This year is my 22nd year in the financial services industry and I am a bit nostalgic. Aside from the fact that I am not as young as I think I am, I’d like to say that 22+ years have been eventful, to say the least. I’ve experienced a personal roller coaster but just like the old Glady’s Knight song, “I’ve had my share of life’s ups and downs, but fate’s been kind, the downs have been few”… thank you Lord. There are many things I am thankful for in the last 22 years of my professional life. Foremost is that for 19 years, I have a wonderful partner, my wife Mia who has also embraced my zeal and advocacies.

For many years, I’ve been blessed to interact with countless people, not only do I get to share my knowledge and passion with them, I get to learn a great deal from them as well. Rolly Robles, a former boss of mine once shared me the concept of S.P.I.C.E. – S for Service, P for Personal and Professional Growth, I for Income, C for Challenge and E for Enjoyment. If I sum up my many years in this industry, I’d like to say that the concept is pretty much accurate.

So what do I really do? Many things. I’m an speaker, writer, trainer, consultant and a ‘trying hard’ entrepreneur. But to be more accurate, I mostly help people plan their financial future or teach people on how to help other people. For the past years, I’ve been doing more of the later, in my capacity as a teacher.

Is it easy? Sometimes it is, but most of the time it isn’t. Acquiring the necessary technical skills can be challenging but financial planning isn’t really rocket science. There are gazillion books, websites, and training programs on personal finance. There are many credible sites in the internet on financial planning and my favorite local program would be the Registered Financial Planner Institute, where I stand as one of its Directors. Acquisition of technical skills isn’t all too difficult — learning soft skills so you can apply the technical skill are the hard part.

Telling people that they need to take personal financial planning seriously is easier said than done. Majority of Filipinos are more interested in many things other than personal finance. Our savings rates are amongst the lowest in the world. Filipinos with insurance coverage are likewise just as low. Less than 1% of us invest in the stock market. Mutual Funds, UITF, Index Funds are not something your average Filipino will know, let alone understand. I’m really excited about the PERA Law but I wonder if our brothers and sisters will take advantage of it properly once it is enacted (anxiously awaiting the implementing guidelines). Average people are aware that they need to plan for retirement but still fail to do so. Common reasons you will hear is that they don’t have enough money to plan with. Agreed, that’s enough reason — but isn’t that enough reason to take planning seriously as well? If income is hardly enough today, isn’t it logical to concern ourselves with proper financial planning? If living expenses are not enough with our income, how will we survive when we don’t have the capacity to produce income anymore? …

… to be continued.

… Con’t.

Blue Chip was my first salvo into teaching finance for the youth. My Pastor (Dennis Sy) and I were discussing on what we can do with the youth and how to prepare them for the future and the idea of Blue Chip was born. Allow me to share with you the blog of one of the participants of Blue Chip, Louis Moran:

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“What did those speakers teach me?”

A Better way to Save

Record your Money

Make a cash flow chart: Use excel or, for manual computers, a paper with a simple data table. A small table you can keep on your planner to record daily expenditures and another to record expenditures on a monthly basis. They should record each individual expense – item, date of transaction, money lost; something like that. And it should be brutally REAL. A monthly record should have a totals vs. monthly income/allowance table, plus, savings, on the bottom. Those savings can be how much you don’t actually spend, if any. And it shouldn’t be discarded immediately; review it, keep it for the next month or two, and then make another one. And remember to keep receipts.

Plan your Money

Whatever my priority is, knowing what I need to spend daily, I can plan my expenditures–  a certain amount for leisure, another for more important things like baon or jeepney fares, and a portion to save. I can save just for the hell of it – i’ll have money to spend for friend’s birthdays or special gigs – or tighten my budget for a certain goal (something you have to get within a certain time, like a test tube set for your school project due next month)

Store your Money

– Some say piggy bank but it also seems like a good idea to start using a savings account, or a bank. It isn’t just storing, it’s investing, though, with little growth (like microbial).

And that’s one thing I learned from the seminar. I knew I needed to save money, except I didn’t exactly have an efficient way which is how my money always disappeared. Bottom line of this lesson is keep track of your money not just by memory. From personal experience, high-school life is the best time to start using organizers – those little notebooks, applications on your mobile phone with a calendar icon, or even your personal computer (Applications like iCal or Entourage). A cash-flow chart is just one of those.

What did they teach me about using money?

Bottom line is the best idea is always an investment.

Invest on Business

‘Make your money work for you, not the other way around’ – quote on quote. Do something you love to do and you’re good at, or something that everybody really wants or needs, like a real opportunist! But in any of the three, something legal of course. The best example for me were the Fausto brothers who were stock traders and business investors at 13 to… how old? 18? They showed us how capable we, the teenagers at the adult’s talk, could do all that even at our age; as well as do business or be opportunists.

On Yourself

Study hard/learn skills. (Another thing I learned, but from other, older people’s experience: do this before the high-school fun ends and they all become serious, stressful studying, board exams, summer enrichment – well, that’s not so bad – and minoring and majoring)

Invest on others

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High School student Louis Moran seems to have learned much from his 2 day experience with us. Things like this encourage me further with my advocacy.

“for attaining wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of insight; for acquiring a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair; for giving prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the young – let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance-“ Proverbs 1:2-5, NIV

I lectured at the Registered Financial Planner (RFP) Program last Saturday and the class and I had a nice discussion on the advocacy that I am into. In fact, I believe the class was more interested discussing my advocacy as against the module that was being discussed on that day. For some years now, I have carried an advocacy on personal finance education and I am so blessed to see that this advocacy is now gaining ground in the country.

During the lecture, I was telling the class that the 8 day program they are taking is a great thing because they will be equipped with the rudiments of financial planning and they will experience a great deal of improvement in their competencies. However, I also told them that before we can even apply what we learn in investment planning, time value money, financial planning process, tax planning, estate planning, insurance planning and all those we learn in RFP, we must get people to really want to achieve financial freedom. Before we can apply all the financial principles, we must espouse something first, discipline.

In reality, a person who does not know how to invest but is very disciplined financially will be in a better position than one who is very knowledgeable in the arena of investments and business but lacking in fiscal discipline.

In the last few weeks, I organized 2 events: All About Money (with Chinkee Tan, Cito Beltran and myself) and Blue Chip (Financial Literacy Program for the Youth).

All About Money was designed to reach to the broad market, those that are finding hope in the achievement of their goals. Chinkee tackled the issue on debt, Cito discussed on the issue of possibility and hope while I discussed the basic applications. There were nearly 500 people in that event and from the assessment forms we got back, they were really glad to have attended such a program like All About Money.

… to be continued.