Mommy Ginger
Let's talk about Business, Beauty and Babies!

My Plan for My Life

There was a day when Zeeka asked me about heaven. She asked me, “Mom, where is heaven and how is it like there?” To that, I replied that heaven is where you want it to be. If you think that it’s a place where your loved ones are and you’re happy, then this or your life here on earth is heaven. If you think that God is also here with us, then maybe this is heaven.

I’d like to believe that there is something after this life when we pass away and I believe in God. How I think about life though is not a means to get to a better place (like heaven), but a vehicle to actually make this world that we live in a better place. Why wait for that better place when you have the power to create positive changes NOW?

I have a plan for my life, and this is how I view it to be:

This is my plan for my life. I know my handwriting sucks.. haha! Please bear with me!

So my first 25 years was really for learning, making mistakes, rising back up and trying again. My tip for those who are still in this part of the “life line” that I’m showing, just explore and try to do things that you’ve never done. If you’re scared to try, write down what’s the worst thing that could happen. You’ll realize that the worst thing isn’t as bad as it may seem.

Currently, I’m in a situation where I know what I stand for and what I believe in. This is where we usually find ourselves, make our own choices, see what we consider valuable and try our best to make a change in this life by utilizing our own actions.

This is also the the time that we try to grow our circle of influence. Because why not?

Just some thoughts about influence. Wanting to gain influence is not a bad thing. What you need to think about is why you want to grow or gain influence. The reason why I want to grow my circle of influence is that I have realized that the you can make huge positive changes when you reach more people. Think of it this way — the magnitude of the impact that you can create will obviously be bigger when you have a bigger circle of influence.

This is the reason why politicians or people in the government can make rules that affect the lives of a lot of people. We gave them our votes. Having said that, I digress… I have no plans of running for office. Haha!

What I stand for is really empowering the micro and small businesses and professionals in our country. I think most of you who follow my blog and vlog (https://youtube.com/gingerarboledavlog) know this and know my plan for my life.

Another thing that I’d like to do and Frances and I are really trying hard to spread the word is to connect every women to other women who can support them. We are doing this using the Lean in PH (https://www.facebook.com/groups/leaninph/) a Lean In Network that we started here in the Philippines.

Moving on, in my 50s or probably 60s and onwards toward the end of my life, I’d like to focus on helping younger people who also want to make their voices heard and who want to make this world a better place.

At the end on my life, I want to be able to say that I left the world knowing that my daughter is living in a better world because I tried to make it a better place for her.

Where did all these self-reflection come from? Haha! Just wanted to share this super duper nice feature that the Belle De Jour team has created.

This comes with a FREE eBook/Workbook that you can download here: https://shop.ilovebdj.com/blogs/news/ginger-arboleda-on-nurturing-your-gift-of-self

This really inspired me to share my thoughts today. Now, for you reading this, I’d love to get to know you. How about you?

Where are you now? What are you doing? Do you have your own life line? Share it with me by leaving a comment below or leaving a comment on social media and use #GINspiration.

Some other articles that you may want to read:

What is Life All About? (My Easter Reflection)

Bloggers and Taxes

Bloggers need to pay taxes.

Today, I’ve been seeing a lot of news that bloggers, filmmakers, digital workers and freelancers need to pay taxes. Frankly, I’m not shocked. This has been the rule in the Philippines since years ago.

I’ve been blogging for more than a decade now and when I started earning and accepting revenue for my blog, that’s when I started paying my taxes. I started paying my taxes since 2013 (7 years ago). So this news today that bloggers need to pay taxes isn’t really shocking.

Advantages of Paying Taxes

Other bloggers wonder why I get to haggle on my rate and this is because I can issue an official receipt. The reason why bloggers who pay taxes can negotiate for a better rate is because companies can book this as an expense. Imagine paying thousands of pesos and you can’t declare the amount they pay bloggers as a deductible expense? That’s basically thousands of pesos going down the drain for the companies.

Another thing is that I loved that it was so easy for me to get a Visa going to Japan 2 years ago. I pretty much had every requirement in the check list that the agency had. No sweat applying for VISA.

There are a lot more benefits like securing loans, credit cards, HMOs, etc.

How to get started

First thing’s first… don’t panic. Collate all the requirements that you need. If you don’t know what the requirements are, feel free to email bizreg@taxumo.com and they will give you a super comprehensive list of requirements. Taxumo helps process BIR registration for Php 4999 (discounted from Php 6000) until July 31, 2020. You need not go to the RDO and register; they will process it for you.

Aside from the processing fee of Taxumo (you can also do it yourself, too, if you have the time), here is my own breakdown of the actual cost.

The Actual Cost of Registration

In this article from Manila bulletin, they indicated that the only cost are Php 500 for registration fee and Php 30 for Documentary Stamp.

From my perspective, here is an approximation for costs:

Php 530 – BIR Registration and Doc Stamp

Php 2500 – Approximation of your Official Receipt (first ten booklets … yes, they need to be 10)

Php 200 – Manual Ledgers (really depends on how many BIR would require; oftentimes only two books for Professionals and 4 books for Sole Proprietors)

Php 200 – Notary for my SPA since I had Taxumo do it for me

Php 350 – Occupational Tax Receipt and Barangay Clearance

Php 250 – Delivery back to your place of all the documents (approximation since depends on the distance from Taxumo)

Php 2000+ – Payment for DST2000 if you are renting.

Total will be approximately Php 6,030. Again, this is an approximation of the costs. So Taxumo will ask for an advance of around Php 5750.

To help educate the market on BIR registration and Taxation, Taxumo is doing an Ask – Me – Anything Community Roadshow. If you are a community admin or founder, feel free to contact Taxumo via customercare@taxumo.com.

For other resources, please see these links from my other blogger friends:

My True Story – How I Registered with BIR as a Self-Employed Blogger

https://www.topazhorizon.com/2019/03/freelancers-professionals-small.html

If you have questions about bloggers and taxes, please feel free to message me in the comments section. Search for more articles on taxes and BIR registration on this blog… I have lots! haha!

Activities That You Can Do with your Kids at Home

Activities that you can do with your kids at home

It’s been a struggle for us parents to keeps our kids pre-occupied and “not bored”. Zeeka would always come up to me and say “I’m bored”, and what I do is automatically give her the iPad. It’s not a good thing to have our kids on their gadgets 24/7, since they need to move around, too. They have other “type of intelligence” that need to be practiced and enhanced.

So in this article, I’ll be sharing some of the other cool stuff that I saw that you can do with your kids.

Before that though, check out this video. We’re sharing with you some of the activities that Zeeka does at home.

Get your Belo Baby Wipes (2 for Php 99) here: https://bit.ly/belobabywipes1

Do you want to try it! 3 winners will win 3 Belo Baby Wipes each!

All you need to do is share the video above using hashtag #BeloBabyWipes and tag @belobabylove and @gingerarboleda on IG and Belo Baby and Mommy Ginger on Facebook.

Visual Journaling

One of the activities that you can do with your kids at home is Visual Journaling. I first saw this activity on my Skillshare account. Zeeka watched with me, and she isn’t really that interested with the things that I watch online. I was pretty surprised that she stayed on and watched with me.

Visual journaling is basically using drawing to express your emotions, interests, dislikes, etc. As parents, we can guide them though the exercise like ask them to draw things that they like, draw the feelings that they feel when they’re inside the house, etc. It helps us understand their emotions, too, during these times.

Bring Me Game or Scavenger Hunt Game

Kids love to love to play this. A fun twist that you can do to get to know your child better is to have them bring things that make them feel happy, or things that they think is funny. For them to familiarize themselves with color, you can ask them to bring an item with a specific color.

Riddles or “Who Knows Me Best” During Mealtime

Another one of the activities that you can do with your kids at home (and sometimes with the entire family) are riddles and the “Who knows me best” game. It’s hard for kids to stay at the dining table during mealtime. What keeps Zeeka entertained is when we do some sort of activity. Yesterday, daddy EJ was throwing some riddles that she needed to solve.

Other times, we play “Who Knows Me Best”. One of us asks a question about himself or herself, then the other members of the family need to guess the answer.

Here are other indoor activities that I did with Zeeka:

Art with GummyBox PH

Creative Writing for Kids

Do you have other activities that you can do with your kids at home? Share them with on the comments section below or in social media.

Woman in Business While Being A New Mom

Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels

Being a woman in business has never been easy. We’ve had to fight for the right to work in the first place, fight for safe working spaces that are free from sexual harassment, fight for equal pay, and fight for respect. The fight for true equality in business may be far from over, but with more than 9 million businesses in the US now owned by women and more women opening businesses than men in the Philippines (*Philippine Statistics Authority report), we have made undeniable progress and have forged a path for future generations of women to follow. 

When it comes to business women there’s always one topic that recurs time after time – how do women balance the running of their business with being a mom and a parent?

The reason why this topic comes up so often is that being a mom and a parent can be hard, but just because it is hard, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. After 9 months of pregnancy, the experiences of childbirth, and surviving the first few months caring for a newborn baby, women aren’t in the same position as men when it comes to jumping back to work, but these differences don’t make us any weaker than our male counterparts, no, in fact, our ability to overcome our biological differences makes us stronger. So if you are currently feeling overwhelmed as a new parent but are rearing to get back to your business, then here are some tips to help you balance things as a new mom. 

Give yourself some support

As a woman in business, there can often be this overriding feeling that we need to prove ourselves, leading us to try to do too much. You may be a supermom, but even superheroes have “back-ups”. Make sure that you put some support in place to help you with your workload at home and at work. This could be having a family member or friend help you with childcare, utilizing a cleaner so that it’s one less thing on your mind, using a recipe box service so that you and your partner need not worry about grocery shopping or dinner, or even outsourcing some of your simple work tasks so that you can focus on the ones that matter most. Using the services of a virtual headquarters or virtual office, sometimes abbreviated to a VHQ, can be a great way to free up your time, handling your incoming phone calls and screening them so that you only need to speak to the people that matter. 

Outsourcing is one of those things that needs to become habit, as it is impossible to do it all yourself. And while you may feel that you want to put your own personal stamp on it, the lesson that outsourcing can be a way to save your sanity needs to come first. Whether you need custom labels that communicates a rustic feel or you want to personalize your emails more, there are ways and means to outsource this to people who actually have the time to do it!

Schedule in time to just be a mom 

When you own a business, it can be very difficult to switch off, putting pressure on your mental health and potentially impeding the valuable time that you have as a family. Many new moms feel guilty about going back to work, so to give your brain a rest and to allow you to just focus on being a mom, try scheduling in some time each day for you to switch off from work, put your phone down and enjoy the unadulterated pleasures of being a mom.

If you are working from the office, then this could mean scheduling time in the mornings and evenings, but if you are working remotely then you have more flexibility to schedule in family time throughout the day. By scheduling in free-family time, you will begin to feel less guilty about the time you spend at work and will start to feel as though you are achieving a more realistic sense of balance. 

Don’t be afraid to allow your family and business lives to mix 

Although scheduling separate time for family and business is very important, you shouldn’t be afraid to let the two mix. With more women in business than ever and antiquated attitudes to business changing, it is now more widely accepted that family and business sometimes have to mix. If you can’t schedule childcare and have an internal meeting, make it known that your child will be joining you for the call, let them see you in action as a businesswoman and not just as a mom. If you need to travel for work, then so long as you are able to, then there is nothing stopping you from taking your child with you for the trip. Many clients like to see a family-friendly attitude within the businesses they choose to work with, so embrace the fact that you are both a mom and a businesswoman, and don’t feel as though having children is ever something you need to hide. 

So there you have it – a few tips to help you in the first few months of life as a mom and a woman in business. Balancing being a mom and a businesswoman may not be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. 

How Businesses Can Thrive in this New Landscape

There is no doubt that businesses all over the world are reeling from the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. With millions of people currently being advised to stay at home as much as possible, companies need to be agile and adaptable to survive. I, personally think that most businesses now are asking “now what?”. They’re asking how businesses can thrive in this new landscape. If you run a business, and you’re looking to work towards a more stable and profitable future, here are some tips to help you thrive in a new landscape.

Go online

While many businesses have been hampered by having to close physical premises (we’ve just moved into a full work-from-home scheme), some have seen an increase in traffic, customers and sales as a result of offering online services. People are spending more time online than usual, and they’re also using websites to place orders and find details of companies providing services in their local area.

If you don’t already have a website, you don’t offer an option to order or buy online, or you don’t accept web or phone payments, now is the time to consider making changes. If you run a store, for example, you could look into marketing your products online and setting up a local delivery service, or you could offer customers the chance to order and pay online using systems like those available from Total Merchant Services.

For businesses to thrive in this new landscape, it’s also useful for businesses to use online marketing techniques to drum up interest while offices, stores and showrooms are shut. Using SEO, PPC and social media marketing, you can drive traffic to your website, create high-quality leads and increase conversion rates.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Communicate

One of the most crucial aspects of navigating uncharted waters is keeping in touch with customers and clients. Keep people in the loop and let them know what kinds of services and products you’re selling and how they can continue to support you during and after the Covid-19 crisis. If you’re now offering online services, for example, let your customers know how they can find your website, what they can buy and which delivery or collection options are available to them.

Use social media to promote your products and services, but also to reach out, keep channels of communication open and inform followers of any news or updates. At this time, customers may have questions and queries about placing orders or visiting a store or an office, so it’s critical to check your emails and social media comments and reply promptly.

Diversify

The pandemic has created difficulties for businesses across all sectors, but it has also opened doors. Demand for some products has soared, for example, and many companies and brands have emerged in a positive light after supporting relief services or measures designed to benefit those on the front line.

If you’re looking to make the most of a negative situation, diversifying may be an option. Could you turn towards creating and selling a different type of product or change the way you provide services? Gyms are an excellent example. While clients cannot train at a facility at the moment, they can tune into virtual sessions, register for online classes or enroll in one-to-one personal training sessions delivered by video call. 

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Global lockdowns have impacted businesses in almost every country, and there is no doubt that the landscape is very different now. To thrive, it’s vital to be adaptable, flexible, resourceful and innovative.