Category: Pop Culture

How To Handle Income Differences Among Your Siblings

Are you the breadwinner of the family? Have you been blessed with windfall and is expected by your siblings to give them or their children balato or significant money gifts?

In Filipino and Asian culture where families are closely-knit, there is always an assumption that good fortune enjoyed by one sibling should be automatically shared with the others. For example, if one family member becomes a successful entrepreneur, he may be expected to find jobs for his brothers and sisters and probably their children as well. The brother or sister with more money may pay for the educational fees and related needs for the nieces and the nephews.

What siblings owe one another has no ready answer. Family history, cultural traditions, and personal beliefs shape the way how siblings share with, support, and help one another.

Here are few suggestions for siblings dealing with money differences that can maintain understanding and fellowship in the family. Continue reading How To Handle Income Differences Among Your Siblings

The Heart of The Deal: How To Create A Fun Yet Affordable V-Day Celebration

Can you afford to be in love?

This was the question I posed to our millennial attendees and friends from media during a Valentine forum a couple of years ago where I shared the stage with finance personalities and entrepreneurs Wilson Lee Flores, Aya Laraya, and Marie-France President George Siy.

The forum discussion focused on finding the real costs of the different stages of love, from courtship, marriage, and starting a family. Each of the invited speaker shared their wisdom on relationships and discussed how money plays a big role in making each relationship work out successfully.

And as the youngest speaker in the event (ehem), I was given the topic about quantifying and qualifying the costs of courting and being romantic, with a killer line that made the audience go nuts:

“If you’re not able to support the costs of courtship, then you won’t be able to support your partner when you get married.” Continue reading The Heart of The Deal: How To Create A Fun Yet Affordable V-Day Celebration

Why Financial Knowledge is not Enough To Get You Out of Poverty

Many Filipinos have been desperately calling the government to help low-income people work their way out of poverty by stamping out corruption, lowering the prices of basic commodities, increasing the salaries, reducing taxes, beating inflation, and teaching financial literacy.

But helping people get out of poverty does not only involve money. The effort requires addressing far more deeper factors that are keeping many people stuck in financial struggles. Continue reading Why Financial Knowledge is not Enough To Get You Out of Poverty