on savings and investment

a blog dedicated to these topics is what am working on right now. only a few many know that am economics graduate and i love to discuss about opportunity costs and trade-offs.

but let me share it also here... because now i realized i have to put up my defences...

SAVINGS

yes, jude and i save a lot and in whatever form we save for the kid's college education... we save for our retirement... we save for emergencies.... we save because we have to save:

- because blessings may not always be this good. we have all heard of retrenchment or personal crisis and its the family, especially the kids who always suffer. whenever my friends comment on how savings-conscious we are this is what i always say: jude has a good job right now but we never know until when he will hold this job. it's stewardship that we practice.

- because emergencies may happen any time. unlike in his previous company, me and the little boys are no longer covered by hospital insurance (that's the trade-off...), we have health cards but only for outpatient cases. *knock on wood* in case one of us gets ill, i don't want to stress ourselves more by desperately borrowing money from our relatives and friends.

- because we want to sustain our living until we grow old. this is the reason which i brought up with jude when i told him that we save a percentage of his net pay. i know our kids love us but we love them as well, and part of that loving is giving them wings which we hope not to clip because of their responsibilities for us. soon they will also grow up and marry and the cycle continues. jude and i know very well the overwhelming duties in parenting and i want my kids to just focus and devote more of their resources to their families.

- because we also want to enjoy life... someone told me before that we save to travel and i agree with his point, "kelan pa? kapag matanda na kayo at parusa na maglakad ng isang kilometro?" so we save to pay for the airfare and the other expenses involve in a trip. in exchange for this, we're content with simple gadgets (i never held an ipod, blackberry, wii, etc.).

INVESTMENT

the hamilo coast club membership

oh yes, we're proud members of this premier, exclusive resort in nasugbu, batangas. jude is enjoying a club membership allowance from his company and he's expected to use it for club membership... and that's we did! it's not only a matter of prestige and enjoyment for us, but on top of this we're thinking that this is a good investment vehicle. we can force ourselves to save, let the club share's value go up and we sell it after some years. we're still thinking of what we can do with the proceeds if ever but using it as capitalization for a business, so i can have other option aside from going back to an office job, is a very nice idea.

you may have seen my posts in facebook about hamilo coast as we alredy like to have a little return on investment (ROI) as early as now.

real property

jude and i are on a lookout for another house and lot near makati (because prices of makati properties are really prohibitive for us). we already searched high and low for a property within our budget and i hope God will give us one.

we're leasing now our house in laguna and our plan is to keep it, not only because we love the place and the house, but because it's so hard to sell it.

we seriously considered early this year that we will move back and live in laguna but it's really not feasible. first and formost, jude has an agreeement with his big boss that his house must only be 20-minutes away from the office. so for the meantime we just really had to rent and yes, lease rate in makati is expensive, php 15k exactly for our apartment. some of our friends say it's exorbitant but when i computed to them the everyday gas and toll if ever jude will drive from laguna and back the amount will total to 11k... and yes, the pagod!

but of course we also feel that the rent money is sayang so we thought now of getting another property which will be in our name after 15 years. anyway, jude has another benefit of subsidized interest rate for any housing loan he will get thru the company. this will help us a lot in paying the monthly amortization.

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i only wish to put into detail how we go about with our finances as i think there's a need to... but if in the process i was able to inspire you to go for your financial goals, am happy that i was of help. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is our blog...

but basically, this is my blog... this is my journal... my outlet... whatever i write here may give a glimpse of my life, but not the whole picture. i am a happy person and i try to be as happy as much as i can but it doesn't mean that when i only talk about tribulations and celebrations, my life is all rosy. i just don't dwell on my problems too much. i just count my blessings and sometimes gets too excited to blog about it.

my life, our married life has a lot of struggles but we only relied mostly on ourselves to win from them. we also had sleepless nights (lots of it) as i don't really like bothering other people. though i didn't talk about it, it doesn't mean that it should be downplayed. it's probably i earned the monicker 'supermom' among my peers as they how my life was.

i talk about good life but there were trade-offs and sacrifices behind it, jude knows how i master our budget and to insert something means i have to remove something. if you see us enjoying it may also mean we were depriving our family with other things.

i also had to accept that i cannot be of help to everybody. until now i feel sad that my father passed away without having a taste of all of luxuries of life. it hurts but whenever this pain is nagging me i just recall the time when he said that "he's already happy when he sees me and my family happy."

but in all these, i never complained nor had regrets because it's MY CHOICE. i chose that i leave the corporate world and take care of my kids round-the-clock... i chose that we live a simple life to give way for once-in-a-while enjoyment. we set our choices, we set our priorities.

and i am thankful until now that God made it possible as when the time that i was already crying to jude that i can no longer juggle work, house chores and taking care of inigo that time (plus the fact that just i leave him with an almost stranger, a labandera to be exact) jude was given a job with income that could also cover my lost income--just what we prayed for!

this is our life and i had nothing to explain. by next week, jude and i will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary and we will renew our vows and look back ito the commitment we made with moral obligation of keeping each other as husband and wife, and extend this goodness to our children. i guess jude and i's accountability is only bounded within...