At one point in your life, you will be given what you think will be a golden opportunity – investing in someone else’s business. Before you turn giddy and give your yesses and your checks, think.

My husband and I, we are very enthusiastic persons. The idea of getting into a new business – except when it involves multi-level marketing, which does not float our boat – is enough to send us to euphoria. But of late, we have been a little selective and a little wary of the businesses we get into. We have been burned some of the time and if added up, those investments would run into the hundreds of thousands. Okay, okay, some are not yet “dead” but we worry about them constantly and we do not think that worrying is very good use of our time and our money.

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I have a confession to make. I have not written my will.

I do not know what is stopping me – not the thought of invincibility because slowly I am finding out the truth and fact of my humanity. Not for lack of knowledge – I have drafted wills for others and other more complicated – and more sober (sobering?) – documents. Not for lack of having given it thought – because I have.

Then what?

Because writing a will is an emotional exercise and I am not sure if I can handle the enormity of it. It is half love letter, half goodbye letter, transmitting all of your hopes and dreams to people you hope not to leave behind too soon. It is a practical letter, an inventory of your life and what you have accumulated in terms of the material and the familial and the emotional. It has a potential to be controversial, leaving in its wake disappointments and tensions and conflicts that you no longer can put under control. It is a testament to what your life has been, to what you valued and continue to value. It is a last heave before you and your life and your words says caput.

And how do you say goodbye?

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If there is anything that I have learned during all my years of existence, it is that you do not get answers if you do not ask any questions.
So I ask my questions, no matter how silly or how dumb it sounds. Doubt is also an element that I constantly entertain in my mind, so I confirm and re-confirm until the thing has no choice but to sound true.

So on the day that I got my credit card statement and alarm bells were sounding in my head, I picked up the phone and called Citibank direct.

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I think I first heard about Mutual Funds from Bo Sanchez. He likens it to a vehicle that almost anyone, with some funds to invest, can jump into, and that it should be a staple in the portfolio of any smart investor.

I was not entirely convinced (I did not really understand).

To further dispel the mystery of this so-called staple – Mutual Funds – I did some further reading and some interviews. It is simpler than I thought.

Mutual Funds, turns out, is an investment vehicle where people can pool their resources to take advantage of the magic of larger numbers, that is, because a lot of people invest into “the fund”, they have a large number, and thus, the mutual fund manager – a professional who will manage the investment – can get better rates of return for them. The mutual fund manager trades the “pooled” money on a regular basis and the net proceeds or losses are then typically distributed to the investors annually. As my friend Salve Duplito said in one of her articles in MoneySmarts, with as little as USD$100, the regular John or Juans can get their feet wet in an instantly diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, or both.

A sort of safe haven for the cautious investor.

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I have a secret.

But before me, it belonged to Bo Sanchez (and maybe before him from some really wise man).

I could still remember the time when I first heard him speak of it. I was cruising in my car and listening to one of his boxed audio seminars. It was the first CD I received from him as a member of his Truly Rich Club. I honestly did not think much about that CD – I plugged it and listened. But there’s something about a two-hour traffic and listening to Bo’s charismatic voice that gets the heart pumping and the mind dreaming dreams.

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the power to dream of riches and making it come true lies at the core of one’s life – in one’s childhood. His views about poverty, about money, his poverty mindset (money does not grow on trees) and his wealth mindset (money grows on trees) start at that time which is at the root of all his memories.

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I called my daughter, who was busy playing, and asked her: C, what is money? Eyebrows going up, eyes slightly questioning (as if saying, now where is mom going with this), she says, tongue in cheek, voice bored, “It has a lot of numbers and signs on it.” Okay (sounds about right). I made a follow up question: C, do you know how you can make lots of money? Grinning, she answered, her voice lilting and confident, “I can draw it.”

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Napoleon Hill said, “The subconscious mind makes no distinction between constructive and destructive thought impulses. It works with the material we feed it, through our thought impulses. The subconscious mind will translate into reality a thought driven by fear just as readily as it will translate into reality a thought driven by courage or faith. xxx Like the wind which carries one ship east, and another west, the law of autosuggestion will lift you up or pull you down, according to the way you set your sails of thought.”

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