Have you seen some credit card advertisements lately? Charge your monthly expenses…no need to worry…you can pay only five percent of the total…and we will still consider you a good client.

Isn’t that just great? *one eyebrow going up*

Just paying the minimum amount will make you vulnerable to a compounding sinkhole that will suck in your money with the force of a hurricane. There is a personal finance advice that says: Pay as much of your credit card balance as you can, if not the total amount. Let’s put this to the test to find just how much it can save you.

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SPENDING the weekend in Tagaytay didn’t seem to be a good idea at first. Vacations, even short and simple ones, cost money. Money Smarts was just a little bit cranky, adding up the cost of gas, accommodations and food in her mind.

But as our little family car left behind the hustle and bustle of the city, the swaying coconut leaves and gentle rolling hills of Tagaytay slowly lifted our spirits, willing our city-tired muscles and tense nerves to relax.

This trip got me thinking about times when it’s best not to hold back on spending. Money Smarts is all about discipline, restraint and, well, being money-smart of course, but there are times when holding the purse strings too tightly may not be a good idea.

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What if someone told you back in 1996 that stocks would fall drastically the coming year? What if he told you that stocks would recover in 2003 and from then on continue moving up?

Will you believe him if he says this uptrend will extend until 2009? What year, then, would you be aggressively buying stocks? What year would you sell?

Sounds out of this world, but some believe the method to this, err, magic is a well known tool called technical analysis. Technical analysts like to believe that charts can tell, for example, when bulls or bears will rule the market.
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It’s not something that people get from a sneezing commuter, but probably just as virulent, if not more. And if you talk to players in the stock market, they’ll say a lot of equities investors are already capitulating to it.

I’m talking about the bug that’s currently causing an IPO fever among equities investors. This year’s IPO fever seems to be growing more intense as an increasing number of companies turn to the stock market to raise funds and as more investors get bored with low returns of fixed-income instruments. Or in some cases, things like time deposit.

I wrote about this earlier today (read the article here) and was I relieved to find that at the senior management level, the exuberance about IPOs was a bit tempered and more palatable – at least to me.
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Only a few months to go before the wedding season begins to heat up. By this time, I can imagine a lot of prospective brides and grooms starting to feel that white-hot feeling of panic as expenses start coming in and as the reality of the entire things sinks in.

A lot of marriages are destroyed by poor financial management, so this is not the time to enter that holy agreement all wide-eyed and unprepared. Love can do a lot of things to finances – both good and bad.

Reader Jay, for example, emailed us asking for advice on how to make his money grow more. He intends to get married and settle down in the Philippines in two years. Jay says he understands the concept of high risk/high return, and wonders what options are available after deposits, stocks and mutual funds.
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Talk is cheap. Cash is not.

We can talk till we’re blue in the face about taking the plunge, going after our dreams to start or expand our own business, or making our money work for us by being our own boss.

Unless we walk the talk, however, all that planning will not count for anything. Margie Quimpo-Espino, one of Inquirer’s business editors asked me pointblank during an interview, “So, have you started your own business? Hey, you have to walk the talk!”

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Summer and scams – what bonds them together? Raul J. Palabrica, SEC commissioner and former Reader’s Advocate of the Philippine Daily Inquirer says con artists are more aggressive in the summer. He wrote:

What is it about summer that encourages con artists to come out and try to bilk unwitting Filipinos of their hard-earned money?

Perhaps, the hot weather has a way of making people drop their guard and become prey to glib talkers. The relaxed atmosphere may have something to do with it. With school over and the children on vacation, most parents (especially those who do not suffer from financial problems) are in a giddy emotional state.

Read the rest of his column here:
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Sonny (not his real name) worked as a janitor in one of the offices in Makati City with a P7,000 a month salary. He lived very simply with his wife and one daughter in a one-room affair and bought a bicycle to avoid spending for transportation daily.

Despite his meager income, Sonny saved P2,000 a month like clockwork. By December, he would have P24,000 in savings just in time for Christmas.

So, Sonny would bring his wife and kids to Landmark and go shopping for useful gifts – good-quality clothes, bags for school, shoes. Then they would have Christmas dinner in Saisaki.
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A reader wrote:

I bought some stocks online in 1997 as a long-term investment while I was in Malaysia from ACE (Asian Capital Equities) but unfortunately, the company closed in late 2003.

My AC shares originally were 7,200 plus 1,440, a 20 percent stock dividend given in May 2004 was not added anymore and my PCOR shares were 15,000. With the revised allocation, my AC became 859 only and the PCOR became 255. Until now, I was only paid half of what I should have received.

When my stocks where transferred to my new broker, all the shares were in order except for my Ayala Corp. stocks which became 17 shares only from the revised allocation of 859 shares. What should I do now?
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Asia’s richest woman has left her wealth – she was worth $4.2 billion – to her fortune-teller, Agence France-Presse reported today.

I bet my future millions in savings (optimistic, eh? :-)) that relatives of the astute, albeit quirky, businesswoman are right this moment chafing at the bit, ready to storm the poor lawyer who will execute her will.

The article says:

Nina Wang, who died aged 69 earlier this month and had no children, left a legacy estimated as worth at least $4.2 billion after transforming her company Chinachem into a real estate empire.

A day after her lavish funeral Wednesday, two wills she allegedly wrote in 2002 and 2006 were published separately in Next Magazine and its sister Apple Daily publication.

The 2002 document said Wang’s fortune would go to her charitable trust. But the later version named her personal fortune teller, Chan Chun Chuen, as the beneficiary.

Read the rest of the article here:

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