Check out my article on the Philippine results of an 11-country Citibank survey on financial intelligence. The results were very revealing, and quantified in figures what we all suspected.

Here’s the link: 8 out of 10 Filipinos worry about bleak retirement–survey

And here’s an excerpt:

MANILA, Philippines – Eight out of ten working, middle class Filipinos believe they face a bleak retirement and more than half expect to be supported by their children in their old age, results of a Citibank survey showed.

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After cooking more than seven batches of leche flan, rushing around the malls making last minute gift purchases and with still a few more odds and ends to buy, preparing for Christmas parties and goodies for kids, I’m pooped. I’m giddy with the Holiday whirl and I can imagine that many of you are, too! And traffic shows it, grrr.

So, I thought we could all do with some holiday reminders. It’s too easy to be afflicted with temporary moneysmart amnesia when you’re busy untangling Christmas lights and party decors.

Double-check your check payments
There must be more bounced checks in December than at any time of the year. If you are used to paying with post-dated checks, check now to make sure your December and January checks are funded with cash. Bank charges on insufficient funds are pretty nasty at P2,000 or higher. It may be Christmas season, but I don’t think that’s the kind of gift you want to give to your banker. Oh and here’s the time when having a good speaking relationship with the branch manager in your bank of account can be to your advantage. If you are considered a good enough client, he will call you to warn of an impending bounced check!

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The urge to splurge and miserly behavior are on opposite sides of the spending habit spectrum, but it’s not too hard to imagine most of us swinging from one side to the other at any given time.

That’s because everyone has weaknesses. I’m not very particular with electronic gadgets, for example, so I lived with a Nokia 3310 when everybody was taking snappy pictures with their latest model mobile phones. My friends told me that was super miserly behavior.

Get me into a kitchen showroom, however, and I will be hard-pressed to don my frugal hat. I “NEED” everything that comes with a nice kitchen, although I don’t know how to cook well! I thought I was moneysmart and was in my safety zone until the kitchen showroom came along. Then boom, sorry spending plan for 2006!

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Oh you better watch out, you better not swipe, you better not flaunt your shiny new card. Christmas spending is coming to town.

Ok, ok, so I’m not the best songwriter in town. :p But the fact is, most of us do have hangovers come January – the kind that make it so hard to go to the bank to pay our credit card bills when Jingle bells no longer chime.

The spendmaster in me talks like a well-meaning conscience: Oh come on, it’s Christmas! What else do you work hard for? The children need the memories, the magic, the gifts, and the ambiance! You can always pay for all the expenses next year. (Voice becoming shrill and high-pitched towards the end of the argument.)

(Photo credit: AFP)

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Warning: the first few paragraphs of MoneySense’s personal finance feature today may read like the diary of a rich, spoiled brat:

When Mardie and I married in 1999, we were better off financially than other newly-weds. We already had a townhouse (my parents helped with the down payment), acquired through a loan from the Government Service Insurance System. I was working then as a lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission; Mardie just finished a contract with a foreign firm and started a consultancy business.

We weren’t concerned about other things as I was pretty much relying on my parents for support. Being the youngest and only girl in a brood of six, I had lived a stress-free life especially about money. My dad was and still is a great provider. Growing up, there were plenty of extras and luxuries (I had a credit card when I was a teenager in the 80s), so at a young age, I was used to buying stuff without thinking of how to pay for them. I actually did not give up my dad’s credit card until a few years after I got married. I knew I could always count on my parents to foot some of the bills and pitch in whenever we had money emergencies. Deep down, I felt that my husband was uncomfortable with this set-up, but he seemed to accept it, and was never resentful.

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(This post was written by Bianca, a MoneySmarts reader who was chosen among a long list of candidates to be part of our Money Makeover. In Money Makeover, we match financial planners with reader-volunteers and chronicle their one-year journey to their financial goals. Generali Pilipinas’ senior executive vice-president Augustus J.V. Ferreria has agreed to coach couple Bianca and Diego for 12 months pro-bono. In Money Makeover, we aim to show readers that finding financial freedom is really possible. Read previous Money Makeover articles here.)

I do not do math.

Addition

It started simple enough.  Joe wanted us to list all of our expenses every day forever.  He did not warn us that our hearts could suffer anxiety attacks because, for one, we were confronted by the fact that our expenses overshot our income by some P30,000 every month.  He also provided no explanation as to how we could have survived all this time – but our zero-balance savings, credit card debts, frequent lifeline calls to mom and dad could possibly provide a clue. It is a stressful exercise trying to figure out where our money went every day because with it comes the understanding that it went to excesses of the flesh and vanities. Want and need are becoming very delineated concepts at this time (but concepts all the same).

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How difficult is it to get personal information from the owners of 5 million Philippine-issued credit cards currently out there? It just takes a name, a credit card number, the bank’s name, an ID with a signature and anyone can have a shopping spree charged to your sanity.

It’s not just the Internet that made this all too easy for anyone with a fraudster’s gene in his system. The urge to have everything at the snap of the finger has made a lot of us too lazy, too lax and too careless with our personal information. And don’t think that you’re free of high tech scammers just because we are in the backwaters of the Philippines. The best hackers were born here :-/

Sometimes, even those that are uber careful get victimized. I know a finance professional who almost fell off his seat when he got a call from his credit card company confirming several hundred thousands of purchases in SM Bicutan. He doesn’t even know how to get there. Good thing the credit card company flagged the transaction and called him immediately. The scammer in the gasoline station must have made an extra swipe and got all his credit card information, transferred them into a new credit card and presto – the gas boy’s wallet just got bigger.

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Believe it or not, there’s always some hapless individual who floats on cloud nine during his vacation, then comes home not only to dirty laundry but also to huge credit card bills and finance charges.

That mad rush to “get away from everything” can cost you quite a lot if you’re not careful – and make it easy to forget how dreamy that vacation was.

Here are some banking traveling tips from our personal finance feature today:

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Guess what? I’m already planning the long weekend holiday breaks in December and where the family will go when summer break comes. I know, I know, that’s like four months and eight months away, but planning hammers down costs compared with flying on a whim!

Bohol looks promising…

Of course, we are Boracay babies so that’s definitely still on the list…

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A couple shows a unique way of celebrating getting out of debt. Uhh…I’m not really sure if you should try this at home, but it sure is amazing to see.