In one of my previous posts, I mentioned about the difference between good debt vs. bad debt. In summary, good debt provides money into our pockets while bad debt drains money out of our pockets. In the long run, good debt becomes asset while bad debt becomes liability. What will you do if you have an unsurmountable amount of bad debt? One of the easiest way to accumulate bad debt is through an undisciplined use of your credit cards. You keep on swiping and swiping that card without you

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One month more and it’s Christmas again! Time flies very fast! Santa Claus will again come to town and will visit each one of us to give some Christmas gifts! Are you excited? As a Santa Claus to your friends and relatives, are you thinking of what gifts to give to them this coming Christmas? We all love Christmas. It’s the season of gift giving among our friends and relatives. However, it’s also the season of spending. You love Christmas but probably hate what it does

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The primary reason most people have money problems is that in school they were never taught cash flow management. Without this training, they wind up working harder and harder in the belief that making more money will solve their problems. Unfortunately, more money often just sends people deeper into debt. More money won’t solve problems if cash flow management is the problem. As CEO of the business of your life, you’ve created a personal financial statement and analyzed it. The next step

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WHAT IS AN EMERGENCY FUND? Life has a lot of uncertainties. You may not know that one day you’ve been hit by a calamity, you had an accident, you suddenly became ill, or your house got burned. In these circumstances, you need to be prepared. In personal finance, it is often called “saving for the rainy days”. These savings is often called emergency fund that is often used when we encounter emergency situations. WHERE SHOULD YOU PUT YOUR EMERGENCY FUND? Since emergency funds

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As I have said in one of my post, one of the keys in achieving financial freedom is to earn more and desire less. Desiring less means controlling your spending. It has been said that no matter how huge your income is, if you don’t know how to control your spending and save for your future, you would end up nothing in the end. As one of my favorite quote in savings says: “Ubos ubos biyaya, bukas ay nakatunganga.” The first thing that you should do is to pay yourself first.

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As many of you are aware of, Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad book became one of the hottest selling books. He introduced the term “rat race” which refers to the ordinary income-spend lifestyle, living from paycheck to paycheck. In order to get out of the rat race, we need to build passive income from assets which would generate enough income to sustain our needs and wants. One of the things that we must first do is to change and open our minds from industrial age

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Foods - they constitute the bulk of our expenses. It’s one of the basic neccessities in life. This is the stuff of life - the stuff that you put into your mouth and others’. It includes the Starbucks coffee you buy during coffee breaks at work, grocery items you buy every week for your family, and other types of foods you buy every now and then. This is such a variable figure and depends on your circumstances, whether you live alone, love cooking, or choose convenience food. It is

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We are talking too much about frugality and ways to save money here. I’ve enumerated several ways on saving money in different situations - whether be it on work, at home, or during leisure times. It’s not always about saving because sometimes we need to spend to get the economy going. If we don’t spend, then basically businesses will shut down because they won’t be generating any sales. Spending somehow have an impact on how we contribute to our economy. It propels

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Are you a reader of Good House Keeping Magazine? Last July 2009, I got my very first feature under their Money Makeover section. I was happy with the outcome and I was contacted again to further contribute to their growing number of readers.   And so since I knew that my second feature will come out this September, I urgently bought the magazine again to see how it goes. I bought one copy at the nearby Mini Stop in our office. The September 2009 issue Good House Keeping Magazine cover was no

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Retirement years are one of the best years in one’s life most especially if you’ve already worked for almost all your entire life. It’s the time to savor the fruits of your labor. It’s time to relax, to free yourself from worries and enjoy the remaining years of your life. Most people commit mistakes in planning for their retirement years. In the end, they have not successfully retired themselves from work and would either depend on the income of their children to support their

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I think many of you would agree that a lot of us are employees. We have a definite working time schedule. We have a boss. We work on a particular role. Basically, we work hard to sustain our day to day living. But if you want to achieve financial freedom, you should not just work hard but work smarter! Yes, you will earn more by working harder. You will work even harder if you got promoted because of the additional responsibilities and tasks that will be assigned to you. You will become

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Are you drowned with debt? Are you having problems in managing your debt? Does it look like that you need to work for the rest of your life just to pay those debts? Well, it’s not too late for you. You must act now not to be burdened by those debts. Of course you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor. You don’t want to end up working just to pay those debts. Here are some personal finance advices for a successful debt management. Control your spending. The ultimate way for managing debt

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Earn more and desire less. These are the words that have utmost importance when you want to achieve financial freedom. No matter how small your income is, if you desire less, definitely you will spend less and you can consider yourself to be “wealthy”. I believe our lifestyle determines whether we will be wealthy and financially free. There are a lot of persons out there who earns a lot but still because of their high lifestyle, however how huge their income is, all are spent and nothing

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Last July 31, I was given the chance to be a resource speaker for the very first financial planning seminar that I conducted. I was at first nervous as this was my very first speaking stint but that nervousness was slowly swallowed as I discussed my topics. It was a success! It was attended by around 50 attendees from our company. I was first introduced as a BS Mathematics graduate from Ateneo de Manila University, mentioned my two former employment background and my feature in Good House

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