Personal Finance Archives - Page 5 of 10

May 8, 2015

Teaching Financial Literacy at Home

I grew up in a family where money is a taboo subject and financial education is never taught. I actually learned about such important concepts as personal finance and financial freedom through self-study. My mother, who was in-charge of budgeting in our one-income household when I was little, wasn’t really a good example when it came to managing our limited financial resources.

Image Source: http://connexcu.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/connecticut-gets-an-f-in-financial-literacy/

Back then, we were living from paycheck to paycheck and we were acquiring liabilities instead of assets. While my parents certainly did their best to provide for our needs, the idea of financial freedom was non-existent to them. Or maybe they knew about it, but it was just not among their top priorities.

Continue reading “Teaching Financial Literacy at Home”

April 23, 2015

Lessons on Stock Market Investing, Vol. II

At present, my stocks portfolio with COL Financial is experiencing a low. (Even my BDO UITF is on the negative side right now.) I’d like to believe the market is down or having some sort of a correction. It’s been like that since the month started. Brenda, a newbie stock market investor like me, shares the same sentiment here. The last time I checked (which was this morning), one of my stocks even had a loss of -18.50%. Should I be worried? My heart says yes while my mind says no. I choose to listen to the latter. I try to be positive about this because I have faith in my stock picks.

To continue with my Lessons on Stock Market Investing series (you may read Vol. I here), below are some of the things I learned from my nine months (as of April 21st) of investing directly in the stock market:

Continue reading “Lessons on Stock Market Investing, Vol. II”

April 1, 2015

Insured!

After weighing our options and preparing our payment, the hubby and I have recently gotten ourselves a term insurance from Sun Life Financial. It’s called Sun LifeAssure. As what’s standard, our annual premiums were based on our age. Mine was P5,160 while the hubby’s was a bit higher at P5,585. This is for a coverage of P500,000 with critical illness benefit. For add-ons, we got accidental death and total disability benefits.

Sun LifeAssure is renewed after five years. This means that the annual premiums to be paid for the five-year period (that we signed up for) are fixed. After that, should we decide to sign up again, our premiums will be higher as they will be based on our age again.

Continue reading “Insured!”

March 26, 2015

Spending Vs. Saving

Recently, I’ve been obsessed about saving. Instead of spending my entire weekly allowance, I’d make it a point to save each week. Like last week, for instance, I saved a total of P565. Funny but I felt very accomplished as I counted the money left in my wallet one by one. Haha.

Spending and saving are broad topics. They have always been a part of discussions on money management and personal finance in general. We spend mindfully and sometimes, mindlessly. We, however, tend to forget about saving.

Continue reading “Spending Vs. Saving”

March 11, 2015

Some Frugal Living Tips

“Living frugally allows you to live richly in ways that you choose.” ~Anonymous

2014 turned out to be a very positive and enlightening year for the hubby and me. It was the time when we took our finances more seriously. We started investing directly in the stock market in July and when November came, we opened a UITF account at a local bank.

While modifying our allocations for this month’s budget in my desktop, I thought about sharing some frugal living tips here in the blog. These are practices that the hubby and I try to do consistently to save money and live a simple but fun married life.

Continue reading “Some Frugal Living Tips”

February 26, 2015

Weighing Our Options: Life Insurance and Health Cards

Our 2015 goals include two very important things: life insurance and heath cards. These are non-negotiables. The hubby and I have to get them this year or never. We’re actually very late; we should’ve gotten them a long time ago. But you know, we weren’t as prepared then as we are today.

How come we are invested in various instruments (e.g. stock market, UITF, and RTB) and yet we don’t have life insurance and health cards? I don’t have a very clear answer for this. Perhaps, we procrastinated. Or maybe, we just felt we didn’t need it just yet (I know, how foolish!). Or I guess, I’d justify it by saying we needed enough time to think as to which life insurance and health cards suit our needs.

Continue reading “Weighing Our Options: Life Insurance and Health Cards”