I bought my Canon G6 in SM’s Cyberzone in 2005. Since I was drooling over the EOS 350D at that time, I thought the G6 for P45,000 was already a money-smart compromise. It has video capability too, the rationalizing part of me said. When we took our new digital baby home, we took pictures of even the most ordinary things like doorknobs, light fixtures and fingernails ☺. My 10-year old kid, especially. It felt like a really good buy.

Boy, was I dead wrong. I learned last week that this camera shop called 24K on Hidalgo sold the little rugrat for P17,000 that same year! Original. With warranties and all. I wanted to weep! Rod, the friendly attendant who was referred to me by Edwin Redrino, a really talented professional photographer, was actually concerned for me.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

(Photo from Agence France-Presse)

No self-flagellation here in MoneySmarts this Holy Week break! Let’s list down all our favorite painless ways to increase savings. I’ll go first:

1. Take advantage of SM Advantage (and other store cards). They hardly cost any money and carrying them in your wallet won’t give you even a slight kink in your shoulder. The other week, I bought several grocery items and replacement parts for toilet flush and paid for them with my SM Advantage card. Not bad at all.
2. Don’t forget your rebates and freebies. I learned this the hard way. I forgot all about my expiring Mabuhay Miles and found out I was eligible for a free trip to a Visayas destination only when it was too late. Be careful, though. Rebates, rewards and freebies need to be managed carefully. For example, if Casa Armas is giving you 20% discount on a meal, don’t go just for the discount but go because you would have eaten out anyway. If you went out because “hey, we have a discount, cool!” you wouldn’t have enjoyed 20%, you would have spent 80% of the cost of the meal. [Read the rest of this entry »]

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:

[Read the rest of this entry »]

(My dream house has this morning view. Can you guess where it is?)

I thought I would blog about this separately as I’ve been getting a lot of emails asking for tips on buying real estate.

I found these list of questions very helpful for those who are house or condo hunting. I’m sharing this from Noet Ravalo’s column “Alternatives to low interest-bearing deposits”.

1. Is your expected income sufficient to cover the amortization?
2. How much of an increase in the amortization can your income tolerate?
3. At what loan rate can your income stream handle at the maximum?
4. If rates do go down, can you advance payments?
5. Will there be a penalty?
6. How about pre-termination of the outstanding loan amount?
7. If currency conversions are involved, by how much will the cost-benefit analysis be sensitive to exchange rate movements?
8. What does this mean for the timing of the conversion of the funding as against the timing of the revenue stream?

[Read the rest of this entry »]

The INQUIRER.net special feature today for personal finance is How to buy jewelry. It has the usual tips on karat for gold, the three Cs for diamond – color, clarity, cut and carat — and what makes good silver and pearl jewelry.

Whether or not jewelry is a good investment, however, is still a debatable point. For Efren Cruz, author of Pwede Na: The Pinoy Guide to Personal Finance (full public disclosure: I co-edited this book), buying jewelry for “showing off” should not be confused with investing in jewelry for future profit. Consumption and investments are not peas in a pod.

“The moment you part with money or time in the hope of enjoying more of it in the future, then you are investing. Investments will differ in potential returns, amount required and time to harvest. With jewelry, it takes longer. It is still, nonetheless, investing, unless you buy jewelry just to show off,” he said.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Here are my estimates rounded off to the nearest thousands for the costs of having my youngest child:

1. It starts with pre-natal expenses, ultrasound and other laboratory costs and vitamins (P15,000)
2. Maternal wear for a working mommy, already with Divisoria shopping (P10,000)
3. Normal delivery (P70,000)
4. Baby furniture - foldable playpen-crib, stroller and car seat, high chair (P20,000)
5. Baby clothes, excluding gifts from titos and titas *thank you po!* (P8,000)
6. Avent bottles, pacifiers, breastpump, baby bags, etc. (P25,000)

[Read the rest of this entry »]

I know you working girls and boys will laugh at me, but whenever I have the time and the energy, I *relish* my market days. Here’s proof: there’s one that’s around 10 minutes’ drive from my place and there’s another one that’s just walking distance. But it’s very small and I don’t get my usual fix of shouting tinderas so I go to the other one

This morning was particularly interesting. The first fruit stall at the Muñoz market was selling nice, shiny tomatoes at P60 per kilo. Then a guy at the next stall started shouting.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

(Photo from Agence France-Presse)

Malacanang has just confirmed plans to cut tariff on oil and petroleum product imports to 2% from 3%, hoping this will cushion the blow from rising oil prices overseas. Tariff, by the way, is in layman terms simply a tax on imported products. (Err, I don’t understand why they have to invent another word for “tax” heh) Wiki explains that it is the simplest and easiest way to collect taxes since it has to be paid so the product can land on shore.

Chopping off a one-percentage-point means around 35% reduction in tariff. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo says she is hoping this will help “every Filipino family.”

Boy, do we all need that relief. We’re all feeling the pinch, wherever we are in the world. Oil has hit $100 a few days ago, just as many price watchers feared and everyone – from the balut vendor to the bigwigs at San Miguel Corp. – will have to think of a way to deal with it. Reuters came out with an interesting article that showed how a Beijing cab driver to a vendor selling food wrapped in banana leaves in Jakarta will suffer even more if oil climbs higher to beyond $100.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

If you want a discount of P1 per liter on your gasoline and a 50-centavo discount on diesel and kerosene, go bring your four-wheeled or two-wheeled babies now to Shell, Caltex and Eastern Petroleum stations.

Playing David to the big three Goliaths, Eastern Petroleum initiated the holiday price cut at 2 pm yesterday (Wednesday), prompting Shell and Petron to follow suit. Problem is, the price cut is only being offered in “selected competitive trading areas” and I have no idea where these are. Errr…just try near your place, will ya? You have only until Monday to get the discount!

Click on this link to read the breaking news article from INQUIRER.net.