If you were to put a peso figure on “your entire life” what would it be?

Watch this heartbroken Australian who decided to auction his entire life on eBay, which includes his three-bedroom house, a 19-year old Mazda car, jet ski, motorcycle, parachuting gear and – get this – his lifestyle, an introduction to all his friends and a two-week try out for his job as rug salesman.

Click here to see the video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia
[Read the rest of this entry »]

It’s pure pain to watch someone suffer from losing all his investments due to a falling market. What to do?

It’s too easy to say, just hold on because markets recover all the time. Curious Capitalist over at Time.com points that the best response is no response, but active investors know that once you lose all the bets, you waste so much of the capital that you can’t get in when real opportunities come up.

Last week, I spoke with several investment guys who espouse peso-cost averaging. The moneysmarts definition of that is “pikit-mata” investing, where you keep setting aside the same amount of money regularly — monthly or quarterly — whether the market is up or down.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Gotcha!

Here’s a snappy secret from publishers. Use words like “how to get rich in ten simple steps” or “secrets of wealthy people” in title and promotional materials. Never use “retirement.” Malayo sa bituka. (Far from the gut).

Like everyone else on this planet, Filipinos don’t like to think about the future. But think of this: it wasn’t too long ago when Bill Gates was a young upstart who started Microsoft in his garage at 17 years old. Yesterday, he clocked in his last full day of work at the office after 33 years of building that icon of technology.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Pacita U. Juan, owner of Figaro Coffee, said her secret to cutting her electric bill in half is the humble power strip.

Admit it, its such a chore to unplug all devices. So, use the power strip with a switch. Even that telephone charger that hardly gets removed from the socket consumes power and your television set which is always turned on by remote may not be showing images on screen but still consuming electricity.

Agree? Disagree?

If you think your stock portfolio has been beaten to a pulp, wait till you hear what technical analysts have to say about whether we’ve already seen the worst.

“Has the PSEi reached the bottom? Hell, no,” said Fitz Aclan, head of investment strategy of the trust department of Banco de Oro.

Fitz gave his inter-market analysis and fearless forecast at the Chart Analysis Forum Tuesday night at the PSE trading floor in Ortigas. Fitz is one of the founders of Absolute Traders, the group that organized the forum.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

UPDATE: Editor’s note: Added video of Abby Sarmiento taken by INQUIRER.net business editor Ma. Salve Duplito.

Filipinos spend too much on staying connected. When you don’t text, you’re not a good friend. When you don’t call, you’re a bad daughter. Husbands know full well the wrath of a woman untexted.

These days, cutting costs will have to include taking a second look at alternatives to the high cost of getting connected. In our household, only my 7-year old and the toddler don’t incur costs. There are six mobile phones in our household (two for the hubby), a landline and a DSL service.

This should be interesting for financial voyeurs . On a monthly basis, this is what we pay telcos :
[Read the rest of this entry »]

My half-finished survey of mommies in the Metro are coping with the rising food and oil prices by buying more goodies at the wet market instead of at the grocery. They swear that they get hundreds off their market-day budget. My previous post on Wet market versus grocery showed that wet market won hands down among MoneySmart readers.

I go to both and compare prices when I have the time. However, I have also been known to be in so much frenzy that I can get seven bags of grocery items chosen and paid for in 30 minutes. Nope, no comparison shopping there! If I did, the last time, though, I would have missed this steal.

Freshly squeezed kalamansi juice is a staple in the Duplito household. I usually buy five kilos of the little green stuff every week. Its price at the wet market last Saturday: P80 per kilo. That would have been P400. In SM Supermarket: P60 per kilo. Total price: P300. Better quality, too.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

When “El Kapitan” was buying the government’s stake in Philippine National Bank more than 10 years ago, my teammates and I (in another publication) wrote a special report on him. While doing my research, I must have read truckloads of literature about the man -– from urban legends to PR-ish articles. Sadly, most of those publications are not available by Googling.

He has been painted as the best rags to riches story this side of the planet, to the most “well-connected” tycoon and everything in between. Lucio Tan is an enigmatic figure. The fact that he is one of Asia’s richest billionaire is not as interesting as how he got his billions.

I would have loved to a one-on-one interview 10 years ago, if only to ask him how he could remain unscathed after every Philippine president he has been closely linked to went down in political flames. But of course, we all know the answer to that.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Vote:

a) Of course not! Subsidies are baaad.
b) It’s a source of corruption. Mark my words!
c) It’s a band-aid solution, but a few pesos are better than nothing.
d) Everybody’s doing it. The US and other countries are giving subsidies. Sige na nga, pwede na (It’s okay).
e) Hey, let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth!

A lot has been said about the government’s decision to give out cash transfers or subsidies to the poor. Comments range from the totally absurd to pure wisdom.

There have been three forms of subsidies thus far: the P500 cash transfer to households that consume at most 100 kilowatt hours a month which will cost government P2 billion, a P2-per-liter discount for drivers of jeepneys and other public utility vehicles, and a P300 subsidy for every child that goes to school.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Stephanie (not her real name) looked a bit like a lost little girl, no different from her eight-year old daughter who transferred to my son’s school. Turns out that it was her first time to attend a school activity. She has been at sea on cruise ships for the last 15 years, going home only once a year – one of 230,000 sea-based Filipinos working abroad.

We had a lengthy and very interesting discussion about what it was like at sea for the past 15 years, starting from when she was a fresh graduate of Hotel and Restaurant Management from a reputable school here in Metro Manila, up until she decided to get pregnant (but not get married) and now that she is waiting for her call to join the crew of another cruise ship.

Stephanie’s story amazed me, although it was not the first time I had heard of the challenges and experiences of Filipino sea-based workers. She told me how Filipinos earn anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 a month, bulk of which come from tips from passengers. She also described how Filipinos burn their money buying clothes, bags, laptops that they never get to use, mobile phones and other techie gadgets from different ports even when these could also be bought in the country at the same price or even cheaper.
[Read the rest of this entry »]