Intro

What if you can watch something that can instantly transform your life into a financially rewarding and wealthy life? Would you be willing to spend a couple of hours to improve your knowledge and understanding of the finance world? And if "studying" means watching a documentary series on Netflix, that you might even enjoy, will you do it? If you are a young person learning about adulting and how personal finance works in the real world, then these shows are for you.

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How To Get Rich

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It was a kinda, sorta rest day yesterday. Having stayed at home and not doing much. I watched a few episodes of How to Get Rich, which was totally worth re-watching. It's a show about people getting advice from financial expert Ramit Sethi. Sethi is an author, podcaster, and entrepreneur whose wealth primarily came from his best-selling book, "I Will Teach You to Be Rich" and online courses.

The show is a 6.3/10 on IMDB and 58% on Rotten Tomatoes; decent numbers, but IMHO, the title of the docuseries sets it up for failure. Yes, the different and sometimes difficult situations facing the people he comes into contact with make it worth watching in itself. The financial advice is actually sound and is directed at making the his clients aware of the financial situation the are in. Most of the time, emotional reactions surface because money, and our attitude about it when we were brought up, comes into play. Because money is a very touchy subject matter, especially among family members, peers, and friends. This is what makes this show a must watch.

For me, how to handle money matters in the context of the various relationships we have in life separates the seasoned finance professional from the wannabes. Digging into deeply held values and belief systems about money and finances will surely make the clients uncomfortable and sometimes unwilling to even acknowledge the issue; and, this is where we will benefit the most: learning from the mistake of others. Watching how they have managed to transform their lives by thinking differently about money is the gist of the show. And if we too are open to change how we think, value, understand, and act on money, then this can potentially transform our lives as well.

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Filipino Values

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Filipinos have traits that impact our financial situation in life. The best example of this is "Filipino time", which is basically just telling the world that we cannot keep our promise to arrive at a specific time, or start an important event, such as a wedding or christening ceremony, on time. This really runs against the grain of good values, heck it even cuts deep down into your character as a person. Personally, I am not exempt from this as I have arrived so late at events in many situations citing the traffic, woke up late, had to drop by somewhere else, had an "emergency", etc. It's embarrassing, but I have done that too.

Another trait closely related to Filipino time is "Mañana habit", which is just our way of saying that we procrastinate a lot. Putting off important decisions for a later time, starting a retirement account when you are already in your forties, investing in yourself, and maybe even getting a life insurance might be things that we put off, but are important in life.

Other traits and values that we can do well to analyze and reflect deeply about are:

• The Fiesta Culture. I really can't blame us for being like this. What can I say, "we love to party." But it should be within the bounds and limits of our financial capacity. We don't need to mortgage our apartment just to celebrate the daughter's 18th birthday. It's just insane what people do just to be able to hold a grand celebration.

• Ningas-kugon. To state simply, it's starting something full of enthusiasm, then losing interest after. Like starting a business, one can be enthusiastic about starting a bakery, but when you discover that you have to give up sleep to run a successful bakery, then you just give up. Another good example is starting a blog. You are so enthusiastic about earning $Hive and $HBD from blogging that you start out putting content everyday. Your onboarder explained that if you are consistent, and upload original, quality, non-AI blogs while engaging in the blockchain, you can become successful here. Of course, the first few months got you a lot of tokens for being part of an onboarding program, but what happens when reality sets in. That you've become accustomed to the $10 or $20 daily upvote. What happens when your blog starts getting $0.50 or $1.23 upvotes, will you still continue blogging?

• Crab mentality. What can I say. This is one bad trait that we need to get rid of. Personally, I really think that celebrating others' successes is easier than trying to put them down for being good at something. And, even if one isn't successful yet, we should be supportive rather than just being dream crushers.

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Conclusion

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There are many other traits that affect our financial lives. Some of these are: the balikbayan-box mentality, "balat-sibuyas", and just general disregard for rules. If we cannot even follow simple instructions, such as not using AI bots when we create blog posts, then how can we expect to be successful here.

That's it for today's blog post. It's getting too long and I don't want to bore you with my rant and self reflections about money and our relationship with it. But, for the last time, if time is money, then we are not valuing other people's time/money by being late. And I will end with that.

Thanks for dropping by and checking out my blog. Let's be kind to one another.

Love and peace,
@juanvegetarian 😎

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*_{I used a Canva template for this blog post, please check out image 1 if you are interested.}