Money and Life Lessons from Suze Orman

I was able to catch Suze Orman's talk at the New Resorts World yesterday evening. Suze is the author of 20 New York bestsellers, a tv host, motivational speaker and financial advisor (including to some Hollywood stars like Oprah Winfrey). 

Just like her talk last year in Manila, she shared her inspiring life story and lots of practical financial advice and life tips during the Q&A portion.  She makes it a point to tell her story to dispel notions and excuses that one can't be successful and rich just because one is too young/too old, lacks education, buried in debt, etc. If you haven't read Suze's life story yet, read it here.

Here are some random personal finance, money lessons and life tips from Suze during the talk: 

- The goal of money is to feel safe and secure. If an investment is making you feel scared, don't do it.

-  Don't say yes to people because you love them or don't want to displease them (e.g. Financially helping out siblings who are physically capable of working and who are probably living a better lifestyle than you are) but instead say "No" because you love yourself. You have to love yourself first before you love others.  (I think Suze interviewed some Filipinos including OFWS the day before and learned that a lot of Filipinos do not just give financial support to parents but even to siblings. The support is somehow expected to be almost like an obligation and these generous souls don't have the heart to tell their family members that they can actually no longer afford to give support.)

- Take care of your parents but (again) not your siblings who are physically capable of finding work because by giving them easy money, you're not helping them.

-  If you have unpaid credit balances, pay them first. That's the best thing that you could do because in a year, that would could cost you at least 36% interest. 

-  If you have a mortgage and you've extra money, fully pay your home first. That would save you at least 6-12% in year (vs keeping your money in bank that earns you only 1 to 2% per annum).

- Contrary to the classic advice, don't live "within" your means. Instead live "below" your means but "within" your needs. 

- Buy things that you need. Don't buy just because you could afford them. Suze shares that though she can afford to buy a big house for instance, she only buys small condominiums because that's what she only needs. She mentioned the sq ft of her condo, either 1200+ sq ft or 1600+ sq ft but either measurement equals less than 200 sqm.  This is a person whose net worth is more than USD35M! 

- Find more pleasure in saving instead of spending. Be happier when you're able to save money and not when you buy things. Be happy living in a modest home because that's all the space you need. Be happy eating home-cooked meals instead of paying for expensive dinners that make you fat, Suze joked. :) 

- For parents, her advice is never to give your kids too much allowance.  Don't buy your kids all the things that they want. Buy them what they only need.  Teach them what are needs vs wants.  If you keep on buying them things and giving them money, they'll never appreciate the value of money and it will give them a sense of entitlement. They are not entitled to your money. Your money is yours.  Your kids have to learn how to make their own money.  Instead, make them understand how much you spend on tuition fees, groceries, electricity, etc.  

- Suze cites that one of the greatest things that has happened to her life was when her mom refused to lend her the money she was asking for to build a restaurant because the family didn't have money.  If not for that maybe she isn't where she is now.  She kidded that in the Philippines, if kids ask their parents, they may perhaps even borrow money just to provide for the kids. So to Filipino parents, she says learn how to say no to your kids.  Just give them enough.

- If you're a financial advisor, don't ever sell to your friends or family members because if the investment turns out to be wrong, you're gonna strain close relationships.  And when you sell to others, make sure to sell not because your paycheck depends upon it, but because the prospect really needs the product you're selling.  If you think the prospect needs to put the money somewhere more urgent and important, then tell him that. 

- As Suze likes to end her show, she emphasizes - People first, Money second, Things third.  She shared that she realized that money wasn't the most important thing when she witnessed a fire accident when she was a kid.  Her dad's store caught fire and all her dad's cash was inside the cash register. The cash register was made of steel and her dad tried to save the cash register inside the burning store.  Due to the extreme heat, the cash register actually melted and she saw how her dad carried it and when he laid the cash register down, his skin on his chest and arms got burned and ripped off. To his dad, money was more important than his life - he risked his life to save the cash register.  Suze vowed since then it's People First, Money second and Things third. 

One Year Lived: 1-year adventure around the world

About a month ago, I got an email from Adam Shepard, author of a recently launched book entitled "One Year Lived".  He shared his sentiment that "People need to travel more, not only because it is satisfying and fun and inspires purpose and provides service to a world that needs it and sparks creativity, but because we need to open up our eyes to what is really going on out there."  

He wrote a book about his one year adventure around the world which he completed in 2012.  He gave me an advance copy of his e-book and I finally finished reading it.

In the book, Shepard shares his motivations, thoughts and learnings from his 1-year trip.  His purpose for publishing his memoirs is to encourage people, especially his fellow Americans, to go out and explore the world.   

In a span of a year, he went to several countries and did various activities -some for a cause and some for leisure.  He taught poor kids in Honduras (where he also met a Slovakian volunteer and fell in love), dug wells to install pumps in Nicaragua, tried bull-fighting in Spain, rode an elephant in Thailand, visited a concentration camp in Poland, learned about the Aborigines of Australia and Maori people of New Zealand, and visited our very own Boracay island!  During his stay in the Philippines, he also got to watch the Manny Pacquiao-Bradley Cooper fight (June 2012) in one of the local cinemas doing the live broadcast, and also finally met the Pinoy guy with whom he has outsourced online work for 2 years. 

The book is interspersed with interesting facts and trivia about the places he visited, hard lessons in life (like getting addicted to gambling and depleting his savings from gambling not just once, but twice) and touching life stories of people he met.  

There was one story Shepard shared about a woman named Flora from Nicaragua which deeply touched me. At age 25, Flora met a guy and fell in love, got married and had a baby daughter. At age 28, they started  building a house but shortly after, Flora discovered that her husband was having an affair so she kicked him out of the house. On her own, Flora tried to continue building their house collecting boards and pounding nails by herself.  One day, a board fell and hit her back.  There was no hospital in the area and they didn't have money to travel and get her treatment and so her back never healed. She has been bed-ridden for 16 years.  Flora is now 44 yrs old.  She lives in a 14x16 ft wooden hut and her daughter (with now a family of her own) checks on her. She takes liquid diet to avoid a messy bedpan so as not to inconvenience her daughter too much.  

Shepard went to Flora's house when a pastor invited him to pray over her.  When it was time to pray, you know what Flora asked the pastor?  To pray for Sergio, her young neighbor who has an ailment.  Here was a person bed-ridden for 16 years and she was asking to pray for the healing of another person. Wow.    

Stories like this, especially when witnessed first-hand, are really life-changing.  You may forget them for sometime or think it's just an experience in passing which you can't do anything about, but unconsciously, they shape our lives and teach us values like compassion, hope and strength of the spirit.  I hope someone who can afford to get Flora medical attention stumbles upon her story and helps her.  She's Flora Herrera from Kisaliya, Waspa, Nicaragua.  

Anyway, here's an excerpt from One Year Lived which may strike a chord. 

Everybody tells you that the BMW 6 Series is the car to have. 

Awesome.

Everybody tells you that every year you delay grad school take money out of your pocket.  Fine.

Everybody tells you that you should be buying a house.

Whatever.

Everyone tells you how to be a millionaire and the idea is a sexy one, but maybe we spend so much time chasing shiny things that we forget that happiness also shows itself among those experiences that you can't hold in your hand.  

I gave a lot for this trip, and I'm glad I did.  

One Year Lived by Adam Shepard is now available on Amazon.com.  The kindle edition sells for USD6.99 and the paperback edition is at USD14.07.  To get a quick glimpse of Shepard's 1-year adventure in a 2-minute video, you can also check out his website at http://www.oneyearlived.com.

Corazon: Chef Florabel's new restaurant at Shang Mall

 I rarely go to Ortigas to dine but I'm glad I met up with friends this evening and tried a new restaurant called Corazon, a restaurant offering Filipino-Spanish cuisine by Chef Florabel Co.

Here are some of the dishes we tried -

 Fish balls and squid balls served in style.  The dish comes with the typical sweet sauce and mild spicy variant. I hope they will also serve the vinegar-based sauce with onions.  Remember the typical fishball vendor has 3 sauces? Hehe... :)

 Seafood Paella.  Well-cooked and tasty.  The only thing that is lacking is "tutong" - the burnt, flaky grains we like to scrape off the paella plate. Hehe...

Callos.  

Salpicao.  Yum-yum.  

Queso de Bola Cheesecake.  I was so excited to dig in that I forgot to take a photo before I touched it. Haha... Anyway, this is really good.  Salty and sweet. I would come back to Corazon's just for this.

Corazon's is located at the 4th Level East Wing, Shangrila Plaza Mall.   The East Wing is the new extension towards Edsa Shangri-la Hotel.  

Truffle Lechon

A friend hosted dinner recently and she served Truffle Lechon. It's lechon de leche stuffed with truffle-infused rice. The lechon's flesh is so juicy and tender (so tender that the meat just falls off the bone!), the skin so crispy and the rice so tasty (in addition to truffle, it's also infused with herbs and spices).  Hay... (Translation: Hard to resist! Haha...).  

The truffle lechon is also called French Lechon, made to order from Pepita's Kitchen in Magallanes. 

I quickly read up reviews about Pepita's Kitchen and found out that their lechon is cooked pugon-style and they offer several types of lechon - stuffed with laing rice, binagoongan rice, spicy sisig rice (called Pinoy lechon), stuffed with garlic bulbs and potatoes (German lechon),  chestnuts and machang style rice (Chinese lechon), stuffed with pansit (Birthday lechon), Spanish chorizo and taba ng talangka paella rice (Spanish Manilena lechon) and many more.  The price ranges from Php6,500 to Php7,000. 

And occasionally, the owner also holds a 14-course Lechon Degustacion experience at the family residence in Magallanes Village. Wow. I think I want to try this one. Haha.. 

Anyway, for more info, you may check out Pepita's Kitchen Facebook Fan Page or contact +63 9178660662 or +632 4254605. 

Gala Magazine's Summer & Anniversary Issue

Sometime in March, I got an email via my blogsite contact details from a Magazine called Gala (pronounced in Tagalog as ga-la which means wanderer).  Here are some of their past covers.

They asked me if I wanted to write a travel article for their summer issue which also happens to be their anniversary issue.   They had a list of local destinations on their wish list and I ended up picking Camiguin.  The issue is out and here's my article. :)

Anyway, if you want to check out the magazine, here's the cover of their summer and anniversary issue. 

Gala Magazine has a comprehensive coverage of events - from concerts, plays, parties, competitions to trade shows, exhibits, marathons and festivals.  And since it's their summer issue, they have several articles on summer tips and tricks and picked 11 local summer destinations from Boracay to Zambales.  The magazine is available at National Bookstore outlets.

Indonesian fruits and delicacies

Whenever I travel, part of the experience I look forward to is tasting the local fruits and delicacies. Here are some foods which I tried during my recent trip to Indonesia.

Salak or known as the snake fruit because its skin is like snakeskin. To peel it, just pinch the tip then you can easily pull away the skin. 

Salak has a distinct smell like durian but at a mild scale.  It tastes like jackfruit (langka) but crunchy.

Passion fruit.  Their variety of passion fruit is yellow to orange (not dark purple).  Just eat the juicy interior and crunchy seeds.  

Photo source:  suppversity.blogspot.com

Pisang Kaki. When I asked the Malaysian delegates I was with during one dinner, they said when translated in English, Pisang Kaki means “banana lake”.   It looks like it has white powderish skin but when you wash it, the skin color is actually green.  You have to peel the skin before eating it. The flesh is yellow and tastes like Persimmon. 

When I googled to learn more about Pisang Kaki, the images that appeared were all Persimmons! So maybe it’s a green variety of Persimmon.

Layered cake or Lapis Legit or Kek Lapis.  According to Wikipedia, Lapis Legit means very rich layer cake. I got two boxes at the airport (there are various flavors like classic, buko pandan, raisin, etc.) and though the boxes were just regular in size (maybe a little over 20 cm x 20 cm), they felt heavy like almost 1 kilo each!  

                          

After checking on Wikipedia, I found out that a 20 cm x 20 cm cake contains up to 30 egg yolks, 500g butter and 400g sugar! Whoa....  

The layered cakes are super siksik (compact), no wonder the boxes were heavy. They say a good lapis legit has more than 18 layers.  Failed to count though how many layers did the cakes I bought have. Haha... 

Kopi Luwak (pronounced with a silent k in Indonesia) is also known as civet coffee or Musang coffee. In the Philippines, we call it Alamid coffee. This type of coffee refers to the beans of coffee berries eaten by a civet then excreted (yes, poop!).   They say during digestion inside the civet’s body, fermentation occurs.   

Photo source: seroberangberang.com

 I got the white coffee kind at the airport so the coffee drinkers at the office could try it out. 

Photo source: Kopiluwakrajaku.com

I'm not really a coffee drinker so I'm not in the position to say if it's good or not. Haha... I love the smell and taste of coffee but couldn't really drink as much because I get palpitations when I do. :(

As I was looking for photos to use here, I came across an article which discusses ethical issues on kopi luwak or civet coffee.  Apparently, some coffee makers cage civets and force them to feed on coffee beans. So if you're planning to buy civet coffee, maybe it's good to check the label first if they were produced using the natural farming and collection method.   

Lessons from Muki Hamami, the Indonesian Billionaire

During a recent trip to Jakarta, Indonesia, I was fortunate to have attended a sharing session by Indonesian billionaire, Rachmat Mulyana Hamami, nicknamed Muki.  His family is part of Forbes' list of world's billionaires with a net worth of USD2.2B.

I did some research about the Hamami family and here are some interesting things I found online together with some of the things Muki shared during the talk. 

Muki is the eldest son of Achmad Hamami.   Achmad used to be an elite jet pilot and holds the record of being the youngest to become a colonel in the history of the Indonesian military.   He retired early because of the corruption in the ranks and became a Math tutor. During the these difficult times, Muki and his siblings sold flavored popsicles to help earn income for the family.

Around 1970, a family friend was instrumental in leading Achmad to an opportunity of becoming the Caterpillar distributor in Indonesia.  At that time, Caterpillar was unhappy with their current distributor in Indonesia and they were looking for someone who had military and business background.  Achmad took night courses in business and the rest was history.  In addition to heavy equipment, the family is also now engaged in leasing, energy and investments.

Today, Muki is the president director of their company, PT Tiara Marga Trakindo (TMT), the holding entity of 17 companies.   During the talk, he shared his dad's vision, what the family is doing to preserve their dad's legacy and various lessons on business and life.  Here are some snippets:

• His dad's mission is to create jobs for people.  During the 1998 financial crisis, he told Muki not to retrench people and to pay all the debts.  Achmad said that they had to swim and sink together. Today, the company has a 35,000 workforce (if I heard it right) and it has zero debt.  

• His dad's dream for the company is for it to last for 100 years.  The company is now over 40 years old under the care of the second generation family members. Muki and one of his brothers have done extensive research, read books, attended courses all over the world and sought the help of business experts on how to make sure their company lasts for generations like Michelin and Kikkoman (Kikkoman was apparently still being managed by the original founders of 1603! Whoa...).  The Hamami family came up with a 100-plus page family constitution to address this and got an expert from the Kellogg School of Management (Professor Ward, a family enterprise expert) to help them draft it.  

• The family constitution outlines in detail on how to conduct business, make decisions and also includes guidelines on philanthropy.  Family members who want to join the business for example have to spend 2 years training on the business and additional 5 years' work experience outside the company.  They are also subject to interviews by the company directors (excluding the applicant's parents), to make sure they are good enough to work for the company.    Family members aren't required to work for the company but they are required to learn financial literacy because the family believes that though they don't need to be involved in the business, they have to be good owners.

• Muki shares his dad's strict discipline and work ethics. He said that his dad comes to the office from 8am to 5pm. Muki fondly remembers that when he was just starting to work for their company, the dad would issue him warning letters for coming in late at 830am!  In 1999, his dad became blind (due to glaucoma worsened by stress during the financial crisis when he had to fly to and from Singapore in search of banks to restructure their USD118M debt).  But even today, at age 81, the dad, Achmad, still goes to the office.

Muki ended his sharing with a life realization.  He shared - "When you die, you die. You won't bring your wealth with you.  Everyone is the same." It was a reminder that wealth is just temporary and that we shouldn't hold on to it too tightly. 

For a more comprehensive read on the Hamami family and their family constitution, you can check out these links:

 http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/1205/indonesia-billionaires-11-hamami-tmt-lasting-value-lestari.html

 http://pudjilestari.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/lasting-value/#more-769

Where to stay in Jakarta: Pullman Jakarta Central Park Hotel

I had a last minute business trip to Jakarta, Indonesia this week and was booked at the Pullman Jakarta Central Park Hotel, the venue of the activity I was attending.  

I took the PAL straight flight to Jakarta which flies late in the evening and arrives after midnight. Our flight got delayed and we arrived at about 1am (2am Manila time) so I was a bit groggy by the time I reached the hotel.  But the great news is the front desk upgraded me to an executive suite. Yay! 

After I checked in and was headed to the elevators, I knew the hotel was unique because this was what greeted me -



My grogginess partially dissipated because I found the display interesting but at the same time a bit unsettling because the jumping baby on a bikini might just move! Hey, it was 2am and I was all alone in the elevator area. Haha...



And there wasn't just one jumping baby but 3 of them! Haha...



When I reached my designated floor and was headed to my room,  the hallway was happily decorated with Andy Warhol-ish paintings. Nice.

My room was at the far-end, near the fire exit.  I had to take a second look when something caught my eye at the dead end -

This!

I had to rub my eyes to make sure it was just another art piece! Haha...

Since I was upgraded to an executive suite, my room had a receiving area.



It also has Pop Art touches...



Even the guest toilet's wall was adorned with this corner painting.  



Here's the bedroom.



Check out the details -

 



Here's the bathroom area -



The only downside of the toilet and bath is it's all open.  The glass doors don't have locks too.  So maybe it's ideal for couples or if you're traveling alone.   Some of my fellow delegates were saying if they had their kids with them, they won't be able to take a shower because for sure, their kids will peek through the transparent glass! (The middle portion of the glass is the only one that is frosted).   



But I really like the bathroom's rainshower and the wooden plank-like flooring.



Even inside the bathroom, there are some artsy touches like this bottle opener.

 

I was able to see more of the hotel in the following days.  It's like walking inside a modern art museum.  Check these out -







And there are more of the torso-less, crossed legs statues!



I also like the hotel's playful choice of colors and furniture pieces.

 

And while waiting for a lift, you can even sit on a coveted Cobonpue's Bloom chair.  Proudly designed by a Filipino. Yay!



Here's the nice view while sitting on the Cobonpue's Bloom chair - it's the mall adjacent to the hotel.

 

The feature that fascinated me the most at the Pullman Jakarta Central Park Hotel was this-


During the evenings near the lobby elevators, you will notice some floor stains with ants swarming over them. Here's the close-up image of one stain.



Once you step into the area (even if you're away from the stains) the ants will come to you!



Here I was trying to take a photo of the floor (that's my shadow) when the ants started coming towards me! Haha...  But no worries, they are just digital images being projected on the floor.


 
And here's a kid who was having fun being followed by the giant ants!:)

If you're wondering about the hotel service, I found the staff cheerful, courteous and very helpful.  The food was good too.  But for more info about the Pullman Hotel in Jakarta, visit  http://www.pullmanjakartacentralpark.com/ and check out more reviews at Trip Advisor.