Compared to the older generations like baby boomers and generation X, Pinoy millennials are known for being more carefree when it comes to many things. Take for instance – money. Millennials should be prudent, and not carefree, when it comes to money matters. Hence, they should start thinking about how they would properly organize their hard-earned money for their future.
Here in the Philippines, fresh grads typically earn a little more than the minimum wage, but you will see them sipping a cup of expensive Starbuck’s coffee almost every day, and dinning out in expensive restaurants every now and then. Enjoying their own earnings is of course not a bad thing, but millennials should start being more serious when it comes to their personal finance.
This article will elucidate the biggest and most common mistakes of Pinoy millennials when it comes to money matters.
[1] Not Investing for Retirement. According to a survey conducted by online analytics firm, SurveyMonkey, almost half of today’s Filipinos aged 18 to 34 have been spending their hard-earned money more on coffee rather than on any retirement fund investments.
As is common among the older generations, you will rarely see a Pinoy millennial investing in his retirement fund. Millennials should plan their retirement early and take it as an important duty for their golden years.
[2] Being Impulsive. Another very obvious characteristics of Filipinos is being impulsive when it comes to money. There are still lots of millennials being victims of investment scams. Instead of examining the nature, operations, and legality of the businesses they are venturing in, they purely rely on the word of mouth from their friends. If their friends invest, they will then. This explains why networking scams became a boom in the Philippines few years ago, and who were their target victims? Students and fresh graduates.
Let’s take Ralf as an example. Ralf is a 29-year old team leader in a well-known call center in Makati. When he was promoted as team leader, he computed his daily expenses and his new salary scheme and decided he could afford a car. Without considering if it’s the best time for him to buy a car, he failed to consider various expenses of having a car such as parking and toll fees every day he will go to work, car insurance premium and monthly maintenance of the car. Thus, Ralf was not able to sustain all the expenses and ended up failing to pay his monthly amortization.
The ideal approach for making financial decisions could be that millennials research their investment thoroughly before taking a step. For example, you may use Lamudi to compare different real estate properties, Carmudi for cars, and MoneyMax.ph for comparing different financial products like credit cards, personal loans, and car insurance.
[3] Saving Without Investing. Individual Filipinos, private firms, and government offices parked P5.1 trillion of their cash in savings and other deposits in the country’s banks according to the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC). Filipino millennials are not really that bad in terms of saving money, but they miss one important matter in terms of managing their money which is investment.
Mutual funds have very low penetration rate in the Philippines, and there are still less than 1% Filipinos investing in the stock market. Savings is not enough because of the high inflation. If millennials would just save money without multiplying it, they would lose the real value of their money over a short period of time.
This article was written and submitted for publication (as a guest post) by Luis Tan Jr. He is the marketing manager of MoneyMax.ph, the Philippines’ most comprehensive online platform for comparing financial products such as credit cards, personal loans and car insurance.
