Sometimes, we need a guidepost, a road map to where we want to be. Most of the time, our goals involve wealth, or ways to wealth. Here are some methods that are tried and tested

1. Make a financial assessment.

A woman should know how much she has before she can decide what to do with how much she has. For many, this starts a series of wake-up calls, not to mention panic attacks. But wake up calls are good, and panic attacks are good because they set off something in the brain that makes it go to preservation mode.

Here is where the expensive coffee and clothes and bags and eating out and traveling have to go. Or at least cut by as much as seventy five percent.

Because to be wealthy is to carve out and use that seventy five percent for something that can bring in more income (read: investment).

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2. Invest.

For the conservative investor, there is the mutual funds that can give a steady yield year by year provided it is not taken out for at least 7 years. Other investments that are considered conservative include government bonds, time deposits, certificate of deposits and treasury bills. Boring, yes, but generally safe.

For the aggressive investor, there is the stock market. It is not for the faint of heart, it should be observed, it should be timed because it is affected by the waxing and waning of the world economies.

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I found this lone piggybank in a toy store and embraced it right away, looking suspiciously to my left and to my right to check if someone will get it from me.

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No other takers. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Kidding.

But to tell you the truth, when I got it, I initially thought of giving it as a gift to one of my nephews or nieces but then as the countdown to Christmas lost digit after digit, I started wanting it for myself (it would be perfect too for my daughter…).

Because it was not just your regular piggybank – it was a piggybank that makes a provision for savings, spending, donation and investment.

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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Today, I learned about a different kind of investment and a different kind of bank.

What did the endorsers have to say?

Giselle Sanchez: “It is an investment just like bonds, stocks and savings.”

Anna-Lynn Salindong: “It is just like an insurance policy – a biological insurance policy.”

But I was not really thinking about investing and investments that day. I was going about my own way, staring at the wall of a clinic, when the wall stared back. On it was a message board and on the board was a poster of a cute baby.

It was a poster for cord blood banking.

Cord blood what???

And I was reminded that I kind of knew about it, a colleague in work having “banked” his baby’s cord blood in Singapore two years ago. All I know was that the expense was prohibitive. But I remembered too that my colleague, although sighing and murmuring about all that money he spent for it, thinks that he did good.

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