#Moneybox

This is a story of struggle when I was just a little kid. It’s quite normal in my country that people are poor, we struggle in everyday living and life is battled through hardships, pain and survival. Well, not everyone is really struggling financially, as there are those who are members of Alta Sociedad, the rich and the famous. Perhaps they haven’t really experienced those moments in life when you have nothing to spend for the very basic need- food.

I have nothing against the Alta Sociedad. It’s never their fault that many of us are poor. They are actually an #inspiration, a #motivation for us to do better, to achieve more and be more. That is, if we are talking about financial capabilities.

When I was young, I’ve seen how my parents struggle and work their hardest just to meet our basic needs, food, clothing, shelter. Speaking of shelter, we used to live in a nipa hut (Bahay Kubo). I still can recall, every time that it rains especially during the rainy season, as the rain was dripping from the roof made of coconut leaves, my mother’s tears were also dripping from her eyes as she tried to fix the leakage with plastic just to stop the rain from soaking all our things including us inside the house.

Don’t ask me the question why my mother was the one fixing the leakage. My father was also helping of course. He was a very good man. He did his best to work for us. But it was my mother who made me realize that something was wrong. There’s something really wrong with the way we approach life, with the way we handle our finances, with the way we work. Something has to be done to get out of poverty.

And so, I made a silent promise to myself that I will persevere, that no matter what I’ll level up. There has to be a way out of poverty. There has to be a way.

I’ve seen my father before, he had an alcancia (moneybox) made of big bamboo base (pusog). He put some extra #coins into that bamboo base and after a year of saving he would open it. So, he passed on the habit of saving to us, his children. He also made an alcancia for us, and gave us extra coins to fill the moneybox. We were just lucky that the public schools we went to were just walking distance from our home. So, every time our parents gave us baon (a small amount of provision in monetary form) when going to school, we kept some of it and saved it to the moneybox. At the end of each year, we had savings, only to be spent on again.

Sigh, but that’s how it was in the past. You hoard money, only to be spent again and so on and so forth. But there has to be another way out of that cycle. That’s when I learned to buy and sell. I used my savings in my moneybox and bought some materials for crafts like making bracelets, necklaces, and sell them in our small store. I even tried the gabot-gabot game where you need to pick a hidden number from a piece of paper, and when your number matches the number on the prize pool you get that prize. I was amazed of how much I earned from this small-time game for children.

I was able to send myself to college. I knew that my parents won’t be able to send me to college. They did tell me. They asked me what I will do after graduating from high-school. I had a plan, of course. I was the kind of person who hated seeing my parents struggling with the best they can just to support me. I hated seeing them work so hard in the farm, in selling whatever they can sell. I took an entrance exam and became a scholar of the University of the Philippines. My parents were relieved from the burden of sending me to college. All they had to worry about was how to feed me while I’m doing my best to graduate. They trusted me. Trust unravaged.

You see, the moneybox was of great help. But there has to be something else to do with it. Alright, you have savings. But can we level this up a bit? Yes. You can challenge yourself by saving more using increments or increasing the percentage of your base amount of savings on a daily basis or weekly or monthly.

A lot more things make sense now. Why are we poor? It’s because some of us stick on what we only know. Some of us never level up on our game. Some never venture. Some are just really satisfied on what they are doing. They keep themselves in a cycle, just round and round and round…and complain that we are poor. Why others are rich? It’s because they invest in themselves. They utilize their capabilities, their talents, their skills, in order to produce more. They save and invest. Rich people know how their money can work for them. Learn too.

The moneybox, it’s just a tool. What you put in it and how you utilize it, that’s what makes it useful.

For more articles and #inspirational stories like this you can follow me @cjunlinjaja.