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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We all want to live comfortably, if not with an affluent lifestyle. But not all of us think about how to exit this life in style. Just today, I learned how that requires quite a lot of money!

A family estate at Loyola Memorial Plans, for example, now costs at least P5 million complete with an air conditioned family mausoleum. Five years ago, the same lot cost P3 million, quite a big jump in price. I think it was business columnist, author and public speaker Francis Kong who said one of his favorite investments is funeral lots! You know what they say about obstetricians and gynecologists – they are never out of business.

At The Heritage Park in Fort Bonifacio, a family estate costs P3.4 million – and that’s the cash price. The same lot goes up to P3.7 million if you pay in installment.

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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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Noet Ravalo answered a reader’s question on pre-need plans today in INQUIRER.net:

I have heard so much about pre-need plans — some good but a lot more of what I hear seem scary — and would like to know more without hearing a sales pitch. I have a very young family and I was wondering if it is time to consider an educational plan for the kids and perhaps a memorial plan for my wife and myself. If you think they useful, what should I look out for? — Ronald

Pre-need plans, especially for education, pension and funeral expenses, are financial planning instruments in “tingi”. They break down the costs of children’s education, retirement and funeral expenses. Buying in sachets, of course, is always more expensive than buying in bulk.

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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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Let’s get one thing out of the way. Saving and investing are not the same, although they are both important and part of the same spectrum. Sometimes, we feel like we are investing, when actually we are still in the saving stage. Getting mixed-up over the two raises expectations that are not unrealistic.

This list of options in the Philippine setting is not by any means exhaustive. It includes the major savings and investment instruments. Where would you draw the line to separate the savings from investment products?

1. Cash. Yep, I just learned last weekend that some Filipinos still prefer to keep their money in cash at home, fearful even of the possibility that they will lose money deposited in banks.

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For Filipinos who are just starting to get their long-term savings acts together, mutual funds have slowly become the investment instrument of choice. It’s not very hard to see why. For a minimum of P5,000, small savers get a professional fund manager working to grow their little nest egg. (Photo of cuckoo’s nest courtesy of Michelle Morelos)

Businesswoman Liah Alcantara is confident returns from the company she has nurtured will help her retire perhaps better than she initially expected. Lately, however, she realized she needed to “put her eggs in different baskets” and invested some of her extra money in mutual funds.

She says she is not a financial person and knows little about how the market works. After listening to her financial planner, however, she decided to make a go for it. Next steps: learning to keep calm amid the gyrations of the market and decoding the mutual fund table.

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It’s a tag party and I’ve been invited “PF” style . Thanks Digerati Life  for including me in your tag list. What a great community of personal finance bloggers! I’ve found quite a number that should be included in my daily reading regimen.

It’s comical how this question has hounded me over the weekend. I thought about it while writing about other things, while walking to the mall, while preparing lessons for kids, while I was getting ready for bed! If I were asked to give just one — just one personal finance advice — what would it be?

Here goes: Enjoy your money! But use a plan and stick to it.

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What do you do when you need money in a hurry?

This guy had it easy. A smudge of driveway sealant that resembled the face of Jesus Christ was found on in his garage, and he sold it on eBay for…$1,525.69. Yep, P70,181.74 for a slab of concrete that doesn’t even cry, change expression or something.

(Photos again courtesy of Michelle Morelos.)

One of my weirdest habits is collecting flyers of “quick sources of cash” and taking note of advertisements on walls and posters. Here are some of the most common:

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