5 secrets to getting out of financial trouble

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. — Charles Dickens

Do you know people in financial trouble who need help? We are often too fascinated by how to get rich; few have paused to study how to get out of and stay out of financial trouble.

Recently during Powerbooks’ ongoing Power Sale, I bought the interesting book The Laws of Money: 5 Timeless Secrets To Get Out And Stay Out Of Financial Trouble by author and CNBC TV host Suze Orman. (By the way, thanks to Powerbooks Greenbelt 4, Makati, manager Jane Lopez and her good staff for finding and keeping a long brown envelope I left behind there last Aug. 9. Thanks for good customer service!) 

Here are Suze Orman’s five secrets:

Law Number 1: Truth creates money; lies destroy it. We should be honest with others and with ourselves; do not let falsehoods or outward appearances ruin us financially. Spending too much or beyond our incomes is one lie. Many people, when faced with crisis, cannot accept harsh realities and change, but go on living lies like a drug addict.

Do not let money be a badge of your identity or measure of your self-worth. Look at our various political leaders, even military and police generals active and retired — how many of them and their spouses live on lies to show off their social status and power, thus encouraging them to compromise moral values and the truth in order to rip off the nation through corrupt or unethical deals?

On the recent scandal involving the government’s Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP), it is deplorable, if true, the charges of behest loans approved in one day to finance the stock market investing of well-connected people. This is unfair to us taxpayers who support state banks and to small entrepreneurs like this writer who can’t get loans in one day. What about the issue of insider trading of Philex Mining stocks? Why does nobody ever get jailed for insider trading here in the Philippines?

What is even more tragic about the DBP controversy was the alleged suicide of the bank’s 42-year-old lawyer Benjamin Pinpin, who left behind a wife and two kids. The eldest is a daughter who took the University of the Philippines college entrance exam last Sunday, Aug. 7, a day after the burial of her dad. A DBP colleague e-mailed this writer: “Atty. Pinpin was a soft-spoken, kind-hearted, hardworking and simple man.”

Law Number 2: Look at what you have, not at what you had. This law doesn’t apply only to financial matters, but also to one’s love life, physical weight, debt situation, education and other aspects of our lives. We should not live in the past but wake up to the realities of the present in order to create a new and better future.

Do not keep comparing our situation now to yesterday or yesteryear. The past has no power over us unless we give it power. We should also learn how to let go in order to have a better tomorrow. For those who were formerly rich or had great ancestors, it is good to remember and honor our forebears but, unlike carrots or potatoes, the best thing about us isn’t our roots!

Law Number 3: Do what is right for you before you do what is right for your money. Money should contribute to our good health and peace of mind, not add to anxieties and ill health. The real goal of having money is not wealth or money per se, but security, more freedom and having control over our own lives. Think also about yourself and your future, not just about your kids and grandkids, so don’t take yourself out of the equation in financial planning. Do not get into credit card debt, which will destroy your life and endanger your family.

Law Number 4: Invest in the known before the unknown. Invest first in the knowns you need in your life such as food, education, shelter, transportation, debt repayments, retirement, etc., before siphoning off your income and savings to unknown things like a bigger house, investing in real estate, a non-retirement stock market investment, etc.  Investing first in unknowns is like stealing from yourself, your well-being, your future and peace of mind. The first crucial step of this law is to pay off debts, whether credit card loans, car loans, housing loans, etc.

Law Number 5: Money has no power of its own. Money is a vital force in our life and you can make it grow, but it is not your life force. Money is not a true measurement of personal power, and our true worth as a human being is not defined by money. If you lost money or have less, don’t look down upon yourself or others with less money. In the same way, if we gain more money, we shouldn’t think that we’re greater than others.

This fifth law is a mental attitude. We should think that we really have power over money, that it is our servant and that we are not slaves to money. Indeed, I strongly believe the true measure of wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.

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Enrile & Belmonte Right On Cha-Cha, PUP & Better Science Education

This writer urges President Noynoy C. Aquino to change his mind about opposing charter change or constitutional reforms, because the proposal of Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile and speaker Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte Jr. to lift the constitution’s “restrictive economic provisions” is long overdue and can help our Philippine economy woo more investors. Our economy needs more foreign and local investors; we must compete with Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and others, which have so much more direct foreign investments every year!  

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Philippine STAR reader Dr. Orlando B. Molina wrote this column to say that he is a candidate to be the next president of the state-run Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), and that he envisions strengthening the technological and science courses of PUP in order “to renew and reinvigorate polytechnic education in PUP.” He cited the Hong Kong Polytechnic University as one ideal role model for a revitalized PUP to support the socio-economic progress of the Philippines and to “help make the country more globally competitive.” I agree!

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Speaking on the need for better math and science education in the Philippines, one of the Philippines’ best math educators is my second cousin, Ateneo de Manila University professor Queena Lee-Chua. She has been a strong advocate of improving math and science education nationwide so that the Philippines can have a stronger economy. Congratulations to her son and my nephew Scott Lee Chua for recently winning in the youth division of the Palanca literary awards, and also for his travel books with National Bookstore’s Anvil Publishing.

Queena’s late grandfather Lee Chiu Chan was the younger brother of my late grandfather, prewar sawmill entrepreneur Lee Tay, while Queena’s late dad Dr. William Lee was a summa cum laude medicine graduate of UP who became one of the country’s top flour traders. Queena is an Ateneo summa cum laude graduate. RFM’s Joey Concepcion fondly remembers Dr. Lee and his business dealings with their family.

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