No matter what we may all think about crazy Filipino drivers and crooked public officials, a lot of Filipinos who have lived most of their productive lives abroad still believe “there’s no place like home.”

The ultimate dream still seems to be coming home to the land of smiles. But how to prepare for it? That’s a common question we receive here at INQUIRER.net.

Should you invest here in the Philippines or in the country where you live? Which will give you better returns in the end? Should you convert your money into pesos now and invest here in the country or keep them in dollars/euros/yen etc. and convert when you are about to retire?

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(Sleeping lizards don’t go anywhere, but they don’t grow too. So like putting all of one’s savings in low interest-bearing savings deposits. File photo from Agence France Presse)

I picked up several things from Noet Ravalo’s column today:

For those that still offer some interest, the lowest that I have seen is a rate of about one-tenth of one percent and this is still taxable at 20 percent withholding tax. At this rate, your monthly return for an outstanding balance of P50,000 comes out roughly to about P3.33 — an amount small enough to miss out among your transactions but big enough to be a nuisance if you try to balance your books before you get your printed statements. The other way of looking at this interest rate is that you have to set aside and keep untouched a balance of P400,000 in your account so that your net interest affords you a small-sized serving of French fries from a popular burger franchise every month.

I would tell the bank to shove the French fries up his nose (no funny words here please), but that’s just me. The owners of more than P3 trillion of deposits out there are still parking all of their money in bank deposits.

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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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If you haven’t received your Christmas bonus yet, you probably will in the next weeks. You’ll probably be getting anywhere from P50,000 to P100,000. How are you going to spend it? Do you have a good tip on where to put that kind of money?

We gotta plan, or else even P100,000 can vanish without a trace.

Hot money, hot Pinoy seafarers (were you thinking of hot Pinoy hunks? Tsk tsk), hot business opportunities in medical tourism – everything’s hot today except the weather. We are expecting another typhoon…sigh. It’s always like that before or after my birthday. EVER since I was born 21 years ago. (Did you just do a double take?)

The Philippines attracted $274 million net “hot money” last October, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported today. That’s quite a huge jump from $35.8 million in September, and totally deserves a blog post.

In this post,  I wrote that hot money refers to short-term investments by foreign investors in local stocks, bonds and money market instruments. While they influence the local financial market, we need to remember that they are very speculative and can leave our shores at the touch of a button. The long-term growth of our stock and bond markets, in fact, will depend on whether domestic investors (that’s you, me and our OFW friends and relatives abroad) will begin to invest in the domestic market. Policy-makers hope a wider base of domestic investors will not be as jumpy as foreigners.

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When I was in my early 20s, I longed to retire at 30. Now that I have reached that marvelous age (plus several years), I realize I need more time. Besides, I can’t imagine not doing what I’m doing now. I would probably be lost without my writing that constantly defines and affirms every day who I am and what are the little things I can do to leave my little mark in this world.

A retirement survey by HSBC called The Future of Retirement in fact showed that many Filipinos would like to work even after they retire.

Boy Javier, an advertising executive, on the other hand, decided to get off the train early. And he is having the time of his life, according to this MoneySense article in the personal finance section of INQUIRER.net.

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When it comes to saving and investing money, people are drawn towards figures that measure returns in cold, hard figures. Returns become some sort of Holy Grail that indicates whether an investment is any good, regardless of volatility and default risk.

In this exclusive interview with Karen Liza M. Roa, president and chief executive officer of Philam Asset Management, Inc. (PAMI), Roa says stability of the company and a well-defined investment process should also be topmost consideration for serious investors.

PAMI is one of the top three players in the mutual fund industry in terms of size. Learn about several sticky issues about mutual fund investing in this interview, like costs of investing, clues on upcoming new funds, the difference between mutual funds and UITFs, and what is the best strategy if you decide to invest in this instrument. MoneySmarts asks the hard questions so that you will be an informed investor. Happy reading!

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Only a few months to go before the wedding season begins to heat up. By this time, I can imagine a lot of prospective brides and grooms starting to feel that white-hot feeling of panic as expenses start coming in and as the reality of the entire things sinks in.

A lot of marriages are destroyed by poor financial management, so this is not the time to enter that holy agreement all wide-eyed and unprepared. Love can do a lot of things to finances – both good and bad.

Reader Jay, for example, emailed us asking for advice on how to make his money grow more. He intends to get married and settle down in the Philippines in two years. Jay says he understands the concept of high risk/high return, and wonders what options are available after deposits, stocks and mutual funds.
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Before I die, I want to see a polar bear in its real environment, play with penguins, explore Scotland, stand on the spot where Jesus likely gave his sermon on Beatitudes, experience backpacking across Europe with my only daughter and intimately know the beauty of the Philippines’ unexplored beaches, mountains and waterfalls.

You all have a sacred list of what you want to do before you hit the bucket. Have you figured out how much money you need to save so that you can retire well and do everything on that list?

Andrew Ferrer, a Fil-Am living in the US with his wife, is planning to retire in the Philippines to maximize their dollar savings. He asks:

How much income do you think we need to have per month for us to survive a pretty decent lifestyle?”

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