savings and withdrawal

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My son has his own bank accounts. Two savings accounts at Banco de Oro and BPI Family Bank respectively. I started giving him an allowance of 20 pesos per school day a few years back with the purpose of teaching him early on about savings and investment.

He’s doing good. For the past few years, most of his allowance goes straight to the bank. But growing up means having more needs and wants. I have seen him a few times buying ice cream, candies or cotton candy at dismissal time. He does manage to still save most of his allowance even with those purchases.

Today, I was able to point out to him, for the nth time, the value of having his own savings. He wanted to buy a new book from The Heroes of Olympus series. It was hardbound and of course more expensive than a softbound book. I said, “If you can’t wait for the softbound book, then you have to use your own money to buy it.”

So he withdrew 450 pesos from his bank account to pay for the book. I then told him afterwards, “Because of your savings, you were able to buy the next book in the book series. See how important savings (and investment) is? If you save your allowance and do not use it up for unimportant things, you’ll have money once there’s a need for you to buy something very important.”

He agreed wholeheartedly.

monopoly night

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I bought a monopoly board game for RJ. Tonight, instead of the usual him-reading-a-book and me-reading-another-book, we will play monopoly. We still don't know all the rules yet but we will read it as we go along.

Monopoly is a good way to teach kids about money, savings and investments. Hopefully, RJ will really learn something from the game.

stock investor at 8 years old

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I started investing in mutual funds a few years back. I even encouraged my sisters to invest also. They gave in, after hours of my non-stop talking about investing, stocks, etc. Then I got curious with "playing the market" on my own, I opened an online stock account.

This month, I opened another stock account with another online stockbroker. I became excited because the market is now recovering. I asked the agent to make it an ITF (in trust for) account for my son. They delivered the application form and after 5 months (I got so busy with other things, like umm blogging) I called and asked their messenger to pick up the signed forms.

We opened a joint account by the way, because ITF is not available withthe said online stockbrokerage firm.

teach your child how to be a millionaire

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It's never too early to start teaching your child to be a millionaire. If you don't know how, let Warren Buffett himself show you how to do it right.

An animated character of Buffett is to tutor children about the art of finance in a series called The Secret Millionaires Club, to be created by the internet empire AOL and media production firm A Squared Media. Episodes lasting three to five minutes will initially appear on AOL, before being distributed more broadly across the web via social networking sites. source: guardian.co.uk

save for the rainy days

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What does the idiomatic expression "save for the rainy days" mean? It means putting aside something, usually in the form of savings and investment, to be used for future needs. The best way to save is to cut back on expenses and use the saved cash to invest into something profitable.

Here are some of the things I do to save and invest.

1. Bring a calculator during grocery shopping to be able to compare the prices of different food brands.

2. I cancelled my call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding and three-way calling on our landline.

3. I don't have credit cards anymore. First and last credit card usage was 10 years  ago.

4. Instead of hiring a driver to bring my son to and from school, I got the services of a school bus instead.

5. I also cancelled our cable subscription.

6. I only buy clothes, accessories, etc during the sale season.

7.  30% of my earnings online I goes directly to the bank.

8. Invest some earnings in mutual funds.

9. Opened up an online trading account.

10. Invest in small businesses that I can do at home.

My son already has his own savings account. He opened one using the Christmas monetary gifts that he got from family and friends two years ago.

What about you, what are your ways of "saving for the rainy days"?