If this is your first time visiting, check out the story behind this blog. Otherwise, please join the others by subscribing to my RSS feed or get updates via email so you don't miss any personal finance articles!

We are moved in to our new apartment and pretty much all settled at this point. Thanks to my wife, everything went extremely smooth. She not only helped coordinate everybody to help with packing, but she also found a good moving company to do the actual moving. Just to give you an idea of how efficient the whole thing went, we got married on Saturday Feb 9 with nothing packed, rested the whole day Sunday and was in the new apartment by Tuesday Feb 12.

So before I say anything else, I’ve got to say THANK YOU to my wonderful wife! (Okay, on with the article…)

Thinking back, there would be one thing we thought could’ve been better, which was having a smaller moving bill! The moving company told us that they charge $100 / hr for their service from the get go. When asked about what the total charge would be, the mover told us that it is quite difficult to calculate it since they haven’t seen our place and don’t know how long it will take. He went on further to say that we can just wait for everything to be all set and done and then talk about it at the end. We agreed to this, and it was our big mistake.

On moving day, the movers came and very carefully moved our furniture, taping up everything to make sure nothing can be damaged. This wouldn’t be bad normally but we instantly knew we would be in trouble because it will take a long time. As the day went on, our bill kept on going up. What ended up happening was that they took 5 hours to move our 1 bedroom apartment (1 hour was to drive from the old apartment to the new), totaling $500 at $100 per hour. At that point, there weren’t much we could do since we already agreed to calculate everything at the end and we were aware of the $100 per hr charge. We were able to negotiate it down to $400, but it was still a lot of money.

We are fully aware that if we set the price in the beginning, the movers could’ve taken 3 hours to move everything instead of 5. However, as it is advantageous for them to take their time, they did! Next time, we will negotiate a final moving price before we give them any commitment. This is known as negotiating from a position of strength because they want our business and we are the decision maker. If they want our business, they will have to give us a satisfactory final moving cost and not try to charge us by the hour.

Hi everyone! I am very tired right now since my visit in Taiwan has been “event-packed” but I want to tell everyone about my trip. I found that Taiwan and United States has a very different living standard! For example, I had a very nice dinner (Japanese Hot Pot, also called Shabu Shabu) that cost $15 USD (tax and tips included) while something similar in the states would cost me $30-40 dollars.

Two of the big difference with prices are that you do not pay taxes nor tips here. Something that cost $10 is $10, not $10 plus tax. Also, when I go to a restaurant, I do not need to pay tips. This makes things so much simpler for the customer! It creates the burden on the business owner to figure all these out instead of asking the customer to calculate everything on every order, saving time.

Without taxes and tips, everything is still much cheaper here. It is amazing how business owners can still profit with prices this low but people here are still capable of making a lot of money. This makes me wonder if people in the United States are just not as efficient (myself included) with our complex government and our feeling of responsibility for the poor.

I know I might have opened a can of worms here, but comments are welcome and please keep a civil conversation if one were to start.

I will be back soon! I miss writing to you about personal finance!