CHRISTMAS BONUS - Use your Financial EQ and be not a Scrooge!

Umaawit na naman ang Aegis sa radio... 
Kaya't ibigay n'yo na!
Ang aming Christmas Bonus Pati na ang 13th month pay Para lahat okay na okay!

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​This is the time of the year again that we get extra money from being employed which we call ‘bonus’ or ‘13th month pay’ because it’s Christmas! And during Christmas, Generosity abounds!

And what do I do the minute that the bonus reaches my hand? I along with my children will march hand-in-hand (with the sound of Hollywood’s war battle in the 1800s in the background), CHARGE!!! TO THE MALL!!! ☺

Yup! That is what 99%  of us working class Filipinos do whenever we get that bonus. We spend it until the last drop of it. 

And inside the mall, we need not be taught how to spend. We are all NATURAL SPENDERS. We are good in spending but very poor savers.

How do I try to handle the spending?

1. Fix a set budget even before going to shop (and stick with it). Two thousand pesos should be all in     (1 blouse, 1 pants, sandals including the monita-monita exchange gift thing and the gift to the adviser-teacher-and-really-just-the adviser-teacher ☺ ). Set it! Okay… okay… buffer a little amount say 5-10% depending on leeway. Then that’s it!

       2. Make a list of what to buy.  
​             So you don’t end up buying a shirt you will not wear for a year or even for a decade.
       3. Learn to be firm (especially to yourself).

We tend to be super kind during the Christmas season which is usually not perfectly fine. And the merry-swiping of our credit cards seem no end.

When you buy gifts to your children and loved ones try to look at what they really need and not what they want. Example, a phone is use for calling, texting, a bit of camera and internet surfing which can be addressed by a simple android phone and not an Ipad Air. The simple android phone serves the purpose but not extravagance.

So here you go, I never meant to ask us to be scrooge-to-the-max and rob us of our happy Christmas making. It is more of pushing our Financial EQ to work for us and making the after holiday days smooth-sailing (aka 'no credit card bills hounding us to our sleep').

Len C is a proud mother of 3 lovely kids, has more than a decade experience in the BPO industry, with MA units major in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the Ateneo de Manila University