(Good old days for the dollar! This was taken November 27, 2003. File photo from Agence France-Presse)

For the longest time, the dollar has been the darling currency of the world. In an earlier post, I asked if it was a doomed currency, but as a good friend pointed out, if it is really the end of the road for the greenback, why do its hiccups still affect world markets?

More and more, however, other currencies are starting to shine. So here’s a quick tip for overseas Filipino workers struggling with the weakening dollar: get paid in the local currency.

Of course, this will only work if you are not working or living in the United States. (Duh). Several of my friends, for example, work for Canadian companies. Instead of getting paid in the US dollar, which was the currency of choice for the longest time, they decided to get paid in the Canadian dollar. It proved to be a good plan as the US dollar slid continuously the whole year.

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From the lips of a five-year old, “Mom and Dad, I need money…” may sound endearing especially when spoken with certain flair. But from a teenager onwards, these words are more often met with a falsetto voice. ☺

We all know self-reliance is best for everyone’s peace of mind, right? But because situations are not the same and there are times asking for financial assistance may not be avoided, our personal finance feature today gives tips on how to borrow money from relatives the proper way.

The question from our reader was:

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This is so not good.

Long and short of the bad news is, 3.8 million Filipinos or 700,000 million (sorry, my bad) families slipped below the poverty line in 2006. You know that creeping feeling that the poor is poorer and the rich is richer? That bitter taste in your morning pancake when you think about how economic growth is not trickling down to the poor? Here are the hard figures that prove it.

We now have a total of 4.7 million Filipino families who are hungry and can barely get by, as opposed to 4.0 million when the survey was last done in 2003. Government is blaming rising oil prices, calamities and low wages.

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Banks are marketing special deposit account products more aggressively these days. With the low returns from time deposits and fixed-income instruments, people are looking for more alternatives and I actually witnessed this in a bank branch the other day.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Doris Dumlao reports today that as of February 8, SDAs have sucked in P546 billion of the money in the banking system. Read her article here.

Here are some useful figures to remember from this article:

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Fitzgerald Aclan, one of the most experienced technical chartists in the country and the chairman of Absolute Traders, says the key levels to watch for at in  is 3,400 for the Philippine Stock Exchange Index (PSEi) and 13,200 for the Dow Jones Industrial Index.

Fitz also believes that the PSEi’s ideal support level is at 2,900 to 3,000. The PSEi on Monday closed at 3,079.99 and the DJIA ended at 12,266.39.

Here’s a So What Chocnut moment. Think of a “support level” as a sticky point that stocks find hard – historically — to bust through on their way down. It’s the historical bottom that investors look for as a signal to buy. Two things can happen to it: it can be confirmed when investors buy stocks at that level (at which point prices start going up, right?) or wiped out if investors still don’t buy at that level and stock prices continue to go down.
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Guys, we have a Frugal Week hangover =). Here is another post on more frugal living tips, courtesy of our editorial partner MoneySense, the first and only personal finance magazine in the country.

As I said in a previous post, there are expensive things that help save money in the long-term. A good education, books, health care, vacations (even simple ones when money is tight) should be in our budget even if they are expensive.

Our article from MoneySense this week written by Ruth Floresca adds some more to the list:

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