခုကိုယ္ေတြလက္ေတြနာေနလို႔ ဖ်ားခ်င္သလိုေတာင္ၿဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။

ဪ ပါးစပ္က၀င္သြားမိရင္ ကိုယ္တြင္ေဘးၾကီးရာ ဆိုတာ တကယ္ပါပဲ။ စားတံုးကလြယ္လိုက္တာ။ ၀လာမွ ပိန္ခ်င္ေတာ႔ ဒီအဆီေတြက ရီတာေပါ႔။ အေမက ေၿပာထားပါတယ္။ ရန္ကုန္ၿပန္လာလည္မယ္ဆိုရင္ ၀ိတ္ေလးဘာေလးခ် ၿပီးမွၿပန္လာခဲ႔တဲ႔။ နင္မရွက္ေပမဲ႔ ငါရွက္တယ္တဲ႔။

စကၤာပူ မွာ ကားေလးတစီး ၀ယ္ဖို့အေရး

က်မ ေနတဲ့ စကၤာပူ မွာကား ေလးတစီး၀ယ္ႏုိင္ဖို. ေတာ္ေတာ္ မလြယ္ပါဘူး။
သူမ်ားေတြ ကားေလးေတြတ၀ီ၀ီ နဲ. ဆိုေတာ့က်မ လည္း ကားရူးရူး ပါတယ္။
ၿမန္မာၿပည္မွာ ၁၀ တန္းအထိ အေဖ ေမာင္းပို.ေပးခဲ့သမွ် က်မ အၿငိမ့္သားထိုင္စီးခဲ့မိတာ အခုမွေနာင္တရမိပါတယ္။ ဆယ္တန္းေအာင္ ၿပီးေတာ့လည္း ကတိုက္ကရုိက္နဲ.စကၤာပူထြက္လာခဲ့ရတာ
က်မ ကလပ္ နဲ. ဘရိတ္ေတာင္ ေကာင္းေကာင္း မကြဲ ခဲ့ပါဘူး။
ဒါ နဲ.ပဲ ၿပီးခဲ့ တဲ့နွစ္ ကမွ လိုင္စင္လုပ္ရပါ တယ္။
ေခြးၾကီးမွ လက္ေပးသင္ ဆိုသလို ဒီထိုးဟိုထိုးနဲ.ပဲ လိုင္စင္ေလးတစ္ခု ေငြ ၁၈၀၀ ကုန္ၿပီး မွပဲ ရ လာပါတယ္။
တၾကိမ္ေၿဖၿပီး ၁၈မွတ္ နဲ.ကပ္ေအာင္ တာဆိုေတာ့ေမာင္းခ်င္လိုက္တဲ့ကား ယားေနတာပါပဲ။
ရွိစုမဲ့စုေလး ၿဖစ္ခ်င္ရာၿဖစ္ ကားသစ္ပဲ ၀ယ္မယ္ဟဲ့ (ကားေဟာင္း ၀ယ္မိလို. မေတာ္ ပ်က္ခဲ့ရင္ စက္ဖံုးေတာင္ က်က် နန မဖြင့္တတ္တဲ့ က်မ ကိုယ့္ ဒုကၡ ကိုယ္ရွာ ၿဖစ္မွာစိုးလို.) ဆို ၿပီး ကား ေစ်း ေတြ စံုစမ္း ကား ဖိုရမ္ ေတြ လိုက္ဖတ္ ၿပီး ေအာက္ မွာတင္ ထားတဲ့ ဟာ့ဒ္ ၀ဲ ဇုန္ က ရတဲ့ Article ေလး ကိုလဲ ဖတ္ ၿပီး ေရာ ေနာက္ဆံုး စီးပြားပ်က္ကပ္ ဆိုက္ေနတဲ့ ခုလို အခ်ိန္ မွာ ကား ၀ယ္ဖို.စဥ္းစား တဲ့ အေၾကာင္းကို ရက္ အကန္.အသတ္မရွိ ယာယီ ေရြ.ဆိုင္းထားလိုက္ပါတယ္။ ခ်စ္မိတ္ေဆြ တို.လည္း ဗဟုသုတ အၿဖစ္ ဖတ္လို.ရေအာင္ တင္ေပးထားပါတယ္။

Can you afford a car?

Once in a while, a forumer will appear with details about his salary and expenditure and seek the advice of fellow HWZers about whether he can afford a car.

The answers will predictably fall into four categories.

(1) "Wah, you earn so much, can afford any car you like" (for any salary above $2.5k)

This type of answer is usually posted by non-working forumers like students or those serving NS, who think that anything above $1k is a lot of money.

(2) "I like honda civic type r because chio. u shld buy"

This type of answer is useless for budgeting, but simply for +1 purposes. Again, this type of posting is usually by students or those serving NS.

(3) "I earn $5k/6k/7k per month but still take bus and eat rice + tau you"

This type of posting is usually by a forumer who earns a fair amount, but thinks he earns a lot and wants to show off how financially savvy he is.

(4) "Singapore cars so expensive if I go live in USA/Australia/Europe/Africa/North Pole the cars are so much cheaper, women more beautiful, jobs plentiful and food is tastier"

These are postings by 'politically aware' (i.e. PAP bashing) Singaporeans who seem to think that their job skills will allow them to migrate easily to other countries to work, when they don't realise that their skills can be done by a Chinese/Indian at twice the speed and half the price.

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However, today, I will answer this question for you once and for all in 5 easy steps.

Step 1 Take your average monthly salary over the last 6 months and minus your average monthly expenses over the last 6 months.

Note: If you don't know how much you earned or saved over the last 6 months, car ownership is likely to leave you in financial ruin.

Step 2 Add car allowance (if any).

Step 3 Minus public transport costs.

Step 4 Do you have enough money left to maintain the car you are thinking of (car loan, insurance, road tax, petrol, parking, ERP, maintenance, upgrade budget)?

Note: If you never owned a car before and you do your calculations and you think 'oh my god, this cannot be right as it is so expensive'. Congratulations, add 10% to your figure and you now have the cost of car ownership in Singapore.

Step 5

If YES, you can afford a car FOR THE TIME BEING (assuming you are happy to reduce your savings by the same amount).

Note: If circumstances change (change job, lose job, lose car allowance, get married, got baby, loved one falls ill and needs medical expenses), then depending on whether you can sell the car without having to come out with money, you may be financially screwed.

If NO, you cannot afford a car. Sorry. Work harder or spend less, then maybe in the future can.

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Extra Observations

1. For young people with less life experience, please note that owning a car and being able to afford a car are two different things. There are many people who cannot afford a car, but still own a car.

Most of the confusion young people face is wondering why their colleague/friend who earns $1500 can afford a car - the answer is they cannot afford a car.

Either they have background support from family, or they are financially bleeding to maintain the car.

2. For guys who think that girls like guys with cars - you are unfortunately right. However, most girls do not know or care what sort of car it is, as long as it can get from point A to point B in relative comfort.

If you are planning on buying a car for the main purpose of increasing your attractiveness to the opposite sex, a cheap and comfortable one will do - no need for a 'sports car' like a Civic Type R or STi. A guy who has an Altis or Sunny but can afford the occasional nice restaurant treat vs a guy with a STi but can only afford hawker centre or Mcdonalds - who do you think will be more successful in the game of love?

3. BONUS Observation Some people will read this posting and think that I am discouraging car ownership.

I am not. I am trying to make sure that ideally, if you choose to own a car, you go in with your eyes open, and not get 'surprised' by your financial situation as time passes and reality sets in.

MANY MANY Singaporeans (including car owners who post on this forum) do not 'pass' the test I have put in this posting, myself included when I first started work.

Although I was making $5.5k when I bought my first car, due to poor financial discipline, I had almost nothing left every month.

It is very unpleasant for a young person to realise that his financial situation is his own responsbility, but the earlier you realise this, the better it is for you.

The stress you get from checking your rolled over credit card debt, overdraft and bills every month is even more unpleasant than trying to gain a basic understanding of personal finance.

It is unfortunate that for most young men in Singapore, a personal finance lesson is paid for in the shape of a $60k depreciating lump of mental on wheels.

If you still decide to buy a car even though you can't afford it, all the best.

မဂၤလာပါရွင္...

မဂၤလာပါရွင္...

သူမ်ားေတြ ဘေလာ႕ေနၾကတာေတာ႕ၾကာပါျပီ..။
ကုိယ္လဲစိတ္ကူးထဲမွာဘေလာ႕ေနခဲ႕တာၾကာပါျပီ..။
အေၾကာင္းျပခ်က္မ်ဳိးစုံနဲ႕မစျဖစ္ခဲ႕တာ..အခု မိတ္ေဆြတုိ႕ျမင္ေနရတဲ႔
"ပန္းေတာ္၀င္" ဆုိတဲ႕ဘေလာ႕က ေန႕ေစ႕လေစ႕မက ေက်ာ္ျပီးမွပဲ ေမြးႏုိင္ပါေတာ႕တယ္..။
ဒါလဲ ပန္းေတာ္၀င္ ခုိင္းတုိင္းမျငီးမျငဳနဲ႕လုပ္ေပးတတ္တဲ႕ခ်စ္လွစြာေသာ
ေမာင္ေလးေက်းဇူးေၾကာင္႕ပါပဲ..။
ကုိယ္႕ဟာကုိယ္ဆုိရင္ ဖင္လွည္႕ေခါင္းကုိင္နဲ႕ဘယ္ေတာ႕မွစျဖစ္မွာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး..။
အခုေတာ႕လဲစမိျပီဆုိမွေတာ႕ ဆက္ရေတာ႕မွာပါပဲ..။ တတ္ႏုိင္သမွ် ပုိစ္႕ေတြကုိ
တင္သြားေပးမွာပါ..။ျမန္မာလုိစာရုိက္တာ မကြ်မ္းက်င္လုိ႕ ရံဖန္ရံခါလဲ အဂၤလိပ္လုိ
တင္ပါ႕မယ္ဆုိတာ ၾကဳိတင္ျပီး ေတာင္းပန္ထားပါရေစရွင္...
လာေရာက္လည္ပတ္သူ မိတ္ေဆြအေပါင္း စိတ္ခ်မ္းသာ ကုိယ္က်န္းမာၾကပါေစရွင္....။