Go, travel, but don’t return empty‑handed
Who doesn’t want to shop in Bangkok, say hello to the Notre Dame, and stretch their legs up the hills of Santorini? These used to be just items on our bucket list too, and we’re pretty sure that by this time, you’ve also filled your own sheet with things to do and places to visit. But, while we’re all for #TravelGoals, we’re also the first to say that you gotta #TravelSmart.
Yes, you deserve that dream vacation and sure, the experience is priceless but when you end up penniless by the end of the trip, you’re left with nothing else to celebrate. So, how then do we get to enjoy traveling the world without breaking the bank?
There are so many ways for you to get information on the best accommodations, most sulit transportation choices and starred restaurants. Go to travel fairs and familiarize yourself with what’s available for your trip. Will it be more cost‑efficient if you book a tour or is a DIY itinerary better? Compare flights and accommodations by visiting many sites like Agoda, Trivago, etc.
Clarissa: I personally go to Skyscanner (both the app and website) to compare flight prices and accommodation options.
Sharon: Research thoroughly and plan ahead of time. This will give you a lot of better deals and will save you more time and money.
Be wary of the numerous seat sale promos that will incessantly lure you into booking that trip on a whim. Make sure that they really are good deals and not just secret traps. Since these are almost always non‑refundable and non‑transferable, weigh your options well.
Sharon: I book my trips almost a year ahead, so I get to wait for seat sales that offer me the best possible deals. The only way seat sales and promos will trap you is if you’re booking them when you’re financially not ready for it.
Clarissa: Booking ahead will also entail risks of your trip coinciding with other commitments. Weigh the odds of these seat sales. I once had to forego my ticket because my best friend ended up getting married on the day of my trip. It was a good thing I got the ticket at a really cheap price so I didn’t mind the money I’ve lost and the trip I had to delay.
Consult friends and ask them for tips that would change your experience significantly.
Clarissa: In Italy, we ended up getting reasonably-priced rooms in—guess what!—a convent in Vatican through advice from friends. Who would even think of doing that? We were in the middle of Rome, staying in such good rooms all while meeting friendly nuns every day. It was such an experience! There was also this one time, when my husband and I were in Greece, another friend advised us that it was best to explore the island by driving ourselves. We were so surprised that we only had to pay 80 euros for renting a car. Yes, that’s only ₱4,000 for all 5 days. I don’t think we would’ve discovered these golden nuggets elsewhere.
Sharon: During our trip to Greece, we once booked a package from Insight Vacations. It included accommodations at Saint John Hotel VIllas, a world class resort, tours, transfers and most of our meals at $4,300 per head for 4 nights. We later found out that had we not gotten the package, we would’ve paid $2,920 a night just for accommodations alone. Imagine how happy and surprised we were of our savings!
You’re on a vacation because you want to enjoy, and scrimping your way all throughout the trip and getting too caught up with how much you are already spending will definitely cause you more stress than relaxation. Set a reasonable and realistic budget that will let you indulge yet won’t rob you of your entire life savings. Treat yourself to a good balance of “bongga” and “tipid” meals while on vacation.
Clarissa: My technique is months before the trip, I commit to allocating a part of my paycheck to fund my travel. So, let’s say my trip is in April, I will save and not spend that much from January to March. It’s all about getting the balance, and preparing and planning the trip well.
Sharon: Personally, I prefer getting tour packages because itineraries are already planned out and paid for before the actual trip. This way, I can bring only a small amount for pocket money and it lets me manage my spending even better.
In our book, “I Wish They Taught Money In School”, we wrote about how credit cards can be your best friend. Use your credit card to your advantage and consider getting hotel memberships especially if you travel a lot.
Clarissa: My husband is a member of Accor hotels and we enjoy a ton of perks. With reasonable annual membership fees, we enjoy free overnight stays, half‑the‑price buffets, even resto and bar discounts, just to name a few. When traveling, I also use my credit card to earn some points (for even more future travels!) and for safety reasons (I don’t like a carrying a lot of cash around). Be smart and make sure you know the exchange rates that can cause you to spend more than when paying in cash. Research on what other perks you can enjoy like free lounge privileges in airports, free hotel accommodations, and points getting converted to miles, which have actually earned me free flights before. There are a lot of benefits so, enjoy them while you can. Just remember my golden rule when using credit cards: pay everything in full every month. In this way, you really take advantage of your card’s perks and save a lot when traveling.
Sharon: The key here is to not only get good deals but to make sure you are disciplined enough to utilize the offers available. Using a credit card is only beneficial if you are disciplined to paying it fully and if you don’t keep spending money you don’t even have.
It’s good to be adventurous in your travels, but exercise sound judgment when managing your finances for them. Your travels will only be enjoyable if you don’t come home empty‑handed. So, make do with what you have and let the offers and deals augment the experience for you. Remember, #TravelSmart in order to be truly #TravelGoals.
Clarissa Seriña‑de la Paz and Sharon W. Que are financial literacy advocates and the bestselling authors of “I Wish They Taught Money in School” and “Money Grows on Trees” Check out their books at www.lifestyleupgrade101.com. Get 10% off, plus a free notepad and bookmark, by sharing this story with the hashtags #MoneyMonday and #SparkUp. Remember to make your post public!
Money‑making gift ideas for your loved ones
Looking for gifts for our parents (*cough* Father’s Day is just around the corner *cough*) can get more difficult as we get older—folded Oslo paper greeting cards with Crayola‑drawn hearts stop being cute after a while. But our parents have done so much for us, they’ve invested so much time and effort into molding us into upstanding citizens. Isn’t it time to invest in them too?
You know what would make a fun gift for parents? Funds. Not cold hard cash, there are still some parents who would take that as a blow to their pride. No, something that they could manage, and take a part in earning.
Enter exchange traded funds (ETF) and mutual funds options that allow you to buy shares that you can transfer to someone else.
Repeating their Mother’s Day, First Metro Securities offers ETF gift certificates for people who wish to invest as low as ₱2,500 in exchange traded funds managed by the securities brokerage arm of the Metrobank group. SparkUp called First Metro and exchange traded fund gift checks are also available upon request, though details on how to pay for and receive the gift check would vary depending on whether you or your chosen recipient already has an account with First Metro. Inquiries can be emailed to customerservice@firstmetrosec.com.ph.
On the other hand, Sun Life Financial has to offer its Prosperity Card which invests a fixed rate of ₱5,000 into a mutual fund that it manages. You can pay for the initial funds for that loved one online, but to get an actual card that you can put in your wallet, you would have to pick it up from a Sun Life office. The recipient will then have to register their own account on Sun Life using the funds from the card. Congratulations, they are now a proud owner of a share in a mutual fund.
“It’s a gift that keeps on giving, because it’s a gift that can grow over time,” Sun Life chief marketing officer Mylene Lopa told SparkUp at the sidelines of a press conference last May 17. “With an investment, it will earn money and it will help the person who received it achieve whatever goals they have. It bears fruit.”
She added that insurance could also be used as a gift to parents, because it’s always good to be prepared in case of an emergency. The caveat? “The insured person has to be evaluated and the process is longer to apply for,” Ms. Lopa said. Because of the evaluation requirement, it’s almost impossible to surprise a person with the gift of insurance, unlike with ETF gift checks and mutual fund Prosperity Cards.
What’s the difference between the above two options—ETFs and mutual funds—other than the former being half the price of the latter?
First, let’s talk about how similar they are. Both ETFs and mutual funds take funds from different investors to invest into a certain group of securities.
Think of it as you and a bunch of people riding the same bus, on an adventure ride to what is hopefully a good destination. You and the other passengers are the investors, the driver is the fund manager, and the bus is the fund. All of you can individually upgrade your seats for a more comfortable ride—you can all add to your initial investments. You can also individually leave the bus and take your upgraded seat and all the memories you’ve had of your adventure with you—or take all your funds and leave if you think that the trip isn’t worth it or if you’ve enjoyed yourself enough. Should the bus take a wrong turn and sink into a bog, you and your fellow passengers are going to lose some funds. But the passenger who upgraded his seat will lose more than the passenger who decided he was going to take the entire trip with the seat that he started with. If the bus takes a right turn that leads to a glorious island paradise, the passenger who upgraded his seat can boast of having the most comfortable ride to the best place ever. As for the passenger who kept his basic seat, well, at least he got there.
The advantage to these funds is that you don’t have to learn how to drive to get to where you are. The disadvantage is that you don’t have a lot of control over your vehicle.
The difference lies in the path the bus will take, or what the funds invest in. ETFs have lower management fees because the stocks within the fund can only be switched around quarterly. So if part of the fund was invested in unprofitable stocks, all the investors will have to sit through that ride for three months. The ETF is listed in the stock exchange and can be expected to reflect the movement in the market, thus it’s easier to track.
Meanwhile, stocks within the mutual fund can be switched around by the fund manager at any time, culling the unprofitable from the profitable. Because that’s more work for him, management funds in a mutual fund tend to be higher. Unlike ETFs, mutual funds are not listed as stocks, which might make it more difficult to track. There are four types of mutual funds: money market funds, bond funds, balanced funds, and stock funds.
What a banker really thinks about the ₱50‑challenge
Early this year, 22‑year‑old Yona Abella, a young girl who seems to be engaged in direct-selling, decided to treat all fifty-peso bills that come her way as “invisible.” By May, her red‑colored notes were worth ₱42,300.
Her post has amassed more than 116,000 likes and has been shared by nearly 40,000 users, prompting us to ask: With these saving schemes becoming appealing to people of different ages online, should we indeed start rolling our sleeves and take on the “challenge”?
So we asked a banker to weigh in.
To our surprise, Ruben Carlo Asuncion, who happens to be the chief economist of Union Bank Philippines, responded to our email with more than an explanation but also a confession:
“I am actually doing the fifty‑peso saving challenge now,” he wrote.
“I consider all my ₱50 bills as invisible now. I simply just tuck them away somewhere in a safe place and target to finish doing it by December,” he continued. “I do not have plans of buying anything with it or any lofty goals. I am happy when I achieve what I planned to do.”;
According to him, such saving patterns help people in developing self‑control and delaying gratification for higher and long‑term goals because “it entails sacrifice.”
“It means foregoing with the daily frappe and/or afternoon snack that one usually buys or consumes,” he said. “Sacrifice itself is not supposed to be considered a disadvantage because it is a training of the mind and heart to forego momentary pleasure or gratification for a loftier goal like setting aside money for purchasing a first car or saving for equity to buy a house or condo unit.”
However, he noted that doing so may not work for all people. “Some may be comfortable with doing other ways like simply putting aside 20% of their income as savings,” he told SparkUp. “As long as it works for a particular person, then, go for it and keep at it.”
According to him, those who do not want to jump on this bandwagon can never go wrong with traditional means of saving money.
“One can still go the traditional way of setting aside money via pass‑book only accounts. By this, one can only access funds via withdrawal over the counter which can deter one from readily accessing the account versus an account with an ATM card,” he said. “Another is the traditional “bamboo” way or the “piggy bank” way. There are many other ways to save aside from the trending ones.”
For people opting to start saving money, especially the young ones, Mr. Asuncion said they should do so “one day at a time.”
What makes the ₱50‑challenge an ideal place to start? It’s a small step.
“Decide that you will save and just do it,” he advises. “Don’t do big steps where you end up just frustrated and discouraged after all the effort. Start small and then move to bigger ones.”
Circus training is changing the lives of victims of sexual abuse
The circus came for the girls of Cameleon Association Philippines, a Visayas‑based non‑government organization (NGO) founded by French National Laurence Ligier in 1997. Through contortion, unicycling, acrobatics, juggling and hula hooping, the girls, who were abused sexually in the past, realized their strength and control of their bodies. On stage, they saw themselves beyond the trauma.
“We began the circus training program around ten years ago, and little by little we discovered that the girls who were quite introverted—sexual abuse survivors are often depressed or introverted—through circus training were gaining self‑confidence. They were showing their talent on stage, and to see people admiring them for what they are capable of, not talking about them just because of their past,” Ms. Ligier told SparkUp after the Metamorphosis circus performance held at the Mall of Asia Music Hall on May 29, which featured not only the girls from Cameleon but also self‑trained and professionally circus performers from France and Canada.
It was a French circus that contacted them first, she recalled. Around ten years ago, they told her that France was using circus training as therapy for sexual abuse survivors and asked if she wanted to do the same thing in the Philippines.
“I said why not, but we are not equipped to do that, because here in the Philippines the circus is not as well known as it is in other countries,” she said. “So I told them to come to Iloilo with their equipment and we’ll see if our girls and our staff like it. Filipinos like stage performances and dancing, so I knew it would work.” Cameleon built up on that program, inviting more professionals to train and work with their beneficiaries through workshops on different circus skills and how to set up a performance for a large audience.
During the She and She forum held on May 16, Cameleon Association Executive Director Claudine Sabio said that there are currently 110 girls between the ages of 6 to 23 under the organization’s Personal Rebuilding program, which aims to protect sexually abused girls and help them rebuild their lives through providing shelter, education, physical and mental health services, and legal service, among others. In approximately half of the cases that they handle, the perpetrators are members of the girls’ families.
In her presentation, Ms. Sabio shared testimonies of the girls that they have worked with who have regained their strength and their identities through circus training.
“When I performed during the circus—when the audience clapped their hands, when other people smiled at me, shook my hands, congratulated me—it was like I found myself again, I regained my identity. And at the back of my mind, I saw a little light of hope, and little by little, I built myself up again,” shared a girl named Joy.
“The circus has helped me to communicate with other people, because during the practices I need to communicate with the other girls to create a concept, we had to have team work and unity when practicing for the shows,” shared Tin.
While circus training, on its own, does not completely free her from her anxieties and the haunting memories of her abuse, for Ana it was the focus needed to perform circus acts that helped her. “All the negative energies were being pushed away from my mind subconsciously. And then I realized that I was opening myself up again, starting to be myself again, just like an ordinary child would,” she said.
But one does not need to be well-versed in circus training in order to help Cameleon with their noble cause. Ms. Ligier told SparkUp that volunteers who are skilled in sports, handicrafts, performance arts and the like, could go to Visayas and share their talents with the girls and their staff. For volunteers who prefer to stay in Manila, they could help through fund‑raising projects, translation work, writing articles, and raising awareness.
“There’s many ways to help, as long as they have a deep motivation,” Ms. Ligier said.
Chuck Berry revisits youth in posthumous album
CHUCK BERRY defined rock ‘n’ roll as he gave voice to feel-good 1950s baby boomer culture. For his swan song, he is reliving that same youthful spirit — and tidying up some loose ends.
The rock pioneer died in March just as he was planning an unlikely comeback; in October, for his 90th birthday, Berry had announced he was releasing a new album.
Entitled simply Chuck, the album comes out today, Friday, and marks the first studio recordings by Berry since 1979, with the 10 songs fine-tuned for release since his death.
Returning after three decades in which musical tastes have shifted in manifold ways, Berry stays true to his classic sound — tightly structured tunes rooted in the blues, with a touch of country and the electrifying energy that he called rock ‘n’ roll.
On Chuck, Berry signs off as forever young. His world at age 90 was the same one that embraced him in the 1950s — a lifestyle of driving fast cars, partying mischievously and checking out women.
The album kicks off with quintessential Berry, his verses alternating with frolicking yet brassy-toned guitar riffs, on “Wonderful Woman.”
In the song, Berry remains transfixed — who knows for how many years — by a woman with “big beautiful eyes” and “long, brown wavy hair” who showed up at his concert — in the second row, he recalls.
On the album’s first single, Big Boys, Berry remembers trying to befriend cool older schoolmates, with his enthusiastic guitar complemented by one of rock’s premier axe-men, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.
A WOMAN FOR JOHNNY B. GOODE
Berry recorded the album around St. Louis, where he lived his whole life, with his son and grandson and other artists who accompanied him for two decades in gigs at the Blueberry Hill club.
Berry dedicated Chuck to his wife of 68 years, Themetta Suggs. But he also appeared to want to close some of the musical stories he started.
Berry revisits 1958’s “Johnny B. Goode” — a song so famous that it represents rock ‘n’ roll to potential extraterrestrials on the Voyager spacecraft — with the new “Lady B. Goode.”
Nearly 60 years later, Berry has turned his classic song into a diptych. “Lady B. Goode” brings the perspective of “the little teen queen” who fell in love with someone who sounds an awfully lot like Johnny B. Goode — a humble country boy who finds fame with his guitar.
Berry, opening with a hard-driving R&B guitar riff similar to “Johnny B. Goode,” sings of her: “She followed him around where he would play his guitar / Till he got so popular they made him a star.”
“Then she could only see him on a TV screen / And hoped someday that he’d come back to New Orleans,” he sings.
BACK TO THE CARIBBEAN
Berry also revisits old territory on “Jamaica Moon,” a remake of his “Havana Moon” whose commercial flop in 1956 had irritated him.
For his second take of the song, Berry again imagines himself as a Caribbean boy waiting on a dock for an American girl who promised to return.
But this time, a bouncy guitar brings a touch of reggae as Berry sings in patois, “Me still alone, me sip on de rum.”
The original “Havana Moon” — acoustic with a Latin flavor — faded as Fidel Castro’s revolution soured Americans’ romance with Cuba, although the song was revived as a cover by Carlos Santana.
“Jamaica Moon” also echoes a lyric in another defining rock song, the famously indecipherable “Louie Louie.”
Berry’s sound goes most contemporary on “Dutchman” as he switches to spoken word over his blues guitar, telling the story of a dog who enters the bar and explains he was once a musician whose “music was considered superb.”
“He didn’t make the Hall of Fame, but it bought him shrimp, rice and beans.”
Berry, in real life, was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. — AFP