The best of MoneySmarts and saying goodbye

And so, after 490-or-so articles over the course of roughly two years, I am saying goodbye to MoneySmarts.

It’s a bittersweet spot to be in. I feel like I am letting go of a child that I have nourished and nurtured for quite a while. Although I feel comforted that she will be in good hands and that we will continue to stay in touch, I will sorely miss the great conversations here (especially those hateful comments haha!).

Many are asking why. There’s a time to let go, you know? Moving on has a personal finance as well as an emotional cost. Yet even when the cost can be high, there is reason to raise our glasses and be grateful because much of the growing up that we do over the course of our lives has to do with how well we handle transitions.

In MoneySmarts, I’ve gained friends, earned trust and learned humility, advanced professionally, learned oodles of money tricks, discovered the high finance of parenting, and a lot more. More importantly, I had so much fun.

Yes, frugality and delaying gratification can sound like wet summer when you’re raring to get tanned, but you get to like doing them when you develop the proper frame of mind.

I also learned that it’s not all about the math. It’s more about the attitude, the ability to laugh when you make a financial mistake and to pick yourself up again and again. More valuable are the lessons on forgiving a loved one who has turned a money problem into disaster, or the need for creativity and in-the-moment involvement in teaching finance to a child or a teenager.

Solutions to the side stories are not found in the scores of articles and scholarly books on investing and money management that I have read and written, but are more valuable in the end. The math you can learn. The emotional maze tied to personal finance can take a lifetime to conquer.

How did I get here? Coming from a poor Bicolano family, a single-parent household, and eventually finding myself in UP Diliman to study Journalism on a budget that felt like a bungee jumper’s rope cut extremely short provided me with a rude awakening to the rough transitions that life sometimes brings. I praise God now for that rude awakening, though I questioned Him about it when I was younger.

Then I found myself working in a business newspaper and learned the trade of writing and reporting about business. In the late 90s, OFWs and their role in the economy were more or less ignored by the government and the media. I thought that pretty soon, they would be a force to reckon with, and they needed to learn about how to manage their money. I was no stranger to the financial problems their families got into despite the increased flow of cash; I was related to many OFWs and a witness to the sad stories. Unfortunately, financial services companies then wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole.

That’s how it all began—my writing about personal finance. It’s a service and an advocacy, and not really a job.

All these—my personal journey and the world out there–made me realize early on that life is hard. It’s not fair. But if you try to make the most of it, learning to laugh when you sometimes fail, you’ll be alright. What’s true with life is also true with personal finance.

So, goodbye. But I’m pretty sure we’ll “see” each other again. I’ll watch out for you, in the Internet, somewhere out there. Feel free to drop me a line anytime at lightdream (at) gmail (dot) com.

Here’s the best of personal finance articles in MoneySmarts that I hope you’ll find timeless and useful (some are guest posts):

Frugality

1. Peso-pinching tips
2. 10 tipid tips to make the most of your vacation
3. Frugal shopping money-smart destinations
4. How are you dealing with the crisis?
5. The high cost of staying connected
6. Bargains in surprising places
7. Sneaky gas-saving tips
8. Recycle
9. Get an HMO
10. Fix broken stuff
11. Manage your magazine subscriptions
12. Wet market vs grocery
13. Misers and money

Spending habits

1. Wants vs needs
2. Aching for a plasma TV
3. Do you trust the bar code?
4. The psychology of spending
5. Bad packaging meets irate shopper
6. The SM Advantage rip-off
7. Decoding your grocery receipts
8. Don’t go shopping when…
9. Money mood swings
10. Lessons learned from an unscheduled, expensive vacation
11. Lifestyle and money
12. Grocery shopping errors you think you’re too smart to make
13. How to shop without feeling guilty

Dealing with debt

1. Paying for the debt of the dead
2. When mom and dad are in debt trouble
3. Don’t borrow and forget
4. The thing with GSIS member loans
5. Good story on bad credit
6. 5 stupid ATM and credit card mistakes
7. Desperate email from a reader: my creditors are after me!
8. Why you need to pay your credit card balance in full
9. Credit card fraud: who foots the bill?
10. Demystifying finance charge computations on your credit card

Saving and Investing

1. No one can afford not to save
2. Selected Philippine time deposit rates
3. What to do with P50M
4. 11 common mistakes in investing
5. How did you make your first million?
6. Are you a millionaire in the making?
7. The first million is the hardest
8. Stock market investing for beginners
9. How safe are Philippine banks
10. Bank fees you don’t have to pay
11. How to trick yourself into saving
12. Minimum placements in Philippine financial instruments
13. Investing during tough times
14. What to do with losing investments
15. How much to invest for the long-term
16. Investing urban legend
17. Hidden cost of VULs
18. Understanding VULs (Sunlife’s reply to Chris)
19. Yield and return: are they the same?
20. Retail corporate bonds, anyone?
21. Pre-need companies with seal of good housekeeping from SEC
22. Guide through the maze of pre-need plan failures
23. Guide for depositors of closed banks
24. Is SSS financially viable?
25. The PERA Bill at its core
26. Decoding the PERA Bill rules (Part 1)
27. Who can open a PERA and how? (Part 2)
28. Where to invest your PERA (Part 3)
29. Tax breaks under PERA rules (Part 4)
30. Painless way to increase your savings
31. Why do Filipinos bet on lotto?
32. Special deposit accounts as alternative to time deposits
33. How to choose an online stock broker
34. Where to put your Christmas bonus
35. Looking for a mutual fund you can count on
36. How to read the mutual fund table

Retirement

1. 51, and not yet ready for retirement
2. Middle-class, working Filipinos worried about bleak retirement
3. Do you really want to retire early?

Scams

1. The anatomy of a perfect scam
2. Tales of woe from Legacy scam victim
3. The scam that rattled high society
4. Confessions of a scam magnet
5. BSP warns against online investment scams and HYIPs
6. New scams, same old tune

Career

1. Speak well, earn more?
2. Are you getting the right salary

Quizzes atbp

What is your money personality
The risk test
Migrate vs stay
The cost of having a baby
On my Christmas wish-list: a new house
Money and math
Surviving Christmas consumerism
Know yourself: the first baby step to financial security
Checklist for interviewing a financial planner
How not to live from paycheck to paycheck
The science and art of making your first million
The millionaires around us

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