Most, if not all, of us know the importance of saving. We save not only for the rainy days but also when we have dreams to pursue - buy a house or a band-new car or start a business. But saving is much easier said than done. It's particularly true if we we live a hand-to-mouth
existence. Filipinos have a colorful idiom for that - isang kahig, isang tuka. It refers to a chicken scratching the ground for food. "Isa" is a Tagalog word for one, "kahig" is for the chicken's act of scratching the ground and "tuka" for the fowl's act of eating with its beak.
Literally, "isang kahig isang tuka" means "one scratch, one pick" with a beak.

That taught us a bitter lesson about the importance of saving. After paying our debts for almost a year, we resolved to save as much as we can, particularly now that we are planning to set up a business or businesses when we go home to the Philippines for good after the graduation of our daughter, our only child, from high school here. One of problems of OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) like us is how to start life anew when we go on final exit from the countries where we have been working for years.
In our case, we have been in Saudi Arabia for about 14 years. When my wife and daughter joined me in 2000, a year after I first set foot on the soil of Jeddah, our child was only two years old. Practically, she has grown up here, in a foreign land whose culture is so different from the country where she was born. Of course, we have plans on how to start life anew in our home country, what business to go into, but this does not free us from the usual worries and trepidation, knowing that we can never tell what the future brings. Aware of the odds, we have to save as much as we can.
As a man of Faith, I always seek divine guidance for every endeavor I take.
Thrift is a matter of habit. Those who were taught to be thrifty when they were young will most likely find little or no difficulty in saving part of their income. It will come as easily as breathing. Conversely, people who grew up a spendthrift will find it very hard to save. It would be like moving heaven and earth. Unless we acquire the habit of saving, money will just slip out of our hands as easily as water flows freely from an open faucet.

It is akin to most people's struggle to quit smoking. If you do not have the will to quit, you can never kick off the smoking habit. The most effective way to start saving or stop smoking is to will it. I am sure of this because I have experienced both. I was a big spender and a chain smoker.
When we have developed the will to save, the other tips will be easy to follow like the common sense advice not to spend more than what you earn, Warren Buffet's classic counsel not to amass things you don't need because, to quote him, "If you buy things you don't need, you will soon sell thing you need," or make your savings earn bigger in mutual funds and other high-yielding investments instead of making your money sleep in unprofitable savings account in banks.
We will discuss some of these in future issues because I think this article is long enough for one to waste much of his time. Your time still falls under money matters because your time is previous, it's gold and can translate to money if spent wisely.
Note: The ad at the bottom of the article is for network marketing, a unique one, which I am part of. If you want to get details on how the earning system works, please drop me message in my Facebook account. My name is Casiano Mayor.
No comments:
Post a Comment