Is this a good investment for me?

The most common questions I get are variants of “Is this a good investment for me?”

Where can I invest my money? Should I get an MF or UITF? I got a VUL is that ok? Which investment is better? Did I make a good (the right) choice?
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Pay Off a Loan Early or Invest The Money First?

I've written before about choosing between paying off a loan early or investing the money. And I thought it's worth revisiting that as I'm about to make the same choice myself.

A few years ago I got a car loan. However, I didn't follow most experts' advice. I did give a little bit more than the usually required down-payment and sought the lowest interest available. But I got a 5-year loan. That way I could get the lowest monthly amortization.

Most experts' advice is to instead get the lowest loan total - that is, get the option that pays the least interest.

Not the most savvy move, specially for a guy with a personal finance blog. But sometimes numbers aren't what they seem at first.
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What happened to my 800?

A while back, I wrote about what I did with my 6k windfall.
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Want to save money? Don't bulk buy!

Ok, you got me. That isn't really accurate. You can save money by buying in bulk - if you do it right. But most of the time, households are better off just managing their cash flows.

First off, yes you do get a lower price (per unit, that is) by buying in bulk. But it's not that straight-forward.

And good personal finance decisions often can be analogous to what a responsible company would do in similar situations. Taking stock of your personal net worth is pretty much a company's balance sheet. And assessing your cashflow is like a company's income statement.

And since companies buy in large quantities, it makes sense that we should do so if we can, right?

Actually, no.
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Car Loans - What You Need To know

Thinking of buying a car? Or know someone who is? Then this article is for you.

My article on car loan rates is one of the most popular articles on this blog. And consequently I got asked a lot of questions about car loans in general. So I thought it would be useful to post everything I know and learned here.

So here's some of the usual questions and decision points I encountered.

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How To Get a TIN - and why you should

When it comes to investing, the earlier you start the better. And you can never really be too early. Well, almost never.
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How to avail of your SSS benefits

A while back I posted about why you need SSS if you want to improve your financial future. I still don't think it's a great investment by itself. But being an SSS member does let you have access to bank products.

In addition, SSS benefits are still useful, even if not nearly enough to rely on. But while I mentioned before what benefits are available, I left off how you can avail of them.

And I thought that info might be useful, since there's a lot of bureaucracy involved. At the very least you'll need your SSS ID, pay your contributions, and go to the nearest SSS branch. However, depending on the benefit, there are numerous forms and documents to submit.
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Should You Invest In A Memorial Plan?

Someone asked me about this via email, and I thought it was a good idea to share it here as well. There are a lot of financial products out there to choose from and memorial plans are one of those things you need to at least think about.

But the kicker is: If you thought it was hard to talk to someone about life insurance, just imagine how awkward the conversation is when it's a lot more focused on caskets and burial services.

And essentially that's what memorial plans are: they're a very focused sort of life insurance. It's not that you (or your heirs, rather) get money. You just don't have to pay for any deathcare (yep, apparently that's a word) expenses.

Memorial plans are a good product to buy, but it comes with caveats that deserve some really thorough thinking and planing. Let's start with the pros:
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5 Survival Tips for Paying Tuition Fees in the Philippines

The school year is about to start again. Even if we totally ignore the date, we would know because school supplies are already newsworthy topics.

However, the biggest concern during this time aren't notebooks and ball-pens but tuition fees. And today we have guest blogger Kyle to share some tips on how to survive this annual challenge.
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On Expense Planning

If you read a lot of personal finance blogs, you've probably come across the thinking that while frugality is an asset, spenders have one big advantage.

They're more aware of the prices and can tell if something is real bargain and why something is as pricey as it is and isn't likely to be any cheaper.

As an infrequent spender, that's intuitively true for me. I rarely spend and the next time I buy an item I find that prices and choices have changed significantly.

Which leads me to a different thought: Spenders have another slight advantage over their thriftier counterparts: they can be less likely to end up having to spend a ton in a short burst to replace stuff.

Why do I say that?
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On College Scholarships

For some reason I tend to follow U.S. political news almost as much as our own politics (which isn't saying much; I'm almost never up to date).

One thing I find interesting is that there's always a big fuss about student loans. Over here, the fuss is usually about tuition fee hikes (high; every year) and scholarship usually means dole-outs from politicians.

So I was really surprised to learn that CHED has a Study Now Pay Later program. And since the two most common investing goals are retirement and college education, I thought it would be a good idea to write about scholarships.
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7 Different Ways To Buy Your Own Home

Just like most people, having my own home is one of my life goals.

And usually, when we say that, we think of it as buying a house. That's the dream, at least. But when you start planning for it, you realize it can take many forms.

Superficially that means a choice of House, Condo, or Townhouse (or Duplex). I say superficially, because although you would have your own preference of those choices,what you will really need to prepare for is the way you would acquire it.
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3 Silent Traps That Hold Back Your Finances

A lot of threats to our finances are external - from rising retail prices, sneaky charges or big red signs(sale!) at the mall.

Some are more internal - something we do to ourselves without realizing it.
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5 Simple Ways To Take Advantage of Lower Gasoline Prices

For a while now, gasoline prices have been relatively low. Although you wouldn't feel it if you aren't a car owner.

Fares are still the same. And we can hardly expect noche buena items to really get cheaper as Christmas approaches. Of course prices in general are a little cheaper due to the numerous sales. But that would have been the case even if fuel prices had risen.

If you're a car owner though, it's a pretty nice thing that prices are down. It can give you a little more breathing room in your budget - until the prices inevitably increase, that is.

It's too bad gasoline prices won't stay low forever. But there are ways for this temporary rollback to benefit you permanently.
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How do you teach your kids to save?

This is going to be my problem in a few years.

I'm not exactly sure how to do it. Even when I think back to how I was raised, it might not directly apply. I have just one kid right now, and I doubt we'll want to have more than two. So there's a bigger slice of the pie to hand out, so to speak.

I've found a lot of tips though, and that should help. I'm just not sure how to make them work.
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On gadgets and goals

Last week was a little tough.

It started with my phone's sim dying. But that's not a big deal. Last time I had to buy a new prepaid sim. This time I got it replaced for free (postpaid; plan zero!), I just needed to report it to globe.

But then my PC sorta died too. It kept shutting down after 10 or 15 minutes. That isn't as small a problem. Last time that happened to me I had to replace the CPU - and the motherboard since the new CPU wouldn't fit my old motherboard.

To make it more interesting I noticed my phone now has about half the battery life it used to have. It won't last 24 hours even with only reasonable usage.

They're both around at least 5 year's old, so it's not a total surprise they're breaking down. I just wish they didn't do so at pretty much the same time!

But then last week, my MEG shares where shooting through the roof. I had a pretty decent profit! And just in the nick of time, it seemed.
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Insurance You Don't Need

A while ago I read an article on Yahoo Philippines about saving money by avoiding some unnecessary, though not necessarily frivolous expenses.

I browsed through the comments and was surprised to see that a mini-argument was brewing about the necessity of life insurance.

The article was saying you could save money by not buying insurance you don't really need. A couple of commenters were insisting that insurance is always a necessity.

So that got me thinking, are there really insurance you don't need? And is life insurance always necessary?
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Is It Better To Get A Bigger Basic Salary Or A Bonus?

Given the same annual salary, is it better to have bonuses or a bigger basic salary?

I used to work for a company that gave out bonuses quarterly. Inevitably I'd hear different people express how wonderful that was. I remember all my coworkers would be excited whenever the bonuses were about to be paid out. Including me. Everyone loves bonuses, right?

Eventually though, people would move on to higher paying jobs. Usually those jobs would only have 1 or two bonuses a year, but annually they earned more.

But I always wondered, if everything else was the same, which "method" was best? They have different pros and cons...
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On Expenses, Passion and Savings

If you've read a lot of personal finance articles or attended seminars on the same, you've probably become aware of a few similarities.

For one, starbucks is a popular target. Inevitably, a quick summation of designer coffee expenses is bandied around.

After that, the "list" usually includes gadgets, shoes, clothes, and high-end (or high-priced) food.

There's probably a good reason for that. Keeping finances in check is the first step towards financial independence. You can't invest without money and how can you have money if you don't save, right?

But life is usually more complex than what we are able to verbalize. And the same is true in this case.
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The Credit Information Corporation and You

Last time, we tackled the establishment of the Credit Information Corporation, and what having an individual credit rating means for ordinary folks like us.

So now that it's here, here's a Q-and-A style run down of what we can expect.
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