This is the pinata I personally made during the 5th birthday of my only daughter. I simply used pink japaenese papers to wrap the pinata made from a milk box. I guess I just spend around Php30 for this. The hello kitty sticker was worth Php10 ( and I used 2 stickers) and the japanese paper was worth 10. It's amazing how I saved a lot of money for this pinata. Had I bought one from a party store, I surely had spent around P200 for this (without candies inside). I only spent around Php60 for the candies.

Buko Sunday @ the Beach

We all love to drink buko (young coconut) juice and savour the freshness of its meat. The buko is becoming part of our Sunday tradition. There's a place which sells buko and the place is fronting the beach. The buko vendors provide cottages for their patrons and we stay there for two hours or more. There are Sundays when we bring our food and stay there for lunch. It's not expensive yet healthy.

New Year, New Look

New year, new look. That's what I did at the very start of 2009. I bought some new things for my personal necessities like toothbrush, towel, bag, wallet, cellphone holder. I also changed my hairstyle - from long hair to short hair. I also did re-arranged the furnitures at home and changed our curtains and pillow cases which I personally have sewn. it took me a week to finish the curtains.

Blessed with Meager Income

It’s not easy to save money nowadays especially that the prices of all commodities - from the most basic ones to that of something which we simply want – are all skyrocketing. With the meager income that my husband receives each month less the withholding tax, GSIS contribution, PAG-Ibig contribution, health Insurance, loans and even death aids, almost nothing is left for our family and with that money we still have to pay for the electricity, water, house amortization, telephone, cable TV, tuition and other school fees for our child, car loan and necessities of my child – milk, diaper, food, and vitamins , whatever is left will be go to our food budget for the whole month. It may be difficult for me to budget the money but still I’m thankful that there is still money to be budgeted. I have no reason to complain about having small money for I am more blessed than the others who can hardly eat three times a day.

Wrong Money Management

I have a friend whose husband is a seaman who is indebted to almost all the persons close to her and the bad thing about her is she doesn’t care to pay even if she often bumps the person or persons she is indebted to. When her husband came home in July last year, he found out that she had not paid some debts which he thought had all been paid when he received demand letters. It made him very furious that he was triggered to send her out of their house. When this friend of mine was temporarily kicked out of their house, she sought comfort in me and it was then that she confessed how she managed their finances. I bluntly told her that without a doubt, she was to be blamed for all their financial trouble. Compared to how much I receive each month, her net monthly allotment from her husband which is in dollars is much more than what I receive in pesos from my husband. Yet she is indebted to many – including to me! She asked me to help her budget her money but before I agreed to do so, I first asked her what and how much are her monthly bills. Again, I compared it with how much I pay and I found out that I am shelling out twice as hers. Then I asked her, “what do you do with your money?” and she replied, “I don’t know”. After our day-long conversation, I came up with a conclusion and frankly told her that she has some financial management problem. Here are the reasons why: 1. She spends money before she receives her allotment. 2. She goes shopping first before paying her monthly bills. 3. She spends so much on pampering herself, that is, she pays weekly for her manicure and pedicure, monthly haircut and regular hair rebonding. 4. She doesn’t cook, she buys ready-to-eat foods and often dine out in fastfoods. 5. She is an impulsive buyer and a great spender on clothing for her and her two children. After that conversation, she promised to change her buying and spending habits. After a week, she came again to me and this time to borrow money. I did lend her money but I made her sign a promissory note thinking that it was the start of her thriftiness. Unfortunately, I learned from my other friends, after a couple of weeks, that she did borrow money from them again. Three months after she borrowed money from me, I demanded payment from her. At first she refused to pay but after telling her that I will collect the money through court, she finally paid. People whose spending habits resembles with that of my friend will really be forever debt-trapped.

Surviving tips From My Mother

My mother, whose name was Irenea, was a small woman with a big heart. She barely stood an inch or two below five feet but her spirits were majestically higher than her own height. She never stood small in her daily battle against the financial complexity brought about by the inverse proportion of meager income earned and number of mouths fed. She conquered all obstacles in life without the least hint of giving up. She taught us how to face the difficult reality and survive poverty. We learned to laugh and cry at the storms and hurricanes, ups and downs, and roses and thorns of our life. We learned to make people believe that we were not financially hard-up and, good thing, they looked up at us as wealthy. My mother was tough and physically active. There were no idle moments for her especially when she was younger. The petite body never hindered her from doing manly activities like cutting the firewoods using an ax, climbing the rooftop of our house to fix the typhoon-damaged roof, and making a chicken “house” out of scrap – and we all “inherited that talent”, may I correct, my elder sister outdone my mother’s manliness for she not only climbed the roof but dared to scale up the lanky coconut trees in our backyard. My mother probably would have survived if she was lost somewhere in the middle of the Amazon jungle. That’s why we called her Amazona. The most important phase our life was our growing up years. Many did not know what our family went through. When we were younger, striving to live each day was a struggle we brawled together with our parents. We had never had the comfort and luxuries in life – no television even. To pass away time, mostly during summer, we just ran off to the beach or climbed up the guava tree in our backyard. We became contented with the basic necessities for we didn’t have other options anyway. In a way, the intricate experiences we went through gave us some useful tips on how to continue to exist during difficult times. These real-life experiences helped in molding us to become what we are now and these are my extraordinary saving graces for my own family. Never discuss financial problems in public. My mother reminded us to be always discreet with our financial status. She, most often than not, never allowed us to let others know with respect to our monetary problems. It was unavoidable, though, especially when we were made to bring the “trademarked” one-eight sheet of intermediate paper- with “Good For” as the heading and my mother’s signature (sometimes forged by my sisters whose golden hands can replicate of signature of my mother) as the closing, to the Man Bening - the bakery owner who allowed us to purchase on credit breads, some of our favorites were pan de carne, pan de leche, and ilang-ilang, or to Man Erie or Mana Lucy- the meat vendors who gave us a kilo credit limit of meat. Look and feel decent even if you only have a single cent in your pocket, and even if that money can only afford you to buy a stick of banana cue for lunch, just savor its sweetness for it will definitely help you energize. Learn to recycle. We learned to recycle our food – we concocted a variety of new menu out of our leftover viands, vegetable and rice. Whatever was left from our previous day’s banquet was re - cooked into a new food and, literally, there was nothing left for the dogs to eat. Our dresses were recycled too – the long and outmoded dresses given by our Aunt in the United States were cut and re-sewn by my mother, despite her inadequate sewing skills, to give it a new look. Her favorite and only style of dress for all of us girls was a gartered on the waist balloon skirt with matching spaghetti-strapped blouse. Our school bags and notebooks were never spared from recycling. The unwritten pages from our notebooks, from the previous year, were compiled to make one or two new notebooks. Never add mouths to feed. My mother neither employed maids nor encouraged relatives to live with/work for us – she believed they were plainly extra mouths to feed. All of us in the family were involved in doing the household chores, the young girls did the cleaning of the house, my elder sister and my mother did the washing of our clothes and the boys did other stuffs outside of the house. This does not mean however that we did this as our routine activities. Sometimes the girls worked the manly stuff when the boys were all away and the vice versa. For that, all of us learned how to cook and bake food - both for humans and the pigs, wash the dishes, sew our own clothes, clean up our mess and the whole house, and grown plants. Plant. We had lots of fruit bearing trees, vegetables and other ornamental plants surrounding our house. Aside from harvesting and eating fresh fruits and vegetables, we were able to save, and even earn, money. My elder bothers were even made to sell coconuts when our finances run out. Pray. We were taught to pray for guidance and more blessings but were not taught to rely purely on prayers. Prayers must be coupled with actions. Poverty was our passport to get a college diploma – we were made to believe, rather forced to believe, that education was the only way to be freed from poverty. All of us seven children managed to get a college degree, and majority of us pursued post graduate degrees, even if going to college was a bumpy ride.

My mother may not have the chance to read this article anymore, for she has been dead for more than a year now. Had she read this, she would have had a hearty laugh and I am a hundred percent sure, we would have a day-long reminiscing of the past conversation.