For inquiries, visit http://iluvlearning.com/money-summit-wealth-expo/
Subscribe
-
Recent Posts
Categories
Recent Comments
Blogroll
Going beyond motivation
Many personal finance talks are great in teaching you in having a good mindset about money… having that mindset is the first step into achieving one’s goals. However, what do you do when you already have that mindset? The next is putting them into action.
Back by popular request, I’ll be running No Nonsense Seminar on Finance: How to Invest for the Future. This is the program that teaches people on the rudiments of investments and investing.
Just how does investments work? What are the differences between investment products? How does one start with investment planning? The answer? Attend this seminar… it’s a very good investment, guaranteed.
Estate Planning anyone?
How many people do you know has applied for Insolvency? I doubt if you’d know much, if any at all. For most of us who earn a simple living and are modest wage earners, we think that having an estate is more of a dream than a reality. We think that our lifetime is too short to catapult our present financial plight into the coveted bracket of lifestyle bliss.
In the Philippines, insolvency is seldom heard. We have grown to become apathetic. We should start to realize that building an estate is not exclusive to the rich and famous, to the executives, to the tycoons of the business world or to the demigods of multinational empires. It is for everyone who has the resolve and prudence of a thinking and financially conscientious man. The philosopher Nietzsche said, “Fight! Do not Work!” This does not mean that we should create a labor union and destroy the capitalist which is what Karl Marx declared in his treatise, the “Manifesto.” This only means that we should create not go along with things that are already created. Build more, and not just remain contented with the idea of what to build or what has been built.
Indifference about insolvency… does this mean that we are good asset managers? Perhaps we are. Even the ordinary man knows that nobody can be sent to jail for not paying debts. But the state of being insolvent is not all about your liability to creditors. It is about your liability to yourself, the potential to amass resources, to achieve prosperity. That does not end there. By no stretch of imagination would you want to see your good and hard-earned resources go down the drain and drag your family along with it.
Perhaps, you were able to manage properly your investments including the fruits of your labor – your properties. You are now prepared to leave this productive live of yours. As that fateful day has arrived, your properties are transmitted to your heirs – your spouse and children. However, can you still guide your children on how to manage or use the properties you transmitted to them? Are you sure your wealth will not be spent in senseless parties, gambling, drinking sprees and incessant shopping? A good life and estate plan would keep you from having to roll inside your grave.
In this country, estate planning has been relegated to the merely inheritance taxes. While estate planning helps you transfer your assets in a cost-efficient manner, it really goes beyond taxes. A good estate plan will help you ensure that what you originally intended for your estate can actually happen even without your physical presence. Further, good estate plans foster family harmony. How many families do you know ended up fighting each other because of their estate? The intentions of the patriarch/matriarch in leaving an estate is help their children and leave a legacy of love – not strife.
Estate planning is a good tool to minimize, if not eliminate uncertainties in the proper distribution of your estate. Estate planning will help you have peace of mind that you will indeed leave a lasting legacy.
“A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.” – Proverbs 13:22
Risk and Property Insurance
Property insurance is a risk-distributing device. A person puts money called premium to a common fund and distributes his risk to the group. There is no way for a person to know in advance whether he will receive compensation more than he has contributed or that he will be merely paying for the loss of others.
The primary goal of a person getting insurance coverage is to assure himself that he will not shoulder the loss alone. He may gamble, take his chance that he may be able to steer his property away from a loss and its devastating effect. But putting a minimum amount, and considering that such amount is the only sum he is bound to loss in case a loss actually occurs is the logic behind getting protection for your property. However, it is unfortunate that most Filipinos remain clung to his fatalistic philosophy of “Bahala na.” When the loss happens, it is already too late.
Risk is an everyday reality. This is the reason why people make calculations instinctively to avoid risk. They forget that their own negligence (lack of foresight, lack of skill to prevent loss) is the paramount reason why property insurance is there in the first place.
Posted in Insurance
Tagged non-life insurance, property insurance, risk management, risks
Leave a comment
Direction, not intention
Sometime ago, while attending our church service at Victory Green Hills, my Pastor (Dennis Sy) said something that made a lot of people pause and think. He said “direction, not intention, determines destination”. I believe my pastor picked up those words from Andy Stanley’s book The Principle of the Path. Andy Stanley is one of my favorite authors and I do recommend you pick up his books.
Although my pastor was talking about our spiritual plight, the words got me to think about personal finance also.
I have yet to find anyone who will tell me that he does not like to experience financial prosperity. I am pretty sure there are very few people who relish the idea of being deeply in debt or terribly broke. Financial security remains to be a top goal of almost everyone. During my public talks, I would often ask the question “who likes to be rich?” and I’d see about 90 to 95% of the hands being raised (the other 5 to 10% are probably not listening to me).
People are often looking for a grand magic formula to achieve financial success and many of them are also looking for the quickest way to do it. After 20+ years in the financial services industry and observing hundreds of successful people, I know that there is no such thing and quick-rich ideas, though can work, is hardly ever sustainable. Achieving financial freedom is a long and deliberate process, and most of the time a painful process at that. Fortunately, it is not a complicated process but rather a very simple one. My good friend and best-selling author (Pwede Na! Books) Efren Ll. Cruz shared to me 3 ways to get rich:
1) Inherit it (for those born fortunate);
2) Marry it (again, for those born fortunate – physically, haha!); or
3) Spend less than what you make and invest the difference.
The 3rd option is actually the only viable option. Inheriting money doesn’t always guarantee you can keep your wealth. Marrying for money is actually a guarantee of a miserable married life. The 3rd option is the sure-fire way to achieving financial prosperity.
The formula is too simple right? But how come majority of us find ourselves lost in the quest for prosperity? Our intention is to be financially disciplined, learn to save, budget properly, etc. Until we see our favorite store on sale, dine at a hotel buffet at a whim, upgrade your car spontaneously, buy furniture unplanned… get the drift? Often times, we lose focus of our goal and we get sidetracked. The intention is still there, we just got detoured momentarily. But hey, “direction, not intention, determines destination” right? It’s like having a terrible fight with your spouse — it is never really our intention to quarrel with our loved ones, but when we lost our control, we get lost and we eventually suffer. One can always make a course correction and redirect towards the original path that will bring us to our destination but there’s time lost and a lot of opportunities may be lost as well. In money management, like anything in life, time is really important. We can never make up for lost time.
Next time you are faced with a detour, focus on your destination and remember that the fastest and most efficient way to get there is through a straight line.
“Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.” Proverbs 4:25, NIV.
– taken from the May-June issue of Moneysense Magazine.
Posted in Money Management
Tagged andy stanley, direction, donita rose, financial planning, moneysense
4 Comments
My advocacy, part 2
… 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:
—————–
“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
——————–
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
Posted in Events
Tagged blue chip, investment training, louis moran, registered financial planner
Leave a comment
My advocacy, part 1
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.
Posted in financial planning
Tagged all about money, chinkee tan, cito beltran, financial freedom, registered financial planner, RFP
2 Comments
No secret
I recently subscribed to a cool thing I at the web which I learned from my good friend David Bonifacio – Formspring. It’s basically a site where you can ask questions from someone who is subscribed there and the inquirer can be anonymous. I didn’t really think there would be that many who would ask me questions but I was surprised there were quite a few. Some questions were silly like what flavor ice cream I like or what my favorite dance is. My friend David had a plethora of questions on love and how to date him – I guess the questions you will get there is according to your perceived personality or image. Fortunately, most of my questions were about personal finance – those are the only questions I can give sensible answers to anyway.
There was one question posted there that I want to discuss in this blog, a question I have been asked many times – “what is the secret to being rich?” Ever since I went public (as a personal finance speaker / writer), answering that proverbial question seems to be the bane of my existence, so to speak. Well, I don’t really get annoyed answering that question but I am a bit disturbed that people actually think there is some sort of secret to being wealthy. My answer? There is none – never was, never will.
Let us not fool ourselves that there is a magic formula that will answer our question. Achieving financial freedom is a process and that process requires something so simple, yet so difficult to many – discipline. There is a reason why I recommend books like Total Money Make Over (Dave Ramsey) or Millionaire Next Door (Thomas J. Stanley & William D. Danko ) over more popular books like Rich Dad Poor Dad (Robert Kiyosaki) and Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (Harv T. Ecker). Read those books and you’ll know why. I subscribe to Dave Ramsey’s podcasts because they are very practical, easy to apply and well, I like his ‘no-nonsense’ approach. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad and I must say there’s some value particularly on awakening our mind to the alternatives. I glanced through the book Millionaire Mind and didn’t even read much anymore because it’s full of mind tricks and lacking of real principles that will work. Unlike Total Money Make Over and Next Door Millionaire, they are direct to the point and you can actually apply it and see real measurable results.
There are no secrets; there are no short-cuts. To believe so is the markings of a fool and no one wants to be a fool right? If there’s one book that will really change you and make you not just achieve success but significance… it’s the Bible. One more thing, as you desire great wealth, pay more attention to the why rather than the how. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Matthew 6:21
If you want to ask me a question on Formspring, visit http://www.formspring.me/RandellTiongson Sensible questions only ok? Questions on love, marriage, dating, hair, good looks and all that, ask my friend David Bonifacio.
Better than yourself
I am currently at the Go Negosyo Negosem Program at Cagayan de Oro. Earlier, I was delighted to see an old friend in the airport, had breakfast and coffee with him and had a nice chat. In today’s virtual world, it’s always nice to catch up with friends face to face. My old friend Paulo Tibig of V Cargo is also a featured speaker of Go Negosyo.
A few minutes ago, I just heard Paulo deliver a powerful lecture on spotting opportunities for budding entrepreneurs here in Mindanao. He was entertaining, witty and more importantly full of business wisdom. I’ve listened to a lot of business speakers and Paulo is one of the best I have heard in a long time.
During our trip from the airport, we talked about a common friend, Joseph Doce. Joseph used to be a top insurance executive and now an accomplished entrepreneur. Paulo mentioned that there is a possibility that his company and Joseph will come into some business arrangement of some sort.
Yesterday, I had a meeting with another good friend, Jenny Ignacio-Magalong. Jen and I work together on many projects and she was briefing me about the updates of those projects. We discussed our projects and I was amazed at how good this lady is and I was learning so much from her. Jenny was also asking me for my insight on a new business she and her husband Luis are getting into. Jenny is not only a great program director (for our projects), she is evolving into an entrepreneur as well.
As I am writing this blog, I got a buzz from a good friend, Thaib Mella. We chatted a bit and he asked for some referrals for his new job, as a Sales Director for a leading Real Estate conglomerate. He is now leading a hi-powered sales team and we were pitching some ideas left and right.
What does Paulo Tibig, Joseph Doce, Jen Ignacio-Magalong and Thaib Mella got to do with each other? You see, at some point in our lives, we were working together. At some point in the past, I was their ‘tormentor’ at the place of work and they were reporting to me. I remember them well and I remember them fondly. I have seen their potentials way back and I have seen them grow in many ways, particularly in the professional sense. With all humility, I am proud to say that these guys are so much better than I am today and even much more successful.
Clearly, these friends of mine did not become great because of me. It is foolish to claim that it is my guiding and mentoring that made them achieve success — far from it. My working relationship with them were brief and they didn’t probably learn much from me. However, there was something I did that was critical in their success today. I stepped out of their way so they can pursue growth.
True leadership is not always about empowerment, teaching, mentoring, shepherding and all that. Sometimes, you just need to step out of the way and bless them as they grow. It’s hardly always about us.
Posted in Random Remarks
Tagged jen magalong, joseph doce, leadership, mentoring, paulo tibig, thaib mella
11 Comments
Productive use of waiting time
Off to travelling again. This week, my work brings me to Cagayan de Oro and next week to Hong Kong. When one travels, having long waiting periods are unavoidable. You need to be in the airport hours before, take a flight and lots of ’alone’ time in the hotel room.
I used to hate waiting and I get annoyed if I have to wait. However, I needed to get used to waiting with the kind of work I have so I decided to make my waiting time productive. When I say productive, I didn’t mean bringing my laptop with me and do a lot of those work — I meant being productive in the sense of recharging oneself.
How? I read and listen to podcasts a lot during those ‘waiting time’. I make sure I always travel with my Bible, a book and an iPod especially on those trips that I need to ride a plane. I fly often, like 2 to 3 times a month but I look forward to those trips so I can recharge myself. The best benefit is I get to read God’s word more than I do during my normal routine — in doing so, I can read the Bible cover to cover once a year (give or take a month or two). I also get to read my books and I have loads of them (most are unread). I also get to listen to podcasts, something I don’t get a chance to under my normal routine.
I just finished the book “Heavenly Man” and I probably will grab another book and shove it to my body bag. I just updated my iPod with my favorite podcasts – the Dave Ramsey Show. I also downloaded podcasts of someone Francis Kong recommended to me a long time ago, Ravi Zacharias — I never really got to it and totally forgot it, until now.
So next time you fret about waiting, make it a productive wait and take the chance to do some real learning. Happy waiting!
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
