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Suddenly within a short period of time and without any early warning, I found myself footing additional RM148.8 per year for my Star newspaper and Astro cable TV subscription. Not a big deal, Indah Water would argue – it only cost me around RM0.41 per day. But if you take a step back and start looking at other never-ending utility bills such as home phone, mobile phone, Internet, electricity, water and credit card fees, you will surprise how such unambiguous charges conspire together to make a hole in your wallet without your noticing.

To be honest, partly, these never-ending bills are our own doing; we want HBO, sport channel and Wah Lai Toi in our remote control, we prefer gold over classic card to show case our status, we are addicted to multiple SMS instead of making a simple call, we want to have fast internet access but failed to note that the connection is based on best connection rate. On the other hand, rising energy price such as electricity and water pushed the overall bill even higher.

To illustrate, here is my average recurring monthly utility bill:

• Phone bill – RM50
• Internet – RM44
• Electricity – RM90
• Water – RM15
• Mobile phone – RM70.00 (after RM30.00 ‘loyalty’ discount)
• Astro – RM79.95 (old rate), new rate will be RM93.95
• Gold card – RM12 (RM120/yr)

All together this come to RM360.95 per month, or RM4,331.40 per year.

I am now going to look at each of this item to see if there is a room to reduce these charges.

Phone bill
Given how popular the mobile phones are today (7 out of 10 Malaysian owned mobile phone), the fixed line phone is as a matter of fact, an redundant item. What more, I have to pay RM25.00 for the line rental. Unfortunately, until the wi-max available, I have no choice but to keep the fixed line phone for my internet connection. I am however is switching to a RM38 fixed call package, after the 5% tax, this will reduced my monthly phone bill by RM10, or RM120 a year provided I do not exceed the allocated call time. I am confident this is doable as the phone is primary used for internet access only. Kindly take note you can get the latest promotion package by calling the hotline number. For reason unclear to me, I can’t seem to find the latest promotion on TM Net’s website.

Internet – Streamyx
For the internet, I took up the basic package – the 60 hrs, RM44/mth 512 package. This is the lowest fee package available. While I enjoy a lower fee, I do recognize that I have to constantly on the watch as not to exceed the 60 hrs cap.

Electricity and Water
Unfortunately, there is not much I can do on this expense besides being more ‘thrifty’ i.e., use the timer for the bedroom air-conditioner when sleep, the number one energy sucker.

Mobile phone
With the endless pricing war going now, this is probably the most promising area to cut my bill. I am using a standard post-paid package and enjoy a RM30.00 monthly ‘stay’ discount. As I have no intention to change my current phone number, after some researching, I decided to stick with my current package but decided to cut down the SMS usage. On the SMS, I has realize that thought the unit cost is 50% lower than the phone call, I however have the tendency to send multiple SMS over a same matter. As a result, I incurred a higher total cost as compared to a simple ‘sort-everything-out’ phone call. I estimate that I could probably reduce the SMS by 30% and that give me a saving of RM5.00/mth, or RM60 per year. On another hand, I already took advantage of the e-billing facility and that gave me another RM5.00 break a month.

Astro
I am a football fan and I must have the sport package – but with the new rate that take effect from June 2007, to maintain my current package, I would have to pay RM14.00 more per month, or RM168 per year. I am therefore seriously consider to ‘down grade’ the Sport + 3 mini packages to Sport + Movie + 1 mini package. Unfortunately, this down grade would not resulted in any saving, instead, I have to pay additional RM10 per month.

Credit Card’s annual fee
Of course the cardinal rule is to get a card that does not charge any annual fee. But after the grace/promotion period, you have to start paying the annual fee. But do not be despair, you can still try to talk you way out from paying the annual fee by threatening to cancer the card, or exaggerate your ‘loyalty’ that can back-up with your usage history. If both of these failed, it is time to consider to reduce the number of card you have, and get the classic one as the different of annual fee between gold and classic can be as high as RM60.00.

So how is my ‘bean counting’ exercise fairing so far?

• Phone bill – From RM50 to RM40
• Internet – RM44 (no change)
• Electricity – from RM90 to RM80 (estimate)
• Water – RM15 (no change)
• Mobile phone – From RM70 to RM65
• Astro – From RM79.95 to RM89.95
• Gold card – from RM12 to RM6.7

Month total is RM340.35 or RM4,084.2 per year.

The bottom line. The reduction is not much and rather disappointing. But the key point is if I am paying over RM4,000 a year for various utility bills, it pays to be a ‘bean counter’ and be smart to spot the promotion package or eliminate those over-pay-under-use package.

Note

For those interested on the RM38 phone package, here are the details:

• 500 minutes local call, after that 4 cents/min
• 40 minutes outstation call (>150km in radius), after that 25 cents/min
• 20 minutes mobile phone call, after that 33 to 38 cents/min depending on the carrier

More on the fixed line phone, do you know the charges? Here is the detail:

For fixed line to fixed line – 4 cents/min flat rate for call made to any phone that have the same first 4 digits as your phone number. 30 cents for call made within 150km radios during peak and 15 cents during non-peak hours. 90 cents for call made more than 150km radios during peak and 50% less during non-peak hours.

For call made to mobile phone that was registered in the same area, 30 cents/min during peak and 20 cents during non-peak hours. For call made to mobile phone that was registered in the different areas, 70 cents and 40 cents/min for peak and non-peak hours respectively.