How We Did It

A Door, Windows

“Did”.  I am not sure about that word.  Because it is in the past tense and means the fun and the adventures are over.  When they are not.  We are just beginning.A reader wanted to know how we “did it”.  She said she read my first post but that I just skimmed the surface of how we overcame the bleak prophesies of our first financial planner, that I did not really explain how we got that 24% increase in our annual income, and more importantly, how we overshot it.  If you have not read that first post, here is what our first financial planner said:

“While the couple’s Emergency Fund Ratio (EFR) will be over 1x by the end of 2007, the ideal ratio is 3x.  The couple would need to add around Php149,000 to their annual income to meet such a ratio.  To raise their savings rate to 18.1% from 6.7%, the couple would need additional annual income of Php262,000, or add 24% to their current annual income.”

So, how?

It was a simple twist of fate.

We just came back from the US and were starting over. I returned to my law studies and my husband revived his advertising company.  He had a few local clients but the income was intermittent.  Yes, I remember that money was few and far between then and it was a sore topic – in fact, it would make me cry.  So I worried, hammed and hewed and would tell my husband, “Show me the money!“, till he would want to cry.  Then came a great opportunity.

My brother-in-law worked for a company in the US that was into a lot of businesses – tax planning and design, among others.  In one of his trips here, he asked my husband if he can design logos for US companies.  Husband, of course, said yes.  Brother-in-law broached the outsourcing idea to his US boss who liked it.  Before we knew it, we were designing 80 to 100 logos a month.

That was it and it was a jumpstart in the real sense of the word.

But recession came and the logos became few and far between.  But because we saved and invested the money we earned (in stocks, among others), we were able to set up businesses and go into several business ventures with like-minded people. Bo Sanchez had a name for this: “creation of money machines” or making money work for you.

MoneyDoctors, a partnership with Salve Duplito (of Inquirer.net) and our second financial planner (who believed in us), was born.

FrontrunnerEntertainment, a partnership with friends from the entertainment business, started producing concerts in February of this year.

Eco Things is coming up with a green product to be launched very soon.

Husband, too, has become some sort of an inventor, fearless in conceptualizing and spending and seeing his creations come to life.  Vague? Well, he has something up his sleeve and we are very excited about it, but we will tell you more about it in the next articles.

Left Hand Graphics is still wielding its art and its design, giving birth to icons that are the wave of the present.

And I started this blog.

But yes, there were ventures that did not work.  One was a barbeque restaurant situated in a high-traffic location, another was a logo design website for which we spent some $2,000 for the back-end programming plus $1,000 more for the call center we tried to set up for it.  There are more, I am sure, because we have talked to so many people who presented us (wittingly or unwittingly) with opportunities.

But that is the key.  We look for opportunities, evaluate if we would get into it, then go into it full steam.

Because we found out that doing or getting into it is half the battle.

Failing is half the battle.

Analysis is half the battle.

Reading, learning, meeting with people, is half the battle.

Because courage is key – the courage to start, to fail, to start over, to learn.

And praying.  That always helps.

But like I said, we’ve only just begun, and the fun continues.

Article by Issa.  Photo by D. Copyright 2010.
Website: www.YouWantToBeRich.com
Email: issa@youwanttoberich.com

[ad name=”HTML-2 Subscribe 2 – After Article”]

[ad name=”HTML-2 Blogher Before Comment”]

[ad name=”HTML-1 MoneyDoctors”][ad name=”HTML-3 Logolopolis”]