October 31st was World Savings Day! Cebuana Lhuillier has been commemorating this consistently for a while now, never faltering in their efforts to raise awareness of the need to save as a necessary first step on the road to financial independence.
This year, in preparation for the occasion, Cebuana Lhuillier, the biggest and most reputable provider of micro financial services in the Philippines, sponsored a small-scale but information-packed blogging event titled “2022 World Savings Day: Restart Your Finances.” Ms. Izza Glino, a blogger for SavingsPinay.ph, spoke as a guest speaker. The talk’s objective is to assist us in getting our finances back on track, which is crucial right now, especially because most of us are now having a challenging time adjusting to the post-pandemic circumstances.
Ms. Izza shared 7 steps on how Filipinos can reset and solve their money problems:
- UNDERSTAND YOUR CURRENT FINANCIAL SITUATION
- Take inventory of your finances – your income. expenses, debt, and assets. With a clear picture of your current financial standing, you can easily draw a plan to solve your money problems.
- REVIEW YOUR SPENDING HABITS
- Find out WHO and HOW are you when it comes to spending your own money lately.
- Are you a SAVER or a SPENDER
- Do you spend more on your needs or your wants?
- MAKE SMALL CHANGES
- Find small ways you can reduce your daily expenditure in order to save more
- What tiny habits can you do for your finances?
- BUDGET
- Setting and following a monthly budget can help you gain a sense of control
- SET NEW OR BETTER SAVING GOALS
- Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals – as any financial advisor will teach everyone, our goals should always be “SMART” – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. These parameters as they pertain to your goal help ensure that your objectives are attainable within a certain time frame.
- PUT YOUR PLAN INTO ACTION
- Implement steps that can minimize the chances of another financial setback.
- CORRECT AND ADJUST
- Perfection is impossible. Get started with your saving goals, correct and adjust along the way.
Another memorable point from the talk was the 1% strategy, make your bed every morning, read five pages a day, and other little yet effective daily habits are examples of the first strategy, called 1% Better. The analogy to saving/dropping the 1 or 5 peso coins from our daily allowance in a cute coin bank that most of us liked to do as kids, and the best part is when we do not even realize that our coin bank is slowly filling up because it is just our small habit and we are not really focused on filling that piggy bank.
Before the celebration ended, they also unveiled the Cebuana Lhuillier Micro Savings, which is ideal for novice depositors. With close to seven million people currently holding micro savings accounts, Cebuana Lhuillier and its banking affiliate Cebuana Lhuillier Bank launched this in 2019 with the intention of making banking simple, accessible, and reliable for most Filipinos.
You can open a standard savings account more easily with Cebuana Lhuillier’s Micro Savings because it does not require keeping a balance. With Cebuana Lhuillier’s nationwide network of more than 3,000 branches, account customers can deposit money whenever they want and withdraw money whenever it is most convenient for them. You can withdraw money from any of the 21,000+ Bancnet ATMs nationwide and make cashless purchases at any of the 350,000 Unionpay and Bancnet approved retail locations with a Micro Savings account.
Micro Savings offers Filipinos a more practical and cost-effective way to save their hard-earned cash. A savings account, often known as a “kids’ savings” or “junior savings” account in banks, can be opened by Filipino residents as early as 7 years old.
