TUNE MONEY – Secret I keep from my husband

Have you been to the cosmetics section of any supermarkets during a sale or one of those ‘Get 10x bonus points and RM20 shopping voucher for every RM100 purchase’ gimmick? If you haven’t, then, you won’t be able to understand women thoroughly. I recommend every guy, singles especially, to hang around there during one of those sales and see the intense looks on those women, their patience in waiting in line and the amount of money they can spend .

I tell you, those are very real revelation of being women. They are not limited to only certain age group. They are females age 16 yrs to 60 yrs and beyond. When we women are into shopping, we tend to cut off the real world and just get lost in our spendings.

I have seen many women taking out wads of cash in the tune of RM1K to RM3K from their handbags to pay for those cosmetics. As you know….cosmetics and make-up ain’t cheap. I myself spent around RM500-RM800 per trip (‘cos the dang freebies only come with purchase RM500, get this set, purchase RM800 get that set) and I normally ended up with a lot of explanations to do when the credit card bills arrived.

That’s the crappy part about having a supplementary credit card. Although I don’t have a ‘credit limit’ set by the man of the house aka my atm, I still need to let him know why my monthly expenses are sometimes higher than his even though he paid for petrol, groceries and our family meals.

Now, this brings us to how men and women think differently. They see a bottle of cream as a bottle of cream. Nothing more, nothing less. Why do I have to buy a bottle that costs RM580 when a bottle sold at the local pharmacy cum giant grocery store sells for only RM8.90? To him, the petrol from Petronas, Shell or Caltex are just petrol. Hence creams from Nivea or Ponds are just the same as creams from SKII or La Mer.

That’s why….there are women who shop with cash. They don’t need to explain! Smart, right? Now, I am going to do that as well. Of course, I won’t be so foolish to bring thousands of Ringgit Malaysia around. I don’t want to get rob, you know? I can now do it with my very own Tune Money card!

I saw the ad for Tune Money and found out that it is a reloadable prepaid Visa card. The difference between prepaid and debit card is that you do not need a bank account linked to this card. Since CIMB is one of their payment partner and half of my online income goes into CIMB every month and they normally sits there untouched anyway, that means I can finally zap those moolah with the Visa, all courtesy of Uncle Sam!

Call it independence or a little sense of mystery, I am going to dump more of my online income into Tune Money and and zap those moolahs for my own pleasure and indulgence. I applied for the card ‘cos it says they don’t need credit check. When was the last time I had a credit card to call my own? 10 long years ago when I was employed. Since then, I am only the supplementary card holder because I have no permanent employment.

Oh oh, did I just advocate wives to hide their spendings from the husbands? Maybe….you see, when it comes to spouse relationships, one of the most touchy subjects, apart from ‘your-mother-my-mother’ topic, is money topic. Sometimes, it is better to draw a line and maintain that personal part of yourself. Of course, only do this if you are making the money yourself and feel you rightly deserve a little pampering sometimes. I am not asking you to burn every single cent away, leaving your poor kids shoeless and shirtless.

One other thing good about having Tune Money compared to those credit cards is the control. For those who do not have the discipline in managing their finances, this is a safer alternative because you cannot bust your credit and get into debts. You only spend what you can afford.

I won’t bore you with details because you can find them on their site. I paid RM9.99 for the processing fee, top up RM50 at CIMB and the card will be delivered to the post office, ready for pick-up in a week’s time.

Back to these touchy subjects on money, do you agree that it is always better to have separate accounts for both husbands and wives? Of course, the universal rule is – Whatever the husband earns, he must declare to the wife. Whatever the wife spends, it is none of his business. LOL.

And as a side note, who wants to apply for the toyboy vacancy? I will send you a Tune Money card, topped up every month. Hehehe.