Financial IQ: 3 Most Important Financial Numbers You Need to Know

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We need to consciously take steps to increase our net worth annually.


Are you getting the right answer to the wrong question? When people find out I used to run a hedge fund, they often ask me, "What is a hot investment right now?" Of course, I don't attempt to answer the question for a lot of reasons, the least being that I would have to ask them a series of probing questions about their finances. Besides, I am not a money manager. Either way, it always occurs to me that they might just be asking the wrong financial question.


I have built my company around the belief that people aren't really interested in money, but rather making their own lives richer, deeper, and more fulfilling. With that in mind, a better question to ask would be, "What are the most important numbers I need to know when it comes to personal finance?" It isn't the hot stock or right mutual fund that will make the biggest difference in their finances or help them attain their financial goals. What they should be looking at are their savings percentage, net worth, and credit score. For someone who is on their way to achieving financial success, each of these numbers will be trending in the same direction -- up.


Want to find out if you are on the right path? Here are three essential questions you should ask yourself:

1. What percentage of my income am I saving?
2. What is my net worth?
3. What is my credit score?

http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/article-112186-8684-3-the-three-most-important-numbers-you-need-to-know?ywaad=ad0035&nc

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Financial IQ: Frugal Ways Make a Comeback

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If you have time, read Millionaire Next Door and one of the habits of millionaires is frugality.


Throw away the cellphone after two years? Not so fast. Ditch the flat-panel TV for an even thinner model? Maybe next year. Replace the blouse with the hole? Darn it!


Consumer spending has picked up, but for some Americans the recession has left something behind: a greater interest in making stuff last.


For a number of products — cars, phones, computers, even shampoo and toothpaste — the data shows a slowing of product life cycles and consumption. In many cases the difference is mere months, but economists and consumers say the approach just may outlast a full recovery and the return of easy credit, because of the strong impression the downturn made on consumers.


It is hardly the stuff of generations past, those stung by the Great Depression, who held onto antediluvian dishware and stored canned goods until rust formed on the lids. But for the moment, many citizens of a throwaway society are making fewer visits to the trash and recycling bins.


In the case of Patti Hauseman of Brooklyn, that meant sticking with a five-year-old Apple computer until it started making odd whirring noises and occasionally malfunctioning. She and her boyfriend bought a new computer for Christmas — actually, a refurbished one.


“A week later, the old one died. We timed it pretty well,” Ms. Hauseman said with a laugh. Her cautious approach applies to other products: she is holding out on upgrading two seven-year-old tube-type TVs, and has taken to mending clothes rather than replacing them.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/In-Recessions-Wake-Frugal-nytimes-2844094476.html?x=0&.v=1

Financial IQ: 9 Ways to Build Wealth in 2011

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Nice article!!  Save as much as possible regularly and pay off bad debt as soon as possible.


Want to build some wealth in 2011? Revisit those New Year's resolutions.


You probably haven't thought about your pledges in more than a month. But odds are at least one of them involves getting rid of debt, increasing your income or building some financial security.


To help you out, nine experts in the fields of money, debt, real estate and consumer affairs have shared their best wealth-building tips for 2011.


1. Funnel That FICA Cut Into a Retirement Windfall


2. Look For Low-Cost Mutual Funds and Watch Those Fees


3. No Shortcuts: Year After Year of Consistent Savings


4. Get Rid of High-Interest Card Debt


5. Buy a Home


6. Balanced, Diversified Portfolio Plus Education


7. If You Have an HSA, Max It Out


8. Do Your Due Diligence


9. Start Your Own Side Business

http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/112185/9-ways-to-build-wealth-in-2011?mod=retire-planning

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Financial IQ: Business Side of Love

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Good advice on pre-nuptial agreement. :)


Since it’s Valentines’s Day, I’ve decided to delve into the business side of love since this seems to be an important topic often overlooked by most people and most especially by emotionally charged younger people with stars in their eyes who think love conquers all.


My advice? Do not splurge excessively on your wedding like a fiesta to the detriment of your family future. The size or lavishness of a wedding does not determine the classiness or beauty of your celebration.  


Here are a few of my thoughts on the topic of love and money:


• Use the head, not only the heart, in choosing one’s spouse. As a history buff, I have studied the lives of many successful people and families — whether in business or politics — whose long-term success and happiness have been affected by their wise or foolish choices of spouse. How many people have ruined their lives and the future of their families with purely emotional and often irrational choices of spouses?


In Philippine business, those tycoons who’ve chosen good spouses that are great assets to their amazing entrepreneurial careers include John Gokongwei Jr., whose wife is the humble and simple-living Elizabeth Limsico Yu; Senator Manny Villar, whose wife is his University of the Philippines (UP) classmate — herself a humble business whiz — Cynthia Aguilar Villar; Metrobank Group boss George SK Ty, whose wife, Mary Vy Ty, is well-known as a humble and devoted wife who serves as Ty’s hardworking assistant on key financial matters such as the compensation of top executives; Filinvest Group and East West Bank founder Andrew Gotianun, whose wife is UP summa cum laude graduate and talented businesswoman Mercedes Gotamco Tan; SM Group founder Henry Sy Sr., whose wife, the self-effacing, religious Felicidad Tan Sy, successfully raised good kids who are not spoiled brats but hardworking and obedient children.


• Sign a prenuptial agreement. This is the one thing the public should learn from Kris Aquino (whose birthday is today) and her late mother, President Cory C. Aquino. Unlike Megastar Sharon Cuneta, who signed a prenup before marrying Senator Kiko Pangilinan, Kris last year tearfully and publicly admitted that she regretted not heeding her mom’s wise advice on first signing a pre-nup before she married basketball athlete James Yap. Kris and James are now separated and in the process of annulling their marriage.


• Be monogamous and loyal to your spouse for the sake of efficiency. A young tycoon once asked me if he should indulge in adultery or polygamy, and I replied — not using Christian moral values but talking to him in a straightforward business sense —that we human beings in general have finite physical resources, energy and time (only 24 hours a day).


• Heed the advice of parents and family elders. One of the most unappreciated and misunderstood facets of love in the modern era is the often very wise role of parents of previous generations guiding people to choose their spouses. Hollywood and even our Tagalog movies love to poke fun at or demonize this aspect, but in most instances, parents mean well and care. Also, marriage is not only between two persons, as it seems in the more individualistic Western view, but it also affects entire families and future generations ad continuum.


Business leader John Gokongwei Jr. once told me that in Chinese culture, it is believed that a person who played a successful role in arranging a good kaysiaw that ends up in a good marriage ideal for two lovers’ families would be blessed with good fortune.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=657128&publicationSubCategoryId=82

Financial IQ: 12 success secrets of Apple's Steve Jobs

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Great success tips from Steve Jobs!!


Steve Jobs has personified capitalism at its finest, due to his customer-focused excellence, his passion for business beyond just earning money and for his contributions to world progress. I’m a loyal user of the Macbook Air and iPod Touch and love his products.


US communications coach Carmine Gallo recently authored a new book, The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, based on three decades of interviews and research on Apple employees, analysts and also the ideas of Jobs himself. According to him, there are seven success principles behind the Steve Jobs phenomenon, which I am sharing here. I added five more success principles at the end, culled from the analysis of former Apple CEO John Sculley.


Principle 1: Do what you love. 


Principle 2: Put a dent in the universe.


Principle 3: Kick-start your brain. 


Principle 4: Sell dreams, not products. 


Principle 5: Say no to 1,000 things. 


Principle 6: Create insanely great experiences. 


Principle 7: Master the message. 


Principle 8: Perfectionism. 


Principle 9: Hire the best. 


Principle 10: Sweat the details. 


Principle 11: Keep it small. 


Principle 12: Customer experience. 


As shown in Steve Job’s remarkable life as a successful capitalist, the true and ultimate test of business success is not just big profits but customer satisfaction.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=652827&publicationSubCategoryId=82

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• Steve Jobs of Apple gives his Success Tips (archian.wordpress.com)

Financial IQ: Used Car Selling Safety Tips

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There are a lot of good deals in buying used cars.  You can get as much as 30% savings when buying a 12-months used car, instead of buying a brand new one.


One of my favorite ways to dispose of vehicles is to sell them after only a few years of use, so that I can use the money to buy a new vehicle. The front-page news in recent weeks on grizzly murders of used car traders is shocking to people like me now planning to sell my Innova and Revo vans in order to buy new vehicles.


Here are some used car trading tips:


• When contacted by buyers by phone or through the Internet, always make the effort to get their address or their telephone numbers that you can call back and verify to see whether they are who they claim they are. Checking their names on Facebook or other social sites would be helpful.


• When meeting them at your house, always get some people to witness the meeting. Although having their faces captured on a CCTV camera is ideal — if you have one — getting someone to photograph them secretly during the meeting would do no harm (It is your house anyway). While doing so would make you look paranoid, it is better to be paranoid than dead. While they are inspecting the car, you can take pictures of them, doing so by explaining that you are just taking picture of a car you hate to miss.


• When they want to do a test drive, insist that they leave government identification cards like driver’s license, SSS, PhilHealth, gun license and other cards that cannot be faked. If they come by car, insist they leave it behind and check if it is really registered under their name and not a stolen one. If they come by two, ask one of them to stay in your place.


• The test drive should only be done within your subdivision or places you are familiar with. These must be places where people abound. Watch out if there are vehicles following you. Always do the test drive at daytime. Meeting them at night or outside your home is out of the question except if you are acquainted with them.


• If you really must meet them outside your house, do so in a place you know has CCTV cameras and have a companion in a back-up car take their pictures (if the glasses of your backup car is tinted). Always bring a back-up car to tag you along during the test drive and make them aware you are bringing one. Again, this is a paranoid act, but better paranoid than sorry.


• Lastly, in these dangerous times and if you have a choice, sell your cars to friends and acquaintances or through referrals from them; and not to total strangers to lessen the exposure and risk. We always tell clients that in the used car business, it is the trust that matters more than the cars.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=650730&publicationSubCategoryId=82

Financial IQ: Tips for Luxury Car Owners & Car Drivers

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Nice tips.  Always keep our cool even if there are times it is challenging... :)


How do we ordinary citizens with or even without cars survive Metro Manila’s streets in the face of daily and chaotic traffic jams, plus a seeming crime wave in recent weeks ranging from carjacking to grizzly murders of car dealers?


Here are a few driving tips for car owners and drivers from the 19-year-old Filipino-Swiss racer Marlon Stockinger, who is the first-ever Filipino to win a Formula race in Europe by placing 8th in the Formula Renault UK 2010. He was also Asian Karting Champion in 2006 and Formula BMW Pacific Scholarship Winner in 2008. Here are tips that Stockinger shared at Kyss Bar in Makati during the Jan. 20 launch party of Inside Showbiz magazine:


• It is best to drive by listening to music, for better focus and concentration whether in Europe’s race tracks or Metro Manila’s jungle of streets.


• To be good in driving, whether as a Formula racer or ordinary driver, be physically fit with regular exercise, sufficient sleep and a good balanced diet. Marlon Stockinger has three European coaches and trainers on racing and physical fitness from England, Austria and Germany.


• Keep a low profile, if obviously you have a very nice car.


• For better safety, use tinted car windows.


• Try to avoid those areas of Metro Manila where carnappings are rampant, or if you happen to be there, be careful with your vehicle.


• Always drive very carefully in Metro Manila, because driving here is a bit crazy. People cut you off so often. There are so many Formula 1 prospects in Metro Manila, especially the bus drivers.


• Pre-owned or used cars are okay, especially for a first car.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=650730&publicationSubCategoryId=82