(Photo from Agence France-Presse)

We hardly think about the few mouthfuls of rice left on our plate. Taken together, this daily rice wastage average 15 grams per head, or 1,280 tons per day and cost Filipinos P23 million. Did I say “daily”?!

Mind-boggling.

These are official figures from the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), the principal research arm of the government on food and nutrition, that I caught this morning from the television show “Mornings on ANC”.
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How many electronic gadgets do you have in your bag? At home? On your desk at the office? In your car? Not counting of course the electronic thingamajigs that are part of your car?

The way we “consume” technology dictates that we find a way to get the best deals on gadgets. Time was when we scramble to get bargains overseas to shave off high import costs. So my eyes widened a little bit when Augustus J.V. Ferreria, executive vice-president of Generali Pilipinas and a financial planning educator gave this tip: stop buying gadgets overseas.

He has a point. Several, in fact. It’s complicated, not to mention expensive, to return an item in case it’s defective. You’ll also find yourself in a bind if the gadget conks out a few weeks after, and you don’t have an international warranty. Sometimes, even if the manufacturer has local dealers who provide services here, it has to ship the gadgets abroad for fixing.

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Our personal finance article for today has been long awaited by many INQUIRER.net readers.

Credit card debt is a common problem. Being mired in debt does not mean a person is evil – it only means that person has not managed money well in the past. That’s all…

So, what to do when you’re already in the clutches of a debt collector? Being badgered by someone to pay credit card debt is depressing and demeaning especially when they start talking to your officemates, your relatives and even your boss! This article lists down ways to deal with it, but my favorite tip is to call them first before they call you.

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I’m almost always in a rush when I’m at the grocery store, so I hardly listen to hurried invitations from cashiers to get my raffle coupons. Supposedly, these raffle coupons will give me the chance to enter the rank of millionaires.

“What kind of marketing gimmick is that anyway?” I asked with disdain over the weekend, during yet another foray into the consumer haven that is SM Hypermarket. I was trying to follow my own personal finance advice after all, and that is to get in, buy the stuff I need, and get out as quickly as I can :-).

Apparently, however, this marketing gimmick is more popular than I thought. Have you noticed how many raffle gimmicks are out there?
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You don’t have to save the cheerleader to save the world :-). You can even save money while doing it, so says the Live Green Movement.

So here are some more tips on reducing energy and water consumption that’s also easy on the checkbook, in addition to the very informative links from qwerty.

Living green at home.
A sizeable 46 percent of energy use is energy loss. That’s electricity being consumed for no productive use, such as when you keep your cellphone charger permanently plugged into a wall outlet. By keeping unused electronic appliances truly switched off, you save more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide and around P12,500 a year.

Ortigas skyline last July 14. Photo from PDI.

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I’M blogging from my son’s hospital room. He was admitted this morning; his baby body unable to cope with the huge volume of phlegm in his throat and lungs. As I went through the motions of admission, one question kept going through my mind: does brand matter?

Conventional wisdom dictates that frugal living and money smarts have to do with beating marketers at their own game. Companies spend millions to build a brand. They hire professionals and pay them seven-digit salaries.

These professionals crack their brains to create a story that would make consumers part with their money.

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Your budgeting system is probably perfect. I only have great admiration for you if you can track your spending religiously and can put our expenses in little boxes that never overflow. I truly do.

But I have long discovered that a rigid budgeting system doesn’t work for me. I’m not a fan of painful budgets for the Duplito household. I wrote all about that in an earlier post. But I do know life will be miserable if I blow money monthly on each little whim. I need to find that sweet spot somewhere between responsibilities and fun.

I discovered this sweet spot is all about giving myself guilt-free money. This is how this plan will go. Let’s say I earn P100,000 on a book project. Let’s say the gods have seen fit to give me a new project to work on this year on top of my very cool project called MoneySmarts. I ask myself, what portion of that amount can I spend without feeling guilty?

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This is the kind of tip you can’t find through Google and you can’t read on MarketWatch and CNN.

Paying off debt is always a good idea, but you have to be smart in doing it. If you are caught between the devil (say, resorting to one meal a day) and paying off debt completely, there has to be a place somewhere in between that will allow you to breathe easier and yet escape a pauper’s life.

One way is to do credit substitution. That simply means retire your debt with the highest interest rate by borrowing with a lower interest rate.

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My hubby, who allowed himself to be absorbed by the rate race after years of consultant work, got promoted the other week after only two years in the company. Initial reaction: whoppeee! Lets go out to dinner to celebrate…We can buy that second car after all…Should I arrange for a vacation out of the country next year?

Earth to Salve…earth to Salve. Financial planning bibles out there say my husband and I are still in the accumulation stage because of our age. I can’t afford yet another misstep in financial planning, like splurging on vacations and baby gear. We are still paying for our children’s education, good insurance policies and other stuff. I have to discipline myself to ignore promotions and bonuses (especially if they are my husband’s haha), keep them immediately tucked in our savings and investment portfolio, so I can turbo-charge our retirement kitty.

This one’s a no-brainer Money Myth Buster. It’s easy to see how a mindset of not counting chicks even if the eggs are hatched can help us get totally out of the rate race. But can the additional scrimping and saving really turbo-charge my savings or am I merely looking at a slow, painful growth in savings despite the sacrifices I am preparing to make?

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Filipinos love houses. It’s no secret that the ubiquitous Filipino seaman pays for a window this month, a wall next month, the backyard the following month…all in the name of a happy house for his family.

Today’s Money Myth Buster is really easy. The tip is: Buy your second house first.

The common tendency is to buy the dream house on the first try. That means buying the one that has the ideal living room, the kitchen that opens up to the east, the house with a bath for every bedroom and two or more guestrooms. Budgets are stretched to the limits. A few months later, amortizations and other hidden costs and series of unexpected expenses become totally agonizing. This tip says this is not a smart way to buy a house.

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