Sunday, November 29, 2015

Mar Roxas Explains the MRT Woes

The 2016 presidential bet Mar Roxas explained the root cause of the MRT woes.  An issue, which was never or not being discussed by the sensational media.  It was during the ANC Meet Your Candidates aired at Manila Polo Club, Nov. 25, 2015.

Karen Davila seems to fry him with sensational questions commonly hauled against the current administration but he was able to make his point.  It didn't affect his over-all composure.

Before he was put into the hot seat, fellow presidential aspirant Grace Poe was also interviewed.
Watch both and then think, reflect, analyze and finally, choose.  But after all the presidential candidates have underwent the same process.  Take note of the videos with an open mind and let it help each one of us as we decide.  The future of the succeeding generations all depends on the very important decision that we shall make in 2016.


Sunday, November 22, 2015

How Overspending Can Be Avoided When Extra Money Comes

By:  Gilbert M. Forbes
Financial Wellness, Stewardship Advocate
DepEd CALABARZON

Christmas Season is coming too fast once ber-months is around.  And this month of November, most of our employees or workers in the government sector are starting to receive their bonuses.

Once, we receive additional money, we begin to think of things to buy e.g., new clothes, gadgets, We even justify that it is needed, let say for instance, the need for a heater or a replacement to an aging cellphone.  Until, we just wake-up that none is left already.  Worst case scenario is to be in a budget dilemma because we forgot to buy things that are necessary like the food on the table for Christmas and New Year.  For sure, we will resort to credit or debt which of all the things, should not have happen.

This could be avoided if we will do the following:
  1. Budget and carefully plan your expenses.  In your budget, include all your payables and irregular expenses for at least three to five months. Think many times before buying some thing by asking, is it really needed? Is there no other alternative but to buy it?  What will be its effect to my general finances or cash flow?
  2. Save It All.  Correct, if you are not in a tight budget, save it all.  Just get the budget for Christmas to your existing irregular expense account savings.  Be sure that what you will take is only the amount budgeted and actually allotted for it.  Don't over-spend, otherwise, your other irregular expense needs in the future could be affected badly and so your monthly cash flow or finances.
  3. Invest.  You may get an additional insurance protection if your current protection has not yet reached the suggested minimum.  Or you can get additional health insurance apart from your PHILHEALTH hence it is not usually enough to cover hospital bills whenever ourselves or any member of the family got confined.  The bigger the coverage, the better.
Let us always remember that all financial benefits we regularly receive is not part of our salary and so not part of the so called active income that we are suppose to spent to make a living.  Financial literacy experts are constant and united on their suggestions that it should not be spent, instead save and later make it grow.

After all, delayed gratification today, is worth a thousand joy and peace of mind. We are to choose. For inspirations and increased motivation to start your financial wellness journey. You may also like to attend our free virtual seminars via zoom by registering at  https://402183ph.imgcorp.com/attendancehttps://402183ph.imgcorp.com/home/workshop 

Monday, November 9, 2015

Simple Importance of Irregular Expense Savings Account

By:  Gilbert M. Forbes
Financial Wellness, Stewardship Advocate
DepEd Quezon, CALABARZON

Suddenly, your washing machine runs out of order.  Then in just a couple of minutes the CPU of your desktop computer.  As if your day turns to a bad fate, your DVD player too.  What will you do then?  Its still a week earlier before the pay day.  And even if it so, your net salary is just enough for a living.


It would of course be not a big problem if you have a withdrawable savings account in times of unexpected events like this.  This is the so called irregular expense savings account.  A savings account intended for seasonal needs, including emergencies,  tuition fees, birth day party, fiesta etc.

With an irregular expenses account, there would be no problem in looking for money in times of emergencies and seasonal needs. Most of all, you will not be tempted to apply for a loan and have debt.  Of course, having debt will mean you have to pay it later including the interest and its impact on your monthly income would certainly be great for it will mean decrease in your buying capability instead of increase.  But this can be avoided.

Personally, it just happen to us for this year is a good year.  One by one, our household appliances just broke.  The first were our two stand-fan and desk fan last summer.  Then, just more than a month later, our washing machine, then our CPU and CRT monitor and just recently, our two-burner stove was discovered to have a leak.

Just try to imagine if you have no extra cash for the said appliances repair and replacement?  What will you do?  For me, I took the zero interest credit facility to purchase a 16-inch LCD PC Monitor and TV into one at Php3,499.00 only payable for three-months.

You might ask, so you fall into debt.  Yes but its a good debt because we could have paid it in cash but instead of paying it at once, we used first our budget for it from our buffer fund for leverage. The double burner gas stove will follow after paying in full the said monitor.

These are just simple things.  It still doesn't include quite serious matters as family sickness and destruction brought by both natural and man-made calamities.  You are the one to decide folks.

But one thing is sure. We can make things simple or complicated depending on our choice.  So what is your choice then?  

You may also like to attend our free virtual seminars via zoom by registering at  https://402183ph.imgcorp.com/attendancehttps://402183ph.imgcorp.com/home/workshop or reading more below:

Sunday, November 8, 2015

FACT OR FICTION: 'Without EDSA I, We Could Have Been Like Singapore-'Bong-Bong Marcos

Exerpts from Ramon J. Parolan's original article at opinion.inquirer.net with "Lee Kuan Yew on Philippines" as original title

What has the late former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew has to say about this?  Is the son of the former dictator Sen. Bongbong Marcos, telling the truth?

Here is what the prime minister statements about Marcos from his autobiography “From Third World to First” discrediting Bongbong’s assertions.
Courtesy:  Google Images

“ It was not until January 1974 that I visited President Marcos in Manila… Marcos received me in great style... I was put up at the guest wing of Malacañang Palace in lavishly furnished rooms, valuable objects of art bought in Europe strewn all over. Our hosts were gracious, extravagant in hospitality, flamboyant.

In Bali in 1976, at the first ASEAN summit held after the fall of Saigon, I found Marcos keen to push for greater economic cooperation in ASEAN. To set the pace, Marcos and I agreed to implement a *****eral Philippines-Singapore… to promote intra-ASEAN trade…I was to discover that for him, the communiqué was the accomplishment itself; its implementation was secondary, an extra to be discussed at another conference.

He once took me on a tour of his library at Malacañang, its shelves filled with bound volumes of newspapers reporting his activities over the years since he first stood for elections. There were encyclopedia-size volumes on the history and culture of the Philippines with his name as the author. His campaign medals as an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader were displayed in glass cupboards. He was the undisputed boss of all Filipinos. Imelda had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they visited Singapore…they came in style in two DC8’s, his and hers.

Marcos, ruling under martial law, had detained opposition leader Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, reputed to be as charismatic and powerful a campaigner as he was. He freed Aquino and allowed him to go to the USA. As the economic situation in the Philippines deteriorated, Aquino announced his decision to return. Mrs. Marcos issued several veiled warnings. When the plane arrived at Manila Airport from Taipei in August 1983, he was shot as he descended from the aircraft...

International outrage over the killing resulted in foreign banks stopping all loans to the Philippines, which owed over US$25 billion and could not pay the interest due. This brought Marcos to the crunch. He sent his minister for trade and industry, Bobby Ongpin, to ask me for a loan of US$300-500 million to meet the interest payments. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “We will never see that money back.” Moreover, I added, everyone knew that Marcos was seriously ill and under constant medication for a wasting disease. What was needed was a strong, healthy leader, not more loans.

… In February 1984, Marcos met me in Brunei at the sultanate’s independence celebrations. He had undergone a dramatic physical change. Although less puffy than he had appeared on television, his complexion was dark as if he had been out in the sun. He was breathing hard as he spoke, his voice was soft, eyes bleary, and hair thinning… An ambulance with all the necessary equipment and a team of Filipino doctors were on standby outside his guest bungalow. Marcos spent much of the time giving me a most improbable story of how Aquino had been shot.

With medical care, Marcos dragged on. Cesar Virata met me in Singapore in January the following year… He said that Mrs. Imelda Marcos was likely to be nominated as the presidential candidate. I asked how that could be when there were other weighty candidates. Virata replied it had to do with “flow of money; she would have more money than other candidates to pay for the votes needed for nomination by the party and to win the election. He added that if she were the candidate, the opposition would put up Mrs. Cory Aquino...

The denouement came when Marcos held presidential elections which he claimed he won. Cory Aquino disputed this and launched a civil disobedience campaign...A massive show of “people power” led to a spectacular overthrow of a dictatorship. The final indignity was on 25 February 1986, when Marcos and his wife fled in USAF helicopters from Malacañang Palace and were flown to Hawaii.

…There was no reason why the Philippines should not have been one of the more successful of the ASEAN countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the most developed, because America had been generous in rehabilitating the country after the war. Something was missing, a gel to hold society together. The people at the top, the elite mestizos, had the same detached attitude to the native peasants as the mestizos in their haciendas in Latin America had toward their peons. They were two different societies: Those at the top lived a life of extreme luxury and comfort while the peasants scraped a living, and in the Philippines it was a hard living… They had many children because the church discouraged birth control. The result was increasing poverty.

“The Philippines had a rambunctious press but it did not check corruption. Individual pressmen could be bought, as could many judges.  Something had gone seriously wrong. Millions of Filipino men and women had to leave their country for jobs abroad beneath their level of education. Filipino professionals… are as good as our own. Indeed, their architects, artists, and musicians are more artistic and creative than ours…

“The difference lies in the culture of the Filipino people. It is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over twenty years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics. They supported the winning presidential and congressional candidates with their considerable resources and reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election that returned President Joseph Estrada.”

“Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If they could get their elite to share their sentiments and act, what could they not have achieved?”