(This post is written by Bianca for Money Makeover)

May you live in interesting times, is one Chinese saying, or curse, whichever way you want to look at it. We do live in interesting times. Just when we thought that we are probably getting it right, calamity struck. Our car was taken. It was not insured.

A little background.

The hubby drives a 9-year-old truck that was the apple of his eyes. His brother handed it down to us four years ago. We paid the balance whenever we could and had already given a total of P90,000, the last installment just very recently. There is, of course, the cost of maintaining it which ran up to some P200,000 over the years. He had dreams of “dressing” it up – in March, he bought it a P20,000 set of wheels filled with nitrogen. He wanted it “lifted”, repainted, made into a macho monster truck. It was a constant companion when we moved furniture, or people, from here to there, and a comfort in the many times that my much-older car has broken down or was being repaired. He never wanted a new one. He was content and happy, my boo.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

Almost everyone wants to be told what to do.

Put P10,000, P100,000, P1 million here, here and here. Choose this company, dump that one. Buy now, sell in three years. Sell Glutathione while it’s hot…

Attend a seminar to find your life-partner. Write your dreams, send your thoughts out to the cosmos at four in the morning everyday so that the universe can respond to your desires and one day you will wake up a multi-millionaire with a house in Ayala, Alabang.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

(Photo credit: AFP)

I missed seeing this article in the Philippine Daily Inquirer when it came out in end-March, but I think it’s worthy enough to be shared again in MoneySmarts, just in case you guys missed reading it too.

Say it with me. “If it’s too good to be true…”

Enjoy reading!
[Read the rest of this entry »]

(Scam artists can make frogs look like princes in 10 seconds, so just walk away. Photo from AFP)

It’s true. I’ve been scammed several times. Don’t laugh at me, okay? This is a public confession of my extreme stupid moments!

When I was a college student, I gave the gold necklace I was wearing to an old lady I met at the Shopping Center in the University of the Philippines who said she would only “borrow” it so that she could pay someone to open her car door. For some reason, she was locked out and could not go home. Duh moment! She spoke in even tones and was very persuasive, but let me tell you it was my stupidity that got the better of me. She looked pretty decent, too.

That was a pretty simple scam, but con artists can get creative in their efforts. Another fraudster was a contractor for a big telecommunications company who installed our DSL modem. He seemed like a harmless guy and I didn’t think there was anything wrong in telling him about my line of work as well as my husband’s. Besides, he was in my home on official business. Unfortunately, he was part of a gang that preys on househelp. He or a member of his group pretended to be my husband, gave a story about being in a car accident and instructed the househelp to bring cash and valuables to a shady place in Caloocan, a city just 30-minutes away from us.
[Read the rest of this entry »]

(We can’t be too careful in protecting our homes from “intruders”. File photo from Agence France Presse)

It was funny on television. You know, the one that showed a helper blowing the scam artist’s cover with her employer’s IDD caller ID? But in real life, it didn’t make me laugh.

I never thought it would happen to me, but it did a few years ago. Then yesterday, a friend sent an email to tell me the Dugo Dugo Gang is still alive and that she had been victimized that day. I thought, they are still alive??? And how in the world do they manage to victimize so many people when their modus operandi is very well-known!

We both thought it would happen to someone we knew, but never to us. In my case, it happened several years ago. Someone called the house while I was away, pretending to be my husband. He said he was in a car accident, injuring a young kid and that he lost several teeth that is why he couldn’t speak well. Then he instructed the maid to get jewelry and cash from “the drawer” and bring these to a particular street corner in Caloocan or else the kid’s parents would ask the police to put him in jail. (Nice little detail to add some pressure huh?) He also asked her not to let me know where she was going because I have a heart problem. Oh, and he added that because our youngest son was sick that morning, the maid should bring him along. The last detail just made me freeze all over.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

Are all schemes premised on multiple investors fraudulent?

Chew on that one. Noet Ravalo tackles this question from one of INQUIRER.net’s readers. The reader also asked if there is a way to set up a legitimate business that can fight the stigma that Francswiss created. Read the article here.

Here are my favorite parts:

The real issue boils down to where we draw the line between a scam, a dream that is otherwise not viable and an untapped business opportunity. This is where the regulatory framework comes in. Financial regulations exist to tell us what is allowed and not allowed. Some of these rules may be a “constraint” to the business opportunity but by and large I am convinced that these rules are needed to protect the great majority who need them the most. Why do we need protection? In the scheme of things, investors are at the bottom of the information chain. Since we do not run the business day-to-day, we are farthest in the chain and would therefore miss out on important details or know of these on a delayed basis. For this reason, investor protection is a central tenet in securities regulation worldwide.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

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.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

So, you made money in a Ponzi scheme. It was a gamble you took and you went into it with eyes wide open. No big deal, it was your money anyway.

However, chances are you convinced your kumare, your cousin, your officemate, and your driver. It was their chance to get rich, you said. Hey, they made some money too — for some time. Unfortunately, bad people like the media and the government tried to get their cut and the entire thing went up in smoke. You shrug and say, I only invested what I could afford to lose.

Sorry to say, the happy story does not end there.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

Hot off a press conference at the Securities and Exchange Commission: The SEC, the Anti-Money Laundering Council and the SM Investments Corp. are warning the public against investing in SMFund.com, another online Ponzi scam similar to Deutchfrancs and Francswiss.

“Nobody can be blamed for wanting to earn high returns. Unfortunately, scam operators are trying to get rich quickly at your expense. Investors in these operations are the ones getting poorer. We are warning the public not to fall prey to this scam,” AMLC executive director Atty. Vicente Aquino told reporters.

Lawyers from SM Investments Corp. owned by mall king Henry Sy also told the media that the company was considering filing a case against felt SMFund.com for using its trade name committed infringement of its trademark, and that they were coordinating with the SEC on possible courses of action (my bad. its very hard to pin down lawyers, whew, and this is the only wording they like). “We are not in any way connected with this company,” Atty. Corazon I. Morando, senior vice-president for legal and corporate affairs of SM Investments Corp. said. In fact, Morando’s team also discovered another website called SMInvestment.com “under construction” and this website was also disowned at the press conference as well.

[Read the rest of this entry »]

Quiz. Tell me what is wrong with this logic.

What’s wrong with Ponzi and HYIP schemes? They can make Filipinos richer and give us better returns than the paltry interest the banks are giving. Earnings from them can send our children to school and build our houses. If we know that they are risky and still want to plunk in our money, then we have the right to invest. After all, it’s our money.

One answer. After this, I will not respond to any comments why Ponzi schemes are a scam, why they should all be closed and why they will all close shop whether or not the government succeeds in bringing them down. Blog entries in MoneySmarts and comments from people like Jon Mariano, Photon and Pinoy Investor have been crystal clear. Those who choose to invest do so only with greed as their motivation.

[Read the rest of this entry »]