The year 2022 became a period of growth, learnings, and experiences for me. Up until this day, I can’t believe that I was able to reach my financial targets and at the same time make big investment for myself. Looking now to all of these achievements I started remember all my humble beginnings. I’m just a 20 years old fresh graduate last 2016 when I decided to apply overseas. Despite of its requirements like years of experience, I took the risk to apply and just get rid of all my anxiety. Five months after I graduate, I landed my first job in a far away place with P18500.00 offer. Far from what others think about people who work overseas, not all of them are getting high salary like what they expect it to be. Despite of knowing it, I decided to go on because as a fresh graduate, I need to look for experience first before anything else. I believe that working overseas will grant me a competitive edge in the industry once I come back to my country Philippines. As soon as I start my job last August 2016, I made a plan for myself and focus on it. That’s when I started to set targets for myself and work for it until I achieve it.
Given that salary, I made a plan fit for my current situation and consider the most ideal thing for me at that moment. Year 2017, I made my first investment which is to secure an insurance for myself. With the help of my mom and a financial advisor, I was able to secure a health insurance which cost P25,000/ year or P2,083.33/ month. Even though I’m not a bread winner, I think that having an insurance will give me an assurance that no matter what happen in the future, my Family/future family will be financially secured. Getting an insurance at the age of 23 became one of the best investments that I’d done for myself. Not only it helps me to feel more secured on my future but at the same time, I don’t need to worry on anything that may happen to me. I believe that everyone of us should consider getting one, especially now that we experience the pandemic which made us realized that anything can happen in the future. Having something which will financially protect us and our whole family should be considered as early as possible.
To give you an idea, here’s the summary of my 1st investment:
This decision that I did is evidence that despite of having less income, anyone can still start something if they’re only willing to do so. I didn’t let my situation that time stop me from doing something for myself. Even though you can avail this anytime, the earlier you invest, the bigger it will be. That’s how compounding interest works. If you’re a bit skeptical on getting one, you can simply start reading how money works. This is how I started because for me, I don’t want to invest on something that I don’t understand. It took me time to finally decide and now I can say that I made the right decision.
After getting my first insurance, It inspired me to invest again for myself. I continued to work in the hospitality industry and after one year and eleven months, I was promoted to a new position. With this blessing, I made use of my salary increase to invest in my second insurance but now with investment. In the year 2019, I avail an insurance and investment which cost P42,786.67/year or P3.565.56/month. Unlike the first investment which I need to pay continuously, this one is only payable for 10 years or until year 2029. As the name itself, half of my payments will go in insurance and the rest are for my investment. If you’ll compare this one from my first insurance, the amount covered for insurance is lower than it despite of having more premium payment. This is for the reason that a portion of it are intended for investment unlike the other which is solely for insurance alone.
To give you an idea, here’s the summary of my 2nd investment:
In this year, I also started to activate other government related savings such as SSS and Pag-ibig. For my SSS, the payment is P23,400.00/ year or P1950.00/ month and it is payable for 10 years. For pag-ibig, the payment is P6,000.00/ year or P500.00/ month and it is payable for 20 years. As you can see, I have a total of four active investment as of this year 2022.
For more than six years working overseas, I experienced a salary increase three times. Despite of this, I still stick to the first amount I set for my expenses and live beyond my means. What I did in order for me to achieve all of these is to make a two-years period for me to achieve my financial targets. By doing this method, it helped me to be reminded of things that I need to prioritized first.
1. It helped me to live beyond my means.
2. Follow the budget that I set.
3. Track my progress.
4. Focus on my target.
5. Push myself to be better.
Although there are times wherein, I spend more than what I set, I usually recover right away by adjusting my budget for the next month. Since I made big investment this year, I know that I’d been compromising my expense budget and end up using my grocery budget for savings. Because of this set up, I’d been eating less and enduring the food available at work. I know that this should not be the proper way and I’d been pitying myself for that. That’s why in this coming year, I’ll make sure that I will not restrict myself anymore especially when it comes to necessities. From the budget draft that I prepared for the next sure, I separate my leisure and my needs so that I can ensure that I will have enough budget to buy my needs. I will be sharing in another blog all the financial goals that I planned for the year 2023.
To give you an idea about my monthly financial recap, here are the previous blog that I published which shares my financial progress and status:
With all of these things happened in the year 2022, I know that I made a big improvement in my life. The next years will be intended for more real estate investment and what I need to do is to save money as much as I can so I can ready everything right away. By using all the tracker and reports that I’m doing right now, I believe that it will help me the same way. I will continue to watch financial blogs and read more books so I can equip myself with ideas that I can apply to my life.
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it. –Oprah Winfrey
For me to be able to properly know my current savings, I categorized everything based on its features. One is current savings then the other one is long-term savings. My current savings consist of funds which I can easily access such as Emergency Fund, Insurance/Investment Fund and Joint Account Fund. My long-term savings are those that I’m actively paying which return will be guaranteed for my future’s security, these are my Insurance, Investment, Social Security, Pag-ibig and rental property. By making it more specific, I can easily track all my current assets and make a net worth report from it. This took me awhile to record everything according to its exact amount and gladly before the year ends, I was able to do it. With all the information that I gathered, I started to plan out things and look for ways to improve my financial situation. What I have in mind are the following:
1. Secure an advance payment for my existing long-term insurance & investment. By securing this, I will be able to focus in expanding my savings capacity for my business fund. Other than this, it would help me to be secured if ever there will financial challenges that I will encounter in the future.
2. Secure my emergency fund. This year, I made sure that I have a savings intended for emergency. I didn’t let any challenges stop me from securing at least P45,000.00 in my bank. Other than this, I’m considering to open up a digital bank so I can save this emergency fund. I watched in some vlogs that there are digital banks which offers higher interest rate compare to regular banks. As of now, I’m still yet to review more information so that I can ensure that this money will be safe.
3. Record and track my finances. Before, I’d been noting everything in my journal. This year I started to make reports in order for me to carefully track my cashflow and at the same time see to it that my savings are safe. Since it gave me great results, I decided to make a yearly report of all my finances from savings, expenses, investment and many more.
4. Stick to my expense budget. This year was a tough period for me and I literally sacrificed my needs in order to reach my target amounts. That’s why this time, I planned to stick to my expenses and don’t let myself endure things especially for the things that I need.
5. Continuously set target. By setting targets, it helped me to be more focus on my goals. The deadline became my way to push myself in doing something that is beneficial for me. Because of this, I can say that I was able to make more progress in the past years compare to before when I don’t use this method.
For the year 2022, I made a big progress in terms of my savings. The new position that I got last October 2020 greatly helped me to achieved all of this amount. By being more disciplined, my savings soar high for only less than two years. Not only that, I also made a couple of big investment in real estate which helps me and my family to have another passive income stream. Now, that investment actively helps us to mange well our finance especially now that my father decided to retire. That’s why I think that I made a great decision to make use of our existing properties so that my family can be benefited by it. Upon researching about different savings method this year, I was able to know the ideal options I can consider in planning my targets. The vlogs which talks about financing and adulting tips in the Philippines became an enlightenment for me to come up with different ideas that I can apply to my life. To give you an idea of my current savings for both of my current and long-term savings, here below is the detailed amount as of December 2022.
If you’ll review my 2022 goals recap which I published last December 1, there are some amounts that I failed to reach because I need to adjust everything in order to make an advance payment for my long-term savings until the year 2024. I decided to do that because I need to have time to prioritized my business fund so I can make another real estate investment for next year. To be able to do that, I need to settle existing payments that I had in advance before the end of the year 2022. Considering that I also went for vacation (which I spent a total of 7,000 Qar or P100,000.00), I made a thorough plan for me to execute it by the end of the year. To tell you honestly, managing everything base on my salary alone is a very hard thing to do. I need to compromise a lot of stuffs in order for me to achieve my financial goals, which makes me feel pressured sometimes. That’s why I need to focus on making more streams of income other than my salary or I can look for another career growth which can offer higher salary.
From the table I shared in the beginning, you can see the detailed status of my insurance and investments which officially started when I got a job overseas. Even though I already have these savings, I think that I still need to consider getting one in order for me to secure more my future. I was actually inspired by one of the youtubers that I’m currently watching right now because in her case, she has a total of seven insurance policies. She’s actively paying for everything and that made me realize that I can actually get more than what I think is enough for me. Once I have higher steady source of income, I’m planning to get another policy which I can settle one time. Together with all of these existing savings, I can finally be at ease that me and my family will be financially safe in the future.
Now, for the breakdown of everything, here below are the details of the payments that I need to secure on a monthly & yearly basis:
Just by looking in these amounts, I can’t imagine how I manage everything up until this day by relying on my salary alone. Although this is very hard to do, I am happy and proud that I choose to start it at a young age. I may not yet see the benefits of it in the present, but I’m pretty sure that one day It will greatly help me and my family. For the next year, I will be focusing more in building passive income and because of that it may take time for me again to avail another set of insurance policy for me. Despite of this, I will not give up in this target and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to come up with new ways to save more money and invest in things like this. It will be another year for me to work on my targets and one thing that I will keep in mind is that, I will continue to make more investment and get more insurance for me. This will be my main financial targets for the next years that will come and for now I’m praying that I can get a new opportunity that will provide me more means to save up for this goal.
“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” —Robert Kiyosaki, businessman
For my expenses, I made a rule for myself to stick to my expense budget despite of all the salary increase that I experienced. This is very challenging to do and to tell you honestly, I’d been sacrificing a lot these years for the sake of saving more. Every time I decided to use my expense budget for savings purpose, I always tell to myself that there will be a right for me to experience what other does. For now, I need to choose between what is worth for me to do. In my previous financial blogs, I shared the details of all my expenses and categorized it to three. These are the following:
1. Self. This category comprises of all my basic needs like foods and grocery. Even though I’m getting food benefits from work, I still need to have some food items during my off. In the early part of this year, I allotted a 200 Qar amount on a monthly basis for my needs. But when I started to make big investment, I keep compromising this budget and decided to make an alternate month for me to buy things for myself. This is not actually a wise decision because I ended up starving myself because I mostly rely on our company issued foods. So once my duty ends at 17:00, I will just settle for eating oatmeal at night so I won’t feel hungry at night. Since I already experienced this and it made me realized that it was a bad decision, I decided to make a fixed budget on a monthly basis solely for my needs. I need to use it regardless if I still have stuffs or not and promise to myself that I will not starve myself anymore.
2. Leisure. Since I decided to travel and explore different places year, I decided to have an allotted budget of 200 Qar every month solely for my leisure. Due to this limited budget, I can only make one to two monthly leisure trips considering the high price of transportation which cost a minimum of 50 Qar and for meals which cost a minimum of 50 Qar. Glady, I used to go with my partner and we usually divide everything so that it won’t be heavy on both of us. Recently, I’d been enjoying my time also with my cousin which started her career here in Qatar last May 2021. At least now, I have another friend with me whom I can hang out with.
3. Family. After I secured a passive income this year which gave them P8,000.00 cash flow, I stopped to provide them monthly assistance and decided to send only money during special occasion such as birthday and Christmas. Everything was actually cool about it and I’m glad that at least even without my assistance, I was able to provide them a means from my real estate investment.
From these three categories which I allotted a certain amount, I was able to save up for my other funds such as emergency fund, business fund and insurance/investment fund. It’s a really little amount to spend with so, it was really a challenging period for myself. On my monthly recap blogs, you can see there the specific things that I spent for the whole month of January up to august. From all the reports that I have right now, I can easily track my expenses and come up with different strategies to meet my financial targets. As I assess my finances for the whole year, I can say that I did pretty well especially in starting my passive income investment and also secure an advance payment for my other liabilities. Spending only 12.5% of my income helped me to invest more on things that I need to prioritized. Even though it was a hard experience, I’m happy that I managed it very well until the last month of this year. Once I got a new opportunity next year, I am looking forward to at least have more means to spend so I can at least be comfortable.
To give you an illustration of my expenses for the whole year, here below are the details of it:
Like what most people do which is to save what is left from spending, what I did is the opposite. I tried to save as much as I can and spend less than I can. This method helped to make big investment this year which makes me feel so proud. This kind of strategy will surely be implemented for the next year and I’ll make it sure that this time, I will have more means to save.
Compare to my budget before, I didn’t make it more specific because I usually don’t go out for the sake of saving. It was just last 2020 when I realized that I actually need to have time outside my workplace and enjoy a little bit and that’s when my travel blogs started this year. It was a great decision though because for the first time, I learn to appreciate the time that I currently have. Even though it is considered as an expense, these experiences inspired me to do better in life. Now I know why a lot of people wants to travel because I experience the same feeling this year. If I’ll be given a good opportunity next year, I’ll be looking forward to consider visiting other countries and share my experience here in this blog.
“It’s through our expenses that we become richer or poorer, regardless of how much money we make.” —Robert Kiyosaki, businessman
I’d been a fan of investing ever since I started working. As I watched different interviews of many successful people, it inspired me to do my best and make use of the time that I have right now. As I reached six years as a full-time employee, it pushed me to look for things that will help me to be financially secured in the future. I experienced growing up when my parents suffer because they don’t have the means to support us when we are all in college. Because of that experienced, it made me look in different solutions so my future family will not experience the same thing that happened to us. It became a learning ground for me and siblings to work on our career and make a wise decision when it comes to our finances. In this year, I made a big investment with the help of my family. This year, I was able to renovate two of our existing properties and double its price. As of the last week of November, my parents finally were able to secure a tenant for both houses.
Here’s the picture of each house that we renovated this year:
For this house, the total amount spent was P330,362.00. The amount I shared is P270,000.00 and my parents shared was P60,362.00. The price is quite expensive because the labor cost is P130,000.00. It was an actually an old house which we used to have since we were a kid and that amount is considerably ok because of the things that they need to change. From roofing, septic tank, flooring and installation of new items, it will surely cost higher than a simple renovation. The renovation started on February and it last on March. By the use of social media, we were able to secure tenants on the last week of April.
This house was used when we are all in our elementary days. Before we graduate from high school, we were able to move in a new house and we put this house on rent. The rental amount before was P3,000.00 only which is as of now can be considered very cheap. The average rental nowadays is P4500.00-P7000.00 so, as soon as the tenant left this year, we decided to renovate it so we can adjust the price based on the market today.
To give you the breakdown of my family’s current rental income, here’s the breakdown of it and my profit.
As I went for vacation this year, me and my siblings agreed to share the renovation cost for the two connecting house which we wanted to change into four-door apartment. Since it will be costly, it is ideal for us to work together so we can at least share its income once it’s done. For me to be more consistent in investing in real estate. I made an 11 years’ time table for myself and set targets that I need to accomplished within a period of time. Together with putting details such as the amount, monthly savings and time frame, I came up into something that will serve as my guide towards this dream. I’ll be sharing in a separate blog my detailed plan about it and hopefully I can work on it by the next year.
With all the things that I experienced this year, I realized that planning is the best way to meet goals. Like what all corporate industry does in their business, it is important that we learn from them and apply it also in our life. By means of setting goals, planning how to achieve it, taking an action and making an assessment after, will provide us a definite growth in whatever goals that we set. My journey can prove that this method is effective because I’d been applying this in my life since before. Actually, all information is available for everyone to check and to explore, it is just that, we are limited to what we are doing because of the irrational fear that we allow to consume our thoughts. No one is stopping us to pursue something. It is free to dream big, but the action requires a big part of it. The choice is ours to take. For me,
I want to go beyond my limitation.
I want to pursue big dreams.
I want to make the impossible, possible.
It’s like now or never. I don’t want to end up regretting something that I didn’t try just because of the fear of failing. Even if it fails, I will continue to break barriers and make a change. Like how I planned and achieved my targets this year, it just shows the importance of having the right mindset. For the next year, I will see to it that I will get another investment under my name. Like what I did this year, I will share my journey in achieving that goal in this blog wishing that it can be a sign of hope for someone who aspire like me.
“Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it ensures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.” – Aristotle
It was just recently when I saw a vlog of someone’s net worth for the purpose of inspiring others and sharing about financial management. After a thorough research on how to make my own net worth report, I finally come up with something that enable me to know my current financial status. At first, I was thinking that this is too much for someone who’s not running his/her own company. Little did I know is that everyone can make their personal net worth report. It will just depend on what purpose they need to have it. Like what I saw in a vlog of Ms. Charm de Leon, her niche is all about finances, adulting tips and investment. By sharing her net worth to her channel, she wants to inspire others about how she manages her own finance and at the same time share different tips on how she invests. In my case, I want to track my progress every year so I can ensure that my plans are working out. I may still have a lot of things to learn about finances, but doing this first step would greatly help me to improve my skills in financial management.
To sum up the status of my finances for the whole year, here’s my detailed net worth report which I prepared as a guide for me to do my best:
In a blog that I read, they shared different benefits of having your own net worth, some of it are:
1. It can help you identify areas where you spend too much money. (Investopedia)
2. It measures your year-over-year progress. (All Worth Financial)
3. Net worth gives you an overview of your financial situation at any point in time. (Wealth and finance)
Some may think that this is not necessary to do so because they think of it as a non-essential activity. The reality is knowing your net worth will help you to determine that your liabilities won’t exceed your assets. That’s when your net worth become negative because of the current liabilities that you have, whether it’s house loan, car loan, mortgages, credit card balance etc. By simply knowing your current status will be key factor for you to manage your finances. Like what I did for this year, this will be my first time to calculate my net worth and upon doing it, I came to know my current financial position in the year 2022. It also provided me a new ideas and strategies where I can improve my savings capacity for the next year.
In my next blog, I will start to set new targets including my net worth for the year 2023. Someday this digit will soon be millions and I will manifest it until I finally achieve it.
Building my finances has been one of my priorities since I started working. For this year, I made one of my biggest investments which marks my first step towards financial freedom. In this blog it shows the summary of all the recorded details I did for the whole year. It consists of my savings, expenses, investment and my net worth for the year 2022.
As I started to thoroughly track and build my finances, I believe it will serve as my guide to achieve all of my financial goals. This will be the start of the financial freedom that I’d been aiming since I started my career. Together with the rest of my goals, I promise to be consistent in doing this in order for me to know my progress every year. I believe that this will help me to know the other aspect that I can still improve and prioritize in terms of my finances. Together with efforts and hard work, I am looking forward that this will be another great year for me to make more investment.
I’m happy and proud for all of these accomplishments that I made this year 2022. I know that this will just be the beginning of everything. One thing for sure is, I will never give up and continue what I started this year.
“Financial freedom is available to those who learn about it and work for it.” ― Robert Kiyosaki
Get new blogs delivered straight to your inbox.
