The other week, I gave my house help their annual raise in salary and told them I would advance the money for the entire year and open a bank account for each of them with it. (I wish I was the one who came up with this brilliant strategy, but it was Noet Ravalo who wrote about this in his column piece “Savings program for ‘kasam-bahays’”)

As I was asking whether they had any form of identification that we can use to open a bank account, I discovered that they had applied for SSS membership (something that I had suggested to them a year or so ago) but that it would take six months for them to get their ID.

Hmm. Should I encourage them to contribute to the SSS?
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Some investors are looking for safer investment havens, after having sat through nauseous market rides in previous months.

Retail bonds might offer less exciting but more stable income, especially for those who are just starting to build their portfolio. However, as with any investment, know first its mechanics and how it can help you diversify your portfolio.

Watch this video of Aboitiz Power CEO Erramon Aboitiz explaining about the company’s P1.5 billion to P3 billion retail bond offering this month.

Most people find stock investing sexy because they are caught up in the excitement of the P1,500-per-PLDT-share shooting up to P3,000 plus in a couple of months. Investors call this “capital gains” or “capital appreciation.”

But when the economy is in a swoon and markets go limp, good old boring dividends become the luster of stocks. Dividends–cash the company sends to shareholders as their share of company earnings–are signs the company is doing good especially if the payouts are regular and they increase consistently through the years.

This doesn’t mean that companies that don’t pay regular dividends are fundamentally weak. Opting for growth by reinvesting earnings into the company instead of sharing them with shareholders is a strategy many great companies like Microsoft used in its early years.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

My friend called me last week in apparent distress about his retired mom and dad. He said his family had a little meeting over the weekend and they found out that their parents have four credit cards with overdue payments amounting to P450,000. With his permission, let me share his story with you.

They owned an old house in the province and another one that was being constructed courtesy of my friend and his two siblings. Two of them work here in the country while one is working as an expat Filipino. The one working overseas left his child in the care of the parents. Together, all three siblings send home P30,000 monthly for the retired parents’ living expenses.

An allowance of P30,000 monthly for two adults and one child in the province living in their own home is not something to sneeze at. So how could they have charged so much money to their credit cards?
[Read the rest of this entry »]

“Our message is simple. You can do anything you set your mind to do.”

–Team Hoyt

Suze Orman has the big awards and the big bestsellers that will make her win a “personal finance guru” contest in the world hands down. Still, I’m getting tired of her prattle.

Last year, she landed on Time magazine’s top 100 artists and entertainers, she has won two Emmy Awards and she has eight bestselling books, some of which I have on my shelf. She’s definitely “on fire”, we hear Oprah saying that again and again. Hey, thanks global financial crisis.

Oh she got her own share of brickbats from different kinds of people out there, and one that strikes close to the bone is the accusation that she has misrepresented her credentials. Wiki says:

[Read the rest of this entry »]

Maybe around 50 times every year since I started writing about personal finance for newspapers and magazines, people ask me this question: What do I do with P100,000? (or P50,000 or some other amount)

These days, P100,000 can be stretched in every which way especially by us Filipinos. “Stretched” though can have many different meanings! I can give you a short list of things I can BUY with P100,000 and guarantee that in a couple of hours, I will be happily looking at paper bags of baby stuff and home décor!

But no, I am NOT recommending that! The fact that people ask how they can save or invest this amount of money is a good sign. Remember, it’s not the amount that matters especially in the beginning of financial literacy. It’s the discipline and the habit that matters.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

This is a guest post from Rose Fausto, mother of Anton, the young boy I featured in my article 12-year-old investment whiz kid:

Thank you very much for that nice article you wrote in Money Smarts.  We showed the article to Anton and he was thrilled but I guess the parents were more excited.

I read all the comments and was happy to hear the nice ones, but of course, the mother hen in me was not so happy about a couple of comments calling our kids brats and my boy brash because he paraded his “total assets.” Someone also said that these amounts might have just been given to the kids. Anton was more calm about the comments, saying, “That’s ok lang Mommy.”
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Two big corporations, Globe Telecoms and Aboitiz Power, have announced plans to issue corporate bonds for the retail investor—that’s you and me, supposedly.

Globe’s offering has already begun, and it will end on February 19 (that’s two days from now), while Aboitiz Power hopes to begin offering its retail bonds in the next three to four weeks.

In an interview with MoneySmarts, Aboitiz Power president and chief executive officer Erramon Aboitiz said the company would like to be less dependent on institutional investors, hence the decision to issue retail bonds.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Last Friday, we were teasing one of our reporters who used to receive bouquets of flowers at our Makati office from her boyfriend. She also used to buy gifts and have them delivered to his office, come Valentines’ Day. They have since gotten married and had children.

Amid the ribbing, she said: “If he’s going to get it from the family budget, never mind!” We all guffawed at that good-naturedly. Blame the economy, I guess.

On the way home, I told my husband that I was amused to see couples doing HHWWPSSP (what, you don’t know what that means? It’s short for “holding hands while walking pa-sway sway pa!”)
[Read the rest of this entry »]