For the past several days, our Facebook newsfeeds have been flooded with news, rants, complaints, hate posts, and protests against the not-so-new but more vulgar implementation of the Bureau of Customs policy of checking Balikbayan boxes sent by Filipinos from abroad.
You could be one of the millions of OFWs and migrant Filipinos who are really angered by this ridiculous policy of our government.
Some of our kababayans and different organizations even organized a “No Remittance Day” as a protest against this bold and unnecessary move by the Bureau of Customs.
Although this will “hurt” the government a bit, we have no other choice but to remit the money that we have anyway after the “No Remittance Day”.
(Save and grow your money while you are still an OFW!!! CLICK here!)
Here are the 5 effective and meaningful alternative ways to send your love back home without compromising your hard-earned money from the crocodiles in our government agencies. No Balikbayan box, no problem.
5 Golden Alternatives To Balikbayan Boxes
1) Send your money to your savings account.
Build an emergency fund for you and your loved ones back home.
If you are breadwinner, you should think about the possibility of losing your job and eventually losing your source of income. How will you support yourself if you don’t have an emergency cash available for you and your loved ones when this happens?
If someone gets sick and eventually the need to spend for significant medical expenses becomes inevitable, you or your family members back home can use this emergency fund.
You can also use this cash in case a typhoon or flood ravages your home or your car and therefore will need some repairs.
2) Purchase an insurance product for yourself and your family members.
You are working abroad most likely because you have loved ones who need your financial support. You wouldn’t sacrifice the physical and emotional distance just for your own desires. You love your family, that’s for sure.
But what if you die today? Or you lose both your arms and legs? How will your loved ones survive if they do not have the financial capacity because you are their only hope?
Getting a life insurance or a health insurance are two VERY necessary items to be included in your bucket list as a breadwinner.
You will never regret purchasing one today.
AXA Philippines launched the very first online insurance store, the AXA iON, so that OFWs like you can purchase the necessary insurance product for your and your family’s protection.
3) Open a stock trading or pooled fund account.
It is understandable that you want to shower your loved ones with goods and gifts that they do not get to have often and seldom experience back home. That’s why we send Balikbayan boxes as a way of saying how we love them despite being away from them.
However, preparing for your golden years while you are working abroad should also be on top of your priorities. If you don’t plan and prepare for it, who else will?
The same thing is true for your spouse, if you are a married OFW. You should be helping your better half in investing for her retirement years.
Letting your children know that you don’t want to be a burden to them when you grow old by investing for it as early as now is one of the greatest “Balikbayan boxes” you could ever give.
You can determine here how much you need to invest to have a happy and a comfortable retirement.
Two of the best instruments to address your needs during your golden years are mutual funds and stocks. Read up the articles through the links provided to learn more how to invest in them.
4) Send groceries, medicine, health cards, to your loved ones via BeamAndGo.
With BeamAndGo, no matter where you are in the world, you can purchase gift certificates that will be sent to the mobile phone of your loved ones back home.
These digital gift certificates will enable you to buy food, groceries, medicine, health care, insurance, education, and other essentials for your family in a way that is affordable, convenient, transparent, and sustainable.
Your loved ones can immediately redeem these digital certificates at any of the participating stores under their network. There is no need to wait on long lines nor handle paper coupons.
So why need a Balikbayan box when you can just do it the BeamAndGo way?
5) Sell your stuff and old but still useable items online.
Instead of sending back home your old DVD player, television, kitchen appliances, furniture, clothes, and many other things inside your closets and drawers inside your apartment abroad, why don’t you sell them via the classified ads websites in your country of work?
You may also auction them on eBay, OLX, expatriates.com, and other similar websites.
You can also sell them to your neighbors and workmates who might be needing the things that you consider sending back to the Philippines.
You can save the money you earned from selling those stuff and bring it home yourself in your next vacation. Or if you really can’t wait, then use the money to do numbers 1 to 4 that I mentioned above.
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