Teachers and Money - part 1

Last week one of my readers brought to my attention an interesting issue that our teachers here in the Philippines are experiencing. Although I have known for a while now that this has been happening for a while now but I was taken aback by the reference article that was shared with me.

From a Rappler article, “DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones mentioned that they had to step in and make sure teachers' loans from GSIS are being paid because 26,000 teachers did not receive retirement benefits in 2016 due to unpaid debts.”

“..Briones also said that teachers now owe Php123 billion worth of loans to the GSIS, which previously threatened to sue DepEd and the teachers if the debt remains unpaid… Teachers nationwide also owe private lending institutions around Php178 billion (As of 2016).”

That’s a very shocking number indeed! This situation further verifies the lack of institutionalized financial education not only for our students but also for our teachers. Another factor for this is perhaps that we have developed a certain culture of money management.

It’s not all bad of course. Here’s some perspective. Only 34.5% of Filipinos over 15 years of age have a formal bank account. Here in Cebu, as of 2017, there’s about Php400+ Billion in bank deposits alone.

So, we’ve nailed down savings and despite only 34% of the population having bank accounts. What we need more is accelerating the institutionalization of financial education as well as going beyond the topic of savings and moving into investments. I mean, ever since I learned about the stock market (which was 10 years ago), the figure of Filipinos directly investing in the stock market remains to be less than 1% of our overall population.

Now, this can’t be addressed in one article so I’ll break down my take on this. For now, here are some tips that I also shared in my Book “A Lazy Investor’s Way”:

“If knowledge is power, then what is more powerful than knowledge?”

Just like any goal, getting your finances stable and becoming financially secured requires the development of good financial habits.

I’ve been researching this topic extensively in the last few years in my quest to eliminate debt, increase my savings, reduce expenses and increase income.

Great things come from small consistent steps. If you can’t save an amount of 10 of any currency, then what more 50, 100, 1000? A disciplined yet consistent approach is key to success in the investment world just as it is a key to success in life.

By establishing habits or routines. Our brain can be hardwired to do things in a sort of ‘Autopilot’ way.

“What is the cost of your ambition?”

There’s a reason that we’re told to keep a budget to fix our financial issues. Without seeing the whole picture, it’s easy to fall back on bad habits and repeat the same errors we did yesterday.

I know there’s a lot of passionate teachers out there that wants to help even spending their own salary to help students, but the passion needs to be balanced by practicality.

If you want to have a bigger impact on society, then we need to be in a good place first. You can’t five more if you have nothing left to give.

End of part1
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Sources:
https://www.rappler.com/nation/188800-briones-mulls-mandatory-financial-literacy-workshops-teachers
https://www.rappler.com/nation/188794-criticisms-deped-teachers-loans-misplaced-briones

“A Lazy Investor’s Way: How to Hack Investing, Your Time, and Use it with Intention.”
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