All Jayme

Are you working for money or is your money working for you?

“You know we could really save a lot of money if I take on that job,” hubby said as he paced around the room.

He was telling me about a work opportunity that was offered to him which meant additional income for us but additional workload for him.

“Maybe you should gauge first what the job requires in terms of time and effort? Those are important things to consider too.” I suggested.

I love my hubby and I’m so thankful that he is such a hardworking and responsible provider. But if earning additional income meant he’ll exhaust himself sick and he’ll be alienated from our family, then I’d rather be content with our current financial state now.

Or find other means of earning more money effortlessly and automatically.

After years of being in the work force, it just made me think how we spend most of our lives working. After all, that’s how we were trained: go to school, get a degree, land a decent regular job and work for a living.

I even had the impression that money is so hard to come by, you have to work hard for money.

But it just made me think. Surely, there must be a better way to live?

“I just realized how we’ve been working so hard for money, I think it’s time that we make our money work for us.” I told him.

Blame it on the personal finance books I’ve been reading, all of which advise the same thing: make your money work for you.

How do you do that? Earn more, spend less, save and invest.

Sounds simple, huh? Not really.

This is a real challenge for someone like me who was (and sometimes still is) a creature of instant gratification. See when I have money, I spend it on what I need and even more on what I want without much thought for the “rainy days.” After all, I work hard, I tell myself, I deserve to enjoy my money.

As for investments, I used to look at it as a very risky and complicated world. Not to mention something “only the really rich people can engage in.” I just thought you need a whole lot of money to do that so I just concluded it wasn’t for me.

But having a family and two babies to care for changed my mind.

I felt I needed to be more conscious about handling money, especially on those days when the grocery cabinet and refrigerator are close to empty and payday is still a week away. (Now I understand why my parents used to flinch every time there was news that oil prices had increased or that pork now cost a hundred more per kilo.)

So now I’ve resolved to take our family finances a bit more seriously and study about investments. I’m getting lost in terms like mutual funds, term life insurance, bonds, stocks and securities. But I’m just taking baby steps. I’m beginning to think investing is not really as complicated as it seems.

I just checked my Paypal account and my paid blogging gigs have been steadily piling up.

I confess, my original intention was to spend it for new clothes, shoes, bags and my other kikay indulgences. But now, I’m thinking of investing it in a “wealth - builder plan” that works like a time deposit with a higher interest.

Okay maybe I’ll keep a few thousand pesos for shopping. But at least saving a portion of my money would get the investment ball rolling.

I’ll try and see how this works and I’ll share some tips here.

Are you working for money or is your money working for you?

Do you have savings or investments plans that really work well for you? Do share them in the comments below.

Photo credit: Daniel Y. Go

Posted in: Miscellany

Tags: investments, life insurance, money, mutual fund, personal finance, savings

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.