Wealth and Finance

What To Think Of As A Gold Investor

January 23, 2021 by Contributor Leave a Comment

Through the years, people have seen gold not just as a precious metal but a great investment. From the period of ancient civilizations to the modern era of today, the value of gold has been increasing, thereby making it an excellent addition to your diversified investment portfolio.

If you’re planning to invest in gold, there are a few things that you should consider first. Unless you’re an expert already, you need trusted sources of advice for investing in precious metals, such as investingingold.com.

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Gary Ng: 5 Tips For Investing during COVID

December 17, 2020 by Contributor 2 Comments

*Article contributed by Amin.

With the pandemic approaching its tenth month, its effect on the global economy is staggering. Many are unable to pay for rent or mortgages, or just day to day expenses. The threat of Covid-19 is real, as the numbers rise across the nation. Despite the precarious market, there are measures investors can make that will better protect them when the pandemic ends.
Financial entrepreneur and investor Gary Ng offers five sound tips.

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How to Avoid Scams Online: SMS Spoofing and Phishing

September 2, 2020 by Ray L. 2 Comments

Tagalog Version (Click Here)

While I’ve already made a previous article about how to avoid scams online, this version is mostly about phishing and SMS spoofing scams which are becoming more common in the Philippines. If you don’t want to lose thousands or even millions of pesos to those kinds of scams, then keep reading to learn more about them and how to avoid them.

First off, to give you a picture of how phishing scams work, imagine you’re in a mall buying groceries. Suddenly, a “worker from an electric company” comes up to you and asks you for your name, home address, and the keys to your house because they need to “verify things”.

Will you give them your house keys?

You don’t want to? What if they say they’ll cut off your electricity if you refuse? Will you give them your address and house keys then?

Yeah, you probably already know that it’s OBVIOUSLY a scam, but people fall for that kind of thing ONLINE. That is exactly how phishing scams work, but instead of a scammer wearing a fake uniform and fake ID, it’s a text message or an email asking for your password, One-time PINs (OTPs), verification codes, and other important personal information.

Never give anyone your password, PINs, and OTPs as those are the “keys” to your accounts. REAL bank and company employees will never ask for that information, but criminals almost always do.

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Bulls, Bears, Bubbles and Recessions? Reading about the Market for Beginners

August 4, 2020 by Ray L. 1 Comment

Tagalog Version (Click Here)

If you happen to glance over the business section of the news, you’d probably read some articles about how the stock market has been “bearish” lately, there is a bubble in a certain industry, or there’s an upcoming recession predicted by some expert. If you’re interested in learning about investing and the stock market, all that fancy jargon could turn you off as it makes things more complicated than it should be.

Since those kinda words are usually on headlines of business and investing articles, learning what a few of them means should tell you a lot about what’s happening to the market at a glance. Let’s talk a bit about about that here.

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Why We All Need to Build an Emergency Fund Account

June 20, 2020 by Ray L. 3 Comments

Tagalog Version (Click Here)

Who knew, right? Who could have predicted (aside from Bill Gates) that such a wide-scale pandemic would paralyze entire countries, leave thousands of businesses bankrupt and millions without a job or income.

While the Philippine government have tried to support people who have not had any income during the quarantine with some social amelioration programs (SAP, locally called “ayuda”), unfortunately, it was not really enough.

While some businesses restarted during the general community quarantine (GCQ) in June, the curve does not seem to have flattened at all and there are still a lot of people unable to return to work, such as Jeepney and bus drivers, etc. There’s also not a lot of people around and most small businesses I see seem to be struggling. Many have also closed permanently.

It’s a sad reality.

Who knew something like this would happen, right? I certainly didn’t.

There’s a reason why a lot of personal finance instructors tell people to save up an “emergency fund”, and this pandemic showed us exactly why.

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