Reflection on Suze Orman's Five Laws of Money

Based on the video seminar Suze Orman conducted, she mentioned that people have two goals in mind: (1) Keep what you have and (2) Create what you deserve in life. I personally agree with what she mentioned that what is the usual technique that our parents or grandparents had been doing in terms of their finances is not applicable in today's generation because of the accessibility of the information we were able to receive. In this case, it would be easier for us to decide what we need to do in our finances.

I think that most of the people would agree on this; thus, she introduced the five laws of money that she deemed as timeless in which one can apply any time period and it is applicable from one generation to another.

Truth creates money, lies destroy it

This law seemed to be simple, but as Ms. Orman explained the reason, I was now able to understand what she is trying to say. It is really true that when we want something that we cannot afford, we sometimes have the tendency to use our credit cards to pay the said item even if it is not something we really need. Thus, it cause us to have an illusion that we can borrow something that we do not really need and if we were not able to manage our finances well, it would cause us to have more stress to pay the debt or even the compounding interest the credit card companies are charging. No wonder, credit card companies kept on increasing a person's credit card limit at the same time keep on giving us credit cards even if we did not have any intention to apply for one. In this situation, it is important to be truthful with oneself such as accepting the fact that you cannot afford to buy a certain item and borrowing money to acquire a certain item is not an acceptable idea as small bad decision, can lead to a series of bad decisions, which would eventually become an issue that would be hard to overcome.

Look at what you have not at what you had
This is the law in which I fully agree. As a person who invest in stocks, I usually have the tendency of looking at stocks that are quick moving at the same time would assure that it would give me a high interest rate so that I could at least get my income on the right track. Personally I think it is important to know that the past should be used as a lesson for the present so that we could prepare ourselves for the future. However, if we keep on looking back at the past or reminiscing the good things that we had in the past, it will not be helpful in our present, which might affect the future that we could have.

Do what's right for you before what's right for your money
The third law states that we should prioritize our own welfare before our money's welfare. I think one should be able to determine first his/her risk profile such as determining whether one is a risk taker, risk avoider or had a balanced approach. Aside from determining the risk profile, it is also important for an investor to be informed that when he/she decided to become a risk avoider, he/she should know that he/she should not expect something huge in return as the saying goes, the higher the risk, the higher the returns. In my situation, sometimes when the stock I chose does not have a chance to get back to the price that I initially bought, I sometimes had the tendency to sell everything so that I would be at peace with myself even if it meant that I lost around a thousand peso for a bad decision that I made. I think for every loss, it should be taken note that there is a lesson that is being incorporated. However, I know that I can still sleep even if the stock that I bought went down as I had bought other financial instruments that would give me dividends and interest.

Invest in the known before investing in unknown
I think this all boils down with ensuring that a person is at least investing in something that is stable or guaranteed such as savings. Ms. Orman also mentioned that one should also have at least eight months of emergency fund in which it would enable a person to tackle the unknown in order to be known. Example of known according to Ms. Orman is buying a roof over your head (house) and an example of an unknown is the stock market since one cannot predict whether the market will go up or down.

Always remember that money has no power on its own
Lastly, it is extremely important to take note that we should not allow money to control nor define who we are. We are the ones who are in control on our money. It is up to us to determine what we are supposed to do about it. As Ms. Orman had mentioned in the last part of her video, she mentioned that we are given two wings, the first one is the Wing of Grace in which it keeps on flapping even without our effort. The other one is the Wing of Self-Effort, which meant that we should keep on exerting our effort in order for both of the wings to flap together. If one wing (specifically the wing of self-effort) is not doing its part, we would not become successful as it would require two wings for us to function well and be successful in our own life.

Work-Life Harmony

Last Monday during our Monday Morning Sharing in our office, the assigned speaker shared some tips about how a person could achieve a work-life balance. Aside from his sharing of these tips, there are actually numerous tips that can be found from various sources such as the Internet that would guide us in order live a balanced life. In our ethics class, our professor mentioned tips such as tracking our time, taking advantage of our option, learn to say no, etc.

Life Roles
I think having a work-life balance would mean that one must also be able to balance his/her life roles well. I remember when I was in college, we are asked to have our life rainbow in which we were being asked what are the roles we'll be taking when we reach a certain age. Honestly, I wasn't sure if the one I did in the activity is still similar with what I want right now. I really think that one must be able to establish or at least have a plan to acquire a particular life role before balancing everything.

Example of a Life Rainbow

If I would follow my view that life roles should be established first so from there, I would be able to achieve the work-life balance or for some people work-life harmony. In my current age, my life roles right now are as follows: child, sibling, student, friend and worker.

Truth to be told, my life is actually simple compared with my other peers who have other roles such as parent, partner, etc. From here, I can now balance my time by ensuring to be on time at work so that I could avoid being penalized by having to leave the office at a later time, which could affect other activities that I'm playing part of (e.g. child, sibling, student). Another thing I could do is to ensure that I have a good proper time management such as doing the important things first, especially I am taking the role of a student at my age, so that I would be able to take care of my body by sleeping on time.

By properly managing the things that needs to be done within a specific time frame, I would be able to fulfill other roles such as spending time with my family, chatting with friends, especially having time for myself.

St. John Baptist de La Salle's Life Lessons

"Real wealth is the ability to think and feel, not being possessed by possessions" 

- St. John Baptist De La Salle from the movie Who are My Own?

Learning the life of St. John Baptist De La Salle, who is also being called as the Patron Saint for Teachers, is refreshing to me. During my elementary years, we celebrate teacher's day every year to commemorate the work of the teachers and to recognize the works of Confucius, who is one of the best teachers in China. However, upon entering graduate school, this is how I learned and be amazed at what St. De La Salle was able to accomplish during his time on Earth.

De La Salle as a Innovator and Risk Taker

Despite coming from a rich family, St. De La Salle was able to see that there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor with the poor doing different means to save themselves from starvation such as stealing food or depending on others for donations. The cycle will keep on continuing if nobody dared to step-up and become the change the society needs. For De La Salle, he knew that the only way for these children to go out of poverty is for them to be given an equal treatment for the access of free education. However, the issue seemed to be difficult to overcome as during those times, only males have access to education and they are being tutored on a one-on-one basis. In the movie "Who are My Own?", there was a scene wherein De La Salle noticed that the teacher is only teaching one student at a time. He also saw that when the teacher is not teaching the other students, they are involved in gambling, playing or even being involved in practical learning such as making them work and using the end product to sell as a means of compensating the school expenses. This is where De La Salle took risk despite the odds being against him, he revamped the method of teaching such as instead of having a one-on-one learning, he provided an atmosphere for the children to learn together; thus, classroom setting has been introduced. Upon watching and reading a story of his life, I remembered during one of my Theology classes in college, my professor mentioned that since God's teachings are written for a few people to see, it would take a long time if everybody will read it one by one. Instead, the gospel and teachings of God is spread through word of mouth, similar to what St. John Baptist de La Salle did. He had the book, but he was able to use his words to spread the teachings to his students.

I truly admire his risk and sacrifice. He sacrificed his financial wealth, social prestige and even his Canonry, which most of the people from the higher social ladder would take pride of. Like the quote above, he did not think that wealth would equate to possessions. Instead he thought of it as a person's ability to think and feel. Sometimes we feel that security such as wealth accumulation is more important than everything else, especially when we are starting to feel the sting of having a poor economy or the feeling that the stock market is already in bear market.^[1] I also admired his persistence in fulfilling God's mission, which is to provide a free education and to close the gap in terms of education between the rich and the poor. He knew that wealth is more than the financial possession we might accumulate in our lives, it is the internal fulfillment to give and help other people who is more in need than him.

De La Salle as a Leader
Not only he became an innovator, but he is also a leader. Perhaps if there is one kind of leadership that could be associate to him is that he is a leader who is able to transform and inspire people to do something that they thought was impossible to do. His fellow Christian brothers knew that they need his leadership skills to guide and inspire them to be a better teacher to their students. By the end of the movie, he had his vision of the ideal classroom he want to achieve, which with the help of his fellow Christian brothers, were translated into reality.

Personal Reflection in Relation to Leadership Role
One thing that is striking about De La Salle is that he has a vision. He does not say things that he wants to happen, but he made sure that he act upon it. He also was persistent in realizing his vision by being the leader among his fellow Christian Brothers.

Based on my experience as a former student leader in my school organization, I realized that vision is really important. I used to remember when I felt that I thought I should be the president of the organization for the succeeding school year since I was an Internal Vice President for that year as the incumbent president decides to run for a student council position. However, by learning that there is somebody in the organization who wants to become a president, I felt devastated, afraid that I might not have any position for me as the organization is dominated by students from mass communication department since it will be a vote based on popularity. Despite these dilemma I've been through, I would like to thank my counselor for enlightening and realizing that it is not yet time for me to become one. When she asked me, "What's my vision?", I was actually dumbfounded that I could not answer her properly. All I thought of that time was I want to become a president. I really didn't have actual plans or activities for my organization. She also told me that I cannot afford to again put my health at risk and made me realize that it would be better to focus on my thesis as it would be a crucial year for me as a LIA-COM student. Lastly, she told me that I've been in position for quite sometime, and the fact that I was re-elected showed signs that the organization has faith in me. Again, she mentioned that if the members knew that I am qualified for a position in the organization, they would still vote for me despite being a minority in the organization.

True to my counselor's words, I was elected as a treasurer that year. By handling a position which I felt I'm capable at, I was able to not pressure myself, regain my strength, pass the thesis for my first course, and still be able to have a shot to become a president of the organization for the succeeding school year - this time I had my visions set just like what De La Salle did. I realized here that there may be people who are natural leaders; however if one is being trained or exposed, he or she would be able to learn and adapt in order to become one.

My award as an Above
Average Performance as
President for the school year

By the time the school year was about to end, I was voted as the president of the said organization, this time with more experience and knowledge on how to run the organization, have an effective activities that is catered to the needs of different groups, guide the new officers and made sure that all members will feel that they belonged in the organization. I know that I wasn't able to fully translate all my vision for the organization, but I know deep inside that even if we are not recognized as one of the best organizations in the school, I am proud that I had a set of officers and members who had the same vision as mine and we were able to enjoy the school year.

I know that I was not recognized as one of the best presidents during the year, but being recognized as one of the top 10 presidents is already enough for me to realize that everything will happen in God's time, vision is really important as I was able to do things that I never would thought could happen; and lastly, I will always remember the people who helped me reach this goal - my co-officers, moderator, members and all other people who supported me though this journey.

Footnote:
^[1]PH stocks head for bear market amid foreign selloff

Introduction

Course Impression

Lasallian Business Leadership, Ethics and CSR. This is the course title that I'm currently taking right now in the MBA program. The first thing that I noticed in the title is the CSR or what some people called Corporate Social Responsibility. The first time I heard the term CSR when I was in college as was introduced by my then moderator of our school organization. She invited a speaker who could enlighten us on this topic especially now-a-days companies are starting to realize that maximizing profit can no longer be the only purpose, but to also ensure that their decisions does not affect the people or community negatively (e.g. environmental concerns). If one will notice in the stock market. Companies such as Semirara Mining and Power Corporation (PSE: SCC) was being accused of not having proper safety for the workers working in the mining site. ^[1]

School Organization Affiliation and Outreach Experiences

Upon learning through my MBA classmates that this course engages in outreach-related activities, this actually made me reminisce the times that we are asked to be involved with outreach-related activities during in college whether I was the one assisting the activity or leading the activity.

This is me telling stories to the kids during one of our NSTP service.

As a Scholastican during my college days, social concern is a huge emphasis that the school is trying to impose to us. They really made sure that we are immersed with these kinds of activities so that we would be able to help and relate to those who are in need. Such as having weekly NSTP service to the kids involved or teaching kids in public schools.

Aside from NSTP and Lay Apostate as part of our school requirements, our school also encourage school organizations to have an outreach activity. By being affiliated and at the same time being a president in a school organization that its primary purpose is to be environmentally conscious^[2], we are trained to spend at a minimum since it would break the vision of our organization which is to maximizing things by using limited amount of resources. Also, we do not have any luxury compared with other organizations that can impose a fee to their members since we are aware that interest organizations  cannot put pressure on their members, which is why it is essential for our organization to factor all aspects whether it is the environment as a whole, company reputation (e.g. to ensure that the products they sell do not contain chemicals), the financial and time burden that we might impose to our members.

Environment Society members teaching kids on how to
 make their own notebooks using recycled papers.

Kids pasting papers using recycled
materials

During my stints in various school organizations, I was engaged in different kinds of outreach activities such as tree planting, coastal cleanup, visiting rural areas and hospitals, teaching kids how to create notebooks and pen holders out of recyclable materials, and giving seminars for the school custodians.

Reflection

Having an outreach activity is difficult and tiring, especially when you are the person in-charge of those activities. During college days, I just realized that students who held positions such as outreach liaison officer should be commended, especially when she did a great job in executing the activity smoothly. As an assistant outreach liaison officer in another school organization, ^[3] I realized how difficult it was to find a group of people or an organization where you could lay the activities and also dealing with different people is actually difficult, especially I'm not a people-oriented person. Despite these challenges I used to face, I knew that my effort will be translated into a good one as I was able to help and put a smile on other people's face.

Since it has been a long time that I haven't involved in outreach-related activities, it makes me feel excited that through my experiences in college and to feel satisfied that you were able to help other people in need, which hopefully would become helpful as I impart my ideas and suggestions to my group.

Footnote

^[1]http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/524006/news/regions/ocd-9-workers-dead-after-semirara-mining-mishap

^[2]The name of the school organization is Environment Society, which I used to be affiliated for five years by holding various positions such as President, Internal Vice President and Treasurer.

^[3]Business Information Technology Society is the name of the school  organization, which I used to be affiliated for two years by being a member and an assistant outreach liaison officer.