New Year, New Life

  Literally.  Because we took it a notch.  Er, notches. Family and I – we just moved to Canada.  A country an ocean away, separated from us by 13 hours of flight time. A country of rugged beauty, incessant rains, warm winters (8 degrees is warm for them), trees with breadth longer than an arm [...]

If You Are Looking for a Job

I love my job. Of course I love my job. But we are doing the “big move” (more on that in the next articles) and so I have to take another look at a job market somewhere and of course, that means stress and interviews and begging (but trying not to look it) to get [...]

Analysis Paralysis: Are You Guilty?

Really?  Have you thought about it? A well-meaning friend (who is looking incredulous) let this question hang in the air, and my mind suddenly started a discourse. Miffed, it said: Of course I thought about it.  If I haven’t…  this train of thought led me to thinking that “thinking” is actually the problem of most [...]

How to Develop a Product (Yes You Can)

You start with a problem, or an inconvenience. It could be the weather, or something you are used to but (by gosh) is really painful (like high heels), or something that you cannot control (like your weight, or the bulging of your tummy). That’s right.  Start with you. Then you search for an available solution [...]

Celebrating the Chinese New Year

The Chinese New Year has been flitting in and out of the edge of my culture and consciousness as kaleidoscopic images of round red lanterns, tikoy, dragon dances and loud firecrackers.
I remember tikoy (Chinese New Year’s cake made of glutinous rice) and my dad dipping it in just-beaten egg yolks and egg whites, frying it on the pan until it gets golden brown all throughout. We would gather round the table and get it from the plate while it is still hot, our hands getting sticky and oily and sticky again, while our tongues seek and taste the gooey center where the goodness is until there is no more.

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A Happy Christmas to You from You Want to Be Rich

Invitation to A Webinar: What You Can Do With Your Christmas Bonus

My mom had this to say about my video invitation to my webinar: You should have tied your hair.

Because I kept flipping my hair this way and that. (chuckles)

But I just had a haircut and the complementary blow dry and the hair was falling smoothly across my face and I did not want to mess it up and I was feeling good anyway and …

Yeah, I should have tied my hair.

Not-tying-my-hair aside, I hope you can join me for my webinar on October 29, 2010 from 12 noon to 1 pm. I will be talking about what you can do with the bonus that you are going to get.

I’m sure it’s on your mind a lot now. But before you blow it on that special something, know that it can be your startup money for a project, or your ticket to being debt-free.

(there’s a great company that will have an initial public offering soon and you can invest on that – ask me about this during the webinar)

I hope you can join me. You can register here.

Special thanks to Medicol.ph and Didi of LovingtheDistance.com for making this happen.

Article and Poster by Issa. Copyright 2010.
Website: www.YouWantToBeRich.com
Email: issa@youwanttoberich.com

P.S. I will be on live chat during the webinar – you can ask me anything. You will also get a certificate at the end. I hope you register now. See you!

How We Did It

“Did”. I am not sure about that word. Because it is in the past tense and means the fun and the adventures are over. When they are not. We are just beginning.

A reader wanted to know how we “did it”. She said she read my first post but that I just skimmed the surface of how we overcame the bleak prophesies of our first financial planner, that I did not really explain how we got that 24% increase in our annual income, and more importantly, how we overshot it. If you have not read that first post, here is what our first financial planner said:

“While the couple’s Emergency Fund Ratio (EFR) will be over 1x by the end of 2007, the ideal ratio is 3x. The couple would need to add around Php149,000 to their annual income to meet such a ratio. To raise their savings rate to 18.1% from 6.7%, the couple would need additional annual income of Php262,000, or add 24% to their current annual income.”

So, how?

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