Hot off a press conference at the Securities and Exchange Commission: The SEC, the Anti-Money Laundering Council and the SM Investments Corp. are warning the public against investing in SMFund.com, another online Ponzi scam similar to Deutchfrancs and Francswiss.

“Nobody can be blamed for wanting to earn high returns. Unfortunately, scam operators are trying to get rich quickly at your expense. Investors in these operations are the ones getting poorer. We are warning the public not to fall prey to this scam,” AMLC executive director Atty. Vicente Aquino told reporters.

Lawyers from SM Investments Corp. owned by mall king Henry Sy also told the media that the company was considering filing a case against felt SMFund.com for using its trade name committed infringement of its trademark, and that they were coordinating with the SEC on possible courses of action (my bad. its very hard to pin down lawyers, whew, and this is the only wording they like). “We are not in any way connected with this company,” Atty. Corazon I. Morando, senior vice-president for legal and corporate affairs of SM Investments Corp. said. In fact, Morando’s team also discovered another website called SMInvestment.com “under construction” and this website was also disowned at the press conference as well.

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Did I just say the “D” word? *looks over my shoulder like a paranoid scam artist (haha, sorry I couldn’t resist!)*

During the Registered Financial Planning course that I took last year, the lawyer who lectured about estate planning kept on using euphemisms like kicked the bucket, passed on, met his maker, gone under, crossed over. He just couldn’t say the word “death” and it was amusing to see his face contortions whenever he had to talk about it.

I’m not a linguist, but it’s obvious that language is a mirror image of culture and human behavior. Filipinos don’t like to talk of death – especially when someone’s on his deathbed. A financial planner that I know had to be hired by a family just to tell the old man that he was going to die soon and he had to figure out how to divide his estate for everyone’s sake.

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Quiz. Tell me what is wrong with this logic.

What’s wrong with Ponzi and HYIP schemes? They can make Filipinos richer and give us better returns than the paltry interest the banks are giving. Earnings from them can send our children to school and build our houses. If we know that they are risky and still want to plunk in our money, then we have the right to invest. After all, it’s our money.

One answer. After this, I will not respond to any comments why Ponzi schemes are a scam, why they should all be closed and why they will all close shop whether or not the government succeeds in bringing them down. Blog entries in MoneySmarts and comments from people like Jon Mariano, Photon and Pinoy Investor have been crystal clear. Those who choose to invest do so only with greed as their motivation.

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Reader mike posted a stinging reaction to my post on putting a price tag on friendships and family:

“So why do we have to believe what Powdthavee wrote? I think the question about people leaving their families to work abroad is a bit judgmental. You will never understand their predicament because you are not in their position.”

I apologize. It was not my intention to sound like I was sitting in judgment over decisions that clearly were not easy and took many things in consideration…things that I absolutely knew nothing about.

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Many mansions house sad people, and yet there are shanties that often ring with real laughter. One of my happiest memories happened at a time when my husband and I were just about to have our first baby, when we were living in cramped quarters, did not have a car, and when our paychecks were very small. Thinking about it now, truly the future looked bleak at that time! But I still remember how simple it was back then to laugh heartily at a simple joke.

On the other hand, lack of money can also cause unhappiness, discontent, failed marriages and frustration. Thus the question in my mind is: how do you measure happiness? What is the value to us of friends, relatives, neighbors and other relationships?

Nattavudh Powdthavee, a social economist at the University of London, released an intriguing study early last month that used shadow pricing method to measure happiness when people talk more often to friends, relatives and neighbors.
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When it comes to saving and investing money, people are drawn towards figures that measure returns in cold, hard figures. Returns become some sort of Holy Grail that indicates whether an investment is any good, regardless of volatility and default risk.

In this exclusive interview with Karen Liza M. Roa, president and chief executive officer of Philam Asset Management, Inc. (PAMI), Roa says stability of the company and a well-defined investment process should also be topmost consideration for serious investors.

PAMI is one of the top three players in the mutual fund industry in terms of size. Learn about several sticky issues about mutual fund investing in this interview, like costs of investing, clues on upcoming new funds, the difference between mutual funds and UITFs, and what is the best strategy if you decide to invest in this instrument. MoneySmarts asks the hard questions so that you will be an informed investor. Happy reading!

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For someone who helps others build wealth for a living, Efren Ll. Cruz has developed a curious detachment from the glitter of money. The author of the best-selling book “Pwede Na: Pinoy Guide to Personal Finance” believes money is only a tool — although a powerful one — that handled well, should help more Filipinos inch closer to their dreams of financial independence.

Easier said than done. Cruz, however, has mastered the “done” part very well. He shares advice freely to members of his huge yahoogroup on personal finance, he designed a personal finance calculator that helps people manage their finances and made this available as a companion software for his book. He writes regularly for INQUIRER.net without remuneration.

That’s not to say that Cruz is “easy”. People consult with Cruz professionally for investment advice, trains the growing group of Registered Financial Planners in the country, being one of the pioneers in the financial planning industry in the Philippines. He set up Personal Finance Advisers Phils. Corp. in February 2006 to develop tailor-made personal finance solutions for Filipinos.

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I just got off the phone with Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. He is warning the public about Suise Financials (http://deutchfrancs.com), FrancSwiss Financial (http://www.francswiss.biz/) and other high-yield investment programs (HYIPs) in the Internet.

“It’s an online Ponzi scheme. The Bangko Sentral, in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Philippine Stock Exchange and the National Bureau of Investigation, is looking into this,” he told MoneySmarts.

Ponzi schemes promise abnormally high returns that are paid, not through income generated from any real business, but from money coming in from new investors.

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