Christmas Bonuses and Hitting Goals

Hello!

I have good news that I want to share. It's nothing really major but something that made me happy this time of the year. I got my Christmas bonus! For most of you this is just normal, but for me I am really psyched about it! It's funny and ironic how it pays to work for a capitalistic business.

So aside from my bi-monthly salary last December 10, I got a sizeable 13th month pay from our company. I am really happy about it because I have just about depleted my Cushion Fund (The fund that cushions my Safety Fund so I won't have to tap from that 'final financial frontier' as I call it.) because of sudden requests from my mom and dad.

Where did most of my finances go?

The roof at my parent's house was leaking so bad and the galvanized steel sheets and the wooden railings need to be replaced fast; so I shelled out of course, because my parents really don't have the money to cover the whole cost of the repairs. I am more than happy to give this to them because shelter is their basic protection. I can't have my parents living under bad house conditions.

You see the wheelchair my mom is sitting on? Mike and I shelled out for it using our pooled funds from our part-time writing gig and a portion of my Christmas bonus.

So between that and the leaking roof, I didn't put away the whole lot of my money. But I am still happy to be able to help. Money is important for me, because it is the tool that enables me to help the most important people that matter in this life.

What did I do with the rest of the cash?

I saved it of course! And due to this, I hit my Financial Goal for this year!

* About P50,000 in a brand-new, spanking Time Deposit.
* Aside from my Travel Funds that are in another account.
* PLUS! a new P5,000 Cushion Fund that I deposited in a new BPI account (ATM only) that I am going to slowly grow again the same way I grew my previous one.
* Some money put away for Christmas SHOPPING!!!!!!

I am so happy! These makes me want to work even harder.

Even though the Christmas heavy spending is so easy to get lost in, I have a good system and a good partner in crime during the Holiday spree, so I'm good to go. Will update about it a few days!

See you then,

Financial Security: Am I Going the Right Way?

My winding and challenging road toward financial freedom makes me feel like I'm crawling in a pit of Tar. Sometimes I console myself saying that, I have a lot of years to go but at the same time after a couple of years working, I scoff at myself for having built so little.
They say it's baby steps and I may just be impatient. I have a little now that I am able top put away but it's so little that more often than not I feel broke.

So where am I now?

Work and salary
I love my work. I come early everyday because I love sitting at my desk, turning on my desktop computer, hauling out my work laptop to turn it on too, and then logging in to check my emails and tasks for the day. I look forward to my boss arriving and my co-workers (including my boyfriend haha!) settling at their stations.

My pay is good. It's not extraordinary but our department pays highest compared to some other departments. I like my company too because they give out monthly incentives almost on time, perfect attendance bonus which I enjoy getting every month, and performance-based quarterly incentives that I get almost everytime. I recently passed an exam that could very much help with my promotion, it was very technical, mostly about my stock knowledge about networking, wireless devices, connectivity technology and such. I passed that so I am hoping that I get the promotion someday, it will certainly boost my take home pay!

Love Life
For a girl, your partner makes or break the progress you are making in life. Either you shoulder them like a burden, give you stresses, or they make you into someone better and boost your dreams. I think its important to find the guy that matches youin every way and that your dreams and his dreams should not echo, but complement each other. I taught him how to budget and it's his first time to actually have a chunk of saved money put away safely in a bank. I love that we're both frugal and we make do with what we have.

After a year of dating, we are happy, everyday we talk constantly, laugh and plan a lot of plans. Like a lot. He's the one I can talk to about anything because he is the smartest guy I know.

Me and My Family
I stress over a lot of things when it comes to my family. I'm living with my sister's 4 children while she's working abroad. In our household, my other sister also lives with her small baby. My first sister worries me because even though she has worked outside the country, she has virtually no savings in the bank. Everything she worked for just goes to the household, from food to clothing, utilities to tuition which take up a huge chunk of her pay. I only pay for the water bill in return and oversee the studies of my nieces and nephews. I am mainly worried about what the future will hold for her who has that many kids and no savings. The same thing with my other sister who has no job and no income, relying on the small allowance our elder sister gives her. I worry about the little baby's milk and food, clothing and doctor's checkup.

Aside from that, my mom and dad are reaching the age where they feel aches and joint pain as well as all those disorders that plague the elders. My mom continues her sari-sari but no one is there for her when her leg and hips start aching so bad, it's only my dad who's 76 years old now and he can only do so much. I want them to rest and not have a worry but I can't provide that for them. I try to give them money but it's only really very little. I can't buy my mom her medicine since its just so expensive, so I give them food supplements to help strengthen their bodies at least. I feel like crying everytime I think of how little I can help.

Future Plans
I've finished building about half of my emergency fund which is a significant amount for me. I divided it into one liquid ATM account ("Cushion Fund") and two Time Deposit Certificates ("Emergency Fund" and "Safety Fund") at PBCom and Metrobank, the latter has just matured this month and I'm thinking of getting a higher interest TD for it at another bank. I am sticking with TDs now because I am ultra conservative and I want my money semi-liquid.

I plan also to pay off my college debts of about 12k next year.

Next year I will be all about investing. A bit of savings and a huge load of business investing. Mike and I are planning to start a business. No details for a while since we have a vague idea of what we are going to do. We're planning to involve his brother in this who has become my very good friend too. We're planning to reach 25k each by March 2012.

That's about the long roundup...
I really hope 2012 will become a better year. I love 2011 for everything that it brought. I need 2012 to work like a charm. I will work so much harder.

Me and My Quirky Budgeting Style

Payday is always a happy time! No matter how bad my mood is or how down I am, payday makes me cheerful. No, I'm not mukhang pera or anything like that, but I get happy because it's time to sit down, relax, and try to work on my budgeting so I can start anew!

My pay is not as huge as some of you may get, but with my simple lifestyle, savings-conscious budgeting style and once-in-a-while splurges, I'm good to go. So how do I go about with budgeting? You may think playing with numbers on a paper is so easy, but you can all attest how hard it is to follow through, right? It's so easy to write that you'll allot this and that amount to savings, and this percentage of your pay on this and that for spending, but once you actually get the money whole, sometimes those good, well-thought of plan flies away as easily as the money flies away from your hands.

This is why I adopted the Envelope Style method! It has worked so well with me, and the division of the money from whole to being broken down into its allotted amount helps me realize that even though I have this chunk of money I've just withdrawn, it is not unlimited and a specific amount has already been divided as per my budgeting.

Putting in money into their designated envelopes help me see where EXACTLY my money goes.

So what is the envelope style?

Envelope Accounting or the Envelope System is a method of budgeting where on a regular basis (i.e. monthly, biweekly, etc.) a certain amount of money is set aside for a specific purpose, or category, in an envelope marked for that purpose. Then anytime you make a purchase you look in the envelope for the type of purchase being considered to see if there are sufficient funds to make the purchase. If the money is there, all is well. Otherwise, you have three options: 1) you do not make the purchase; 2) you wait until you can allocate more money to that envelope; 3) you sacrifice another category by moving money from its associated envelope. The flip side is true as well, if you do not spend everything in the envelope this month then the next allocation adds to what is already there resulting in more money for the next month.
With envelope budgeting, the amount of money left to spend in a given category can be calculated at any time by counting the money in the envelope. Optionally, each envelope can be marked with the amount due each month (if a bill is known ahead of time) and the due date for the bill. - Wikipedia, Personal Budget: Following a Budget

Basically, what you do is get several envelopes and mark them according to what you have originally set on paper. My budget usually revolves around this percentages:

60% - Savings. And out of that amount here is the breakdown:

• 39% - Emergency Fund
• 39% - Insurance Payment
• 22% - Travel Fund

40% - Expenses. And out of that amount, I break it down to:

• 36% - Allowance
• 24% - Credit Card Bills
• 20% - Tuition
• 20% - Water Bill

Each of those break downs, I put it in the allotted envelopes, and that's it! The big chunk of my money disappears and I get a feel of how they are distributed according to their flow. It reduces the chance of overspending on one aspect and undersaving on another. This way, there is a place for everything and everything is in its place!

It has been so useful for me for the past two years. It has taught me to be disciplined, to recognize how much I'm putting into savings and expenses, and most importantly it avoids me having tap in to other resources by sticking to the contents of the envelope ONLY, and trying workarounds and money-stretching ideas. I like it because they are alotted neatly! But my envelope style is not THAT quirky, but I do get a lot of "wow, you still do that?" with matching wry smiles. I don't mind, well, it's not even unique but it works for me.

Getting the Significant Other to Save Money

Mike and I have been together for about 10 months now, even though our friendship has already started its roots 15 years way back in third grade. Because we've been friends for a long time, we share almost the same interest, from watching movies, series, playing video games, Asian Language and culture as well as reading books and learning.

That's about what's on the surface, because beneath it we're both supremely alike and terribly different at the same time---From priorities to wants, and most of all, when it comes to handling money.

In a nutshell, I could easily say that he is the SAVINGS = DEBT - TOTAL MONEY type of guy while I'm the more traditional EXPENSES = SAVINGS - TOTAL MONEY kind of girl. If you follow either of the two budgeting equations you would know that there's a world's difference between the two. You may say that both seem like legit ways to manage our payroll, but if you scratch deeper you will see that Mike is the type to think about paying everything off first, ensuring that he's covered for a defined amount of time, and treating what's left as savings. While I, on the other hand, put a big chunk of my money as savings and try my hardest to stretch, pinch, and find a workaround on what's leftover to cover my expenses.

Vastly different people, you may think. But we haven't fought about money even until now because despite our differences, we found a really good balance somehow! I understand why he does the Expenses First equation, though, because he rents an apartment which means he has to pay a monthly stipend, his food and bills also need to be looked into. He can't possibly adopt my Savings First equation, so I try my best to help him budget. He hasn't had much experience with the whole budgeting and saving money every payday until when we got together, and it's only recently, due to my successful (forceful?) coercion to save a bit of money over time, that he has now a pretty good liquid contingency fund in a bank (I can at least brag about that right... hehe!)

It's not that I "inspired" or "pushed" him to anything, I'm just one of the few lucky ones who has a very rational and logical boyfriend, who can easily follow numbers and one who knows that I only encouraged him to save  because it is only for his own good. In my opinion, he is a bit used to his past, where he earned a lot, by whole lot I mean like X5 my salary at that given time period. He could easily buy whatever he wanted, pay cash or credit card and still have enough left to cover the miscellaneous. But now he shifted jobs, changed cities, and now he's stuck here with a very cautious spender! XD

In my case, I am very glad to have someone like Mike who helps me get rid of my notion that spending for myself is bad! Yes, it takes me a quite a while to decide to buy the things I want. Even when it comes to clothes, I say I like it, then not look into it at first. If I still like it after a while, I try it on but don't go through with buying the thing. And if I really like it enough, I will have to find a sort of justification and reason WHY I have to have it. It's an arduous process. Mike tells me it's okay to spend, that I don't have to fear about running out of money anytime soon. I really like saving, so very much, but spending (and especially not getting discounts) is very low, except for my daily expenses which I have already allotted and budgeted properly. This way, Mike and I found balance.

There are people who used to be in a good relationship with their special someone, but has long turned sour because of financial problems. Honestly, though, for me it is one of the worst things to fight over with! But I understand how hard money can affect a couple, any couple, not unless you're Bill Gates and his wife or some other billionaire couple. Fighting over money sounds stupid, but money matters are serious, and if you fight a lot about it, you end up losing a lot of respect for each other. Without respect, love will find it difficult to continue holding on to what's left of your relationship. Thankfully, Mike and I know this, and we follow the age-old adage that "It's just money." No matter what a great enabler money may be, it's still just what we call a "material", a  "thing" that you will be able to replace someday, but when you fight over something that small, it's sad that you have let money control your relationship. Never forget that money is just money, but loved ones are always priceless and irreplaceable.