Monthly Archives: August 2009

You are browsing the site archives by month.

Are You On The Internet?

Virgin Territory

Internet: Virgin Territory

My mother had foresight.

She had the two of us enroll at a computer school at a nondescript building, with an area not exceeding 40 square meters.  I forgot where it was located, but I remember we had to look over the shoulder of the teacher and we had to share a computer, tinkering with DOS and binary numbers and floppy discs together.  We were no longer mother and child, but two people trying to ride with the times.  I am not sure if I (or she) learned anything.  I know that back at home I continued to type my thesis with an electric typewriter.

Not that it mattered.  What we had learned would be relegated to the annals of computer history, because in a few years, mankind was to take several quantum leaps into the information age.

In his book “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty First Century”, Thomas L. Friedman catalogued the shift of the philosophy of the world – from working hard, man had to work smart.  He said, “… One way small companies flourish in the flat world is by learning to act really big.  And the key to being small and acting big is being quick to take advantage of all the new tools for collaboration to reach farther, faster, wider, and deeper.”

From the computer came the Internet.  And the internet is the new frontier where this is possible.

Read More →

Of Mothers, Children and Money

Sunflowers

Sunflowers

I wanted to give my mother some money.

“Oh good!”, she says. “I can have your brother borrow it because he just got his credit card statement and he owed so much… You know your brother, he and his wife, they spend so much and they are at the mall all the time, buying this and that, and you know, they spend so much on their children, all the time…” She went on and on.

I was not sure I liked where the conversation was going and I told her so.

I asked her, trying to control my emotions (it is after all my money), “But mom, tell me… what good will that do? What will that achieve? Will that stop him from using his credit card or make him money smart?  And you, what will you gain? She said, “Well, I can nag him.” My mother’s not-so-secret and ineffective weapon. “But that would only make him deaf, mother, not make him learn life’s lessons.”
Read More →

Citibank Free Movie Tickets: A Lesson In Reading the Fine Print

Where Is Your Road Taking You?

Where Is Your Road Taking You?

Citibank Ad: For a minimum single receipt purchase of Php1500, you can get a free movie ticket of your choice in some designated cinemas.

Aside from being very inaccurate, free is too strong a word.  Okay, okay, the movie tickets have a potential to be free if you can find  Php130 movies at your favorite movie haunt.  But since the advent of THX and reserved seating and glamorized movie houses (great audio! superb video!), this is no longer the case.  Movies typically range from Php170 to as high as Php400 nowadays.

So, Citibank, the right, er, more accurate, word is subsidize.

Let’s begin at the beginning.  When I saw this ad one fine day, which took up more than half the size of a newspaper, and no fine print, my savings!savings! antennae went up and I began, consciously, to put more heart (and thought) into my purchases.  I had a target, and that is to use my Citibank card for purchases Php1,500 and above.   There were times when I would try to sweet talk the salesladies into cutting up my purchases (I remembered seeing in the ad, “a minimum of Php1,500 single receipt”, so I thought there had to be something there) so I would get different transaction receipts for every Php1,500.  But, as I experienced at Charles and Keith Trinoma, I was not always successful.

Read More →

Increasing Your Financial Intelligence

 

The Money Maze: Exciting, Amazing, Discoverable

The Money Maze: Exciting, Amazing, Discoverable

My friend Robert Kiyosaki said I should invest in increasing my financial intelligence.  By invest he meant put in money, effort, and more importantly, time.

Financial intelligence is the foundation of great wealth. It is the understanding of money and how it works in the present day world.  Understanding that debt is not merely debt, but that it could be good or bad; and assets are sometimes not assets but liabilities; and that expenses should be increased and income decreased to maximize the tax laws written by the rich for the rich.  It is seeing not what is there but the totality of the picture.  It is listening to the story of numbers, and using more numbers to create an extraordinary future.

Read More →

Accounting, Math and Newscasting

The Universe Says Yes

The Universe Says Yes

I used to love numbers and would spend countless hours doing my trigonometry exercises.  I could not explain it except that I (probably) had the genetic predisposition for it – dad was an accountant.  I could have been one too, but for some twist of fate, it was my younger brother who became an accountant (okay, okay, he’s also pretty good in Math) because I wanted with all my heart to become a newscaster, and shunned what I now call my lost inner talent.

In one desperate (yes) moment to get into a tax law firm, I told my interviewer that my dad was an accountant and my brother was an accountant. Silence. Without batting an eyelash, he told me, “Maybe I should hire them”.  He’s got a point.

Imagine my surprise when they hired me.

Imagine my surprise (!) when Robert Kiyosaki mentioned in Rich Dad, Poor Dad that if he were to do everything all over again, he would be an accountant.  And that this is the course he would recommend to kindergarten students.

The destiny that I denied.

Read More →

Eating In Style – At Half the Price

The Psychology of Hunger

The Psychology of Hunger

A sea of gastronomic fare set amidst gleaming cutlery, lit with chandeliers dripping from adorned ceilings, while strings serenade the night – it was a sight to behold and I tried to hold back the moan gurgling from my chest.  I look over at my husband and I know he feels the same.  I can see the same desire in his eyes.

A buffet spread in all its glory.

And we are paying for all of this gastronomic, marvelous, excellent (I could go on) – food – at half the price.

Half the price.

Oh, and did I mention, the setting is a five star hotel.

Sofitel and Shangri-la, Spiral versus Heat

Allow me to usher you to the world of the truly rich, where USD$50 dinners can be had for – yes – half the price.  But – there is a but – (and here it is again) but only if you are a member of the privileged set.

Read More →

Time Management for Entrepreneurs

 

Capturing Time

Capturing Time

I am overwhelmed.

The problem with having a finger in too many things is that it is a problem –you end up going around like a headless chicken, not knowing which tail is up and why, missing appointments, wanting to miss appointments, day ends up unproductive because the enormity of everything threatens to engulf you and not doing anything seems so very enticing.

Warren Buffett said: “We enjoy the process much more than the proceeds.”

But he is Warren Buffett, and he has a team of lawyers, tax planners, financial advisers, accountants and analysts, not to mention secretaries and people who will do anything for him, at his beck and call.  He is not a one man like team like you and me – starting entrepreneurs that we are.  Pending a Warren Buffett status, we have got to get a hold of ourselves, and time.

After all, they say, time is all in the mind.  It can contract and expand at the turn of the mental dial.  Now, how to find that mental dial…

Enter time management.

Read More →