Financial Planning Series by Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf together with Sunlife Financial
Next sessions are scheduled as follows
September 12 - Money & Career
7 pm - 9 pm, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Burgos Circle
September 21 - Money Matter for Mommies
10 am - 12 nn, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Net Lima
September 28 - Marriage & Money
10 am - 12 nn, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Net Lima
All sessions are held in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. You can register for this FREE Seminar via brighterlife.eventbrite.com
Personal Finance for the Self-Employed
If you are not convinced then asked yourself this question: between keeping and earning money, which one is easier? Earning requires you work for someone else and that someone will pay you. Action from two individual is involved. Keeping money requires action only from you. Boom!
Keeping money is easier than earning it right? Yes or Yes?
So just like you, I am still learning about personal finance. Pouring myself on books and blogs. When I received an email from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf about a free personal finance seminar, I immediately signed up. I also forced my wife to sign-up. Only after signing up did I realize that seminar title is “Personal Finance for the Self-Employed”
Too late to back down!
While being self-employed is one of my future goals, I am someone who will not fall under that category just yet. I just made a mental note to pretend to be self-employed in case someone asks during the seminar. I pictured attending a seminar with rich business owners with only me and wife there who are employees.
The Seminar
We live near Bonifacio Global City so we got in the venue thirty minutes before the scheduled seminar. The location of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf 26th Bistro is easy to find and a parking lot is just across the cafe. Upon entering, we got ourselves registered and chose a table with a good view of the projector.I was planning to order a brewed coffee and a bagel while waiting for the seminar to start when one of the ushers told me that they are serving breakfast. I was not really hungry that time but who says no to a free breakfast. (Side Note: At that point, I was worried that the sponsor might do a hard selling at the end of the seminar but I was glad they didn’t. We attended a hotel opening in Boracay before with a free lunch but the organizers were rude. They made a hard sell leaving us disgusted with the brand Astoria until now. I cringe just hearing the name.)
Going back to the seminar, it was a really good experience hearing from Mr. Randell Tiongson himself. I knew him on his blog and I occasionally see people I am following in twitter tweet about him. He is one of the directors of the Registered Financial Planner Institute Philippines and a strong advocate of financial education for OFWs.
He is a good speaker peppering his speech with jokes, stories and anecdotes. He made the topic very interesting though in reality personal finance is really a boring topic. My wife already made a post in her blog about her take in the seminar which you may want to read here
My TakeAways
Applying Knowledge
“Most people say they know about personal finance but if you take a look at their bank account, it says otherwise” This statement hit a nerve. I am totally guilty. This hurt since I am an accountant. I encountered budgeting way back in college and dealt with it extensively in the first few years of my ten year career. Sadly though, while I have my personal budget, reviewing it regularly and acting upon unnecessary expenses is an activity I usually miss.Money and Life
“Money is not important in life. However, important things are life requires money”How does this statement come across to you? For me it is a reminder to balance everything out. We all work in order to provide for our family. We need money to bring food to the dining table, send kids to school and shelter. However, we should always remind ourselves that our family also needs us. We should not let our family define us as provider and only that. We are more than that.
This reminds me of a quote from the book “The Secret of Millionaire’s Mind by T. Harv Eker “Money is extremely important in the areas in which it works and extremely unimportant in the areas in which it doesn’t.
Free Gift Certificates!
Hahaha. I now appear as a cheapskate but we were also given P100 gift certificate. Free breakfast, free coffee, free seminar and free gift certificate, how can I say something wrong about the seminar? There’s really none and the people from Sunlife did not hold people for a sales talk after the seminar. While I and my wife stayed a little bit because we wanted to ask about variable life insurance, some other guests left immediately after the seminar.Now, if you have the time, I suggest you sign-up in one of their seminars. You will learn a lot. If you don’t have the time, then I suggest go check Sunlife’s Brighter Life website. It is fun learning and reading. Lastly, I especially liked one of their video ads. I felt like it was custom made just for my wife
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Sharing some pics during the seminar
