What do you give to someone who has everything?A few Christmases ago, Synergeia Foundation president Milwida Guevara found herself worrying what to give to Washington Sycip for Christmas.
Apart from being a well-known figure in the business sector, Wash is one of the reasons Synergeia can do so much work in the education sector, Milwida says. (If you are interested in reading more about this very interesting man, read my favorite professor’s blog post on him here. Butch Dalisay finished his biography on Wash Sycip just this year.) After agonizing about her problem, Milwida bought Wash a toy train that moves on its tracks. You know the type, either your son wants one or your husband does. 
“He was so happy with it, he played with it in his office and called his staff to look at the train,” Milwida told me, laughing.
When I asked Mr. Sycip last week about his toy train, his warm laugh spoke volumes of how much he loved it!
Finding the right gift is an art. Some people plan gift-giving for weeks; some do it on the day before Christmas Eve. Here are some ideas that would last longer than toys, clothes, iPods or iPhones and could start your loved ones on the road to financial security.
- Savings accounts
- Investment gifts (mutual funds, UITFs, stocks or bonds)
- An appointment with an investment planner
- Books and magazines on personal finance and money management. (MoneySense’s gift subscription for one year is P648. The address label on every issue will bear the name of the sender. Email info@moneysense.com.ph and include your name, address, telephone number, email, age, company and position. Payments can be made through any BPI branch. Visit www.moneysense.com.ph for more details.)
- Seats to a personal finance seminar
- Money management software
- Your time (a one-on-one dinner in a special restaurant to talk about goals and dreams sounds nice!)
- Donations to a charitable institution
Read our personal finance article for today to know more tips about finding the right gift for financial security.
So, be wise in your gift-giving and be money-smart!
December 12th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Hello! Thanks for the suggestions! Big help!
December 5th, 2007 at 11:24 am
If all the money to be spent on gifts this Christmas is instead donated to the poor, we can eliminate poverty in our country. The annual poverty threshold is P14,900 per capita and the income gap is 30% or P4,470 per capita. That’s the additional income needed to go above the poverty line. With a poverty incidence of 30% or 26.6 million people, the total income gap is P119 billion.
Assume the 33 million employed persons will spend an average of P4,000 for gifts this Christmas. That’s P132 billion, more than enough to fill the total income gap. Zero poverty incidence is the best Christmas gift.