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Investing in Cryptocurrencies

We just released a video about investing in a volatile crypto market. We shared our experiences and how we personally started and how are we investing in cryptocurrencies.

Here is the transcript:

[GINGER] Hey everyone! We have another interesting episode here at GTV for you. I’m Ginger Arboleda and I’m EJ and we’re content creators and startup business owners who love sharing our experiences on personal finance, investing, business and parenthood.

[EJ] Investing in Cryptocurrencies has become more popular, but before getting into it, financial vloggers often warn you that the crypto market is very volatile and only invest what you can afford to lose. So, let us warn you, if you plan on investing in Crypto, especially if you’re new to the game, only invest what you can afford to lose.

[GINGER] Right now, our crypto and NFT portfolio comprise 6.30% of our total portfolio and, for us, that’s relatively fast considering we just got into it early 2021. We’re pretty new investors in this space, so at first we were really shocked at how high and then low the market could get. It was really stressful for us, seeing the number spike and dip the next day. But a year investing in crypto has taught us a lot, and we’d like to share what we have realized.

[EJ] First, you should look at that instrument over the long term and see if it increased in value over the years. If it does, then that’s a good sign that you’ll probably earn LONG TERM on the investment. Let’s take Bitcoin. Bitcoin was at around 1 dollar in 2011, now in 2022 it’s at 41 thousand dollars. Obviously it rose over that long term so, for us, that’s a sign that over the long term, we MAY earn on bitcoin. Now, Bitcoin is THE cryptocurrency, everything else is called an altcoin or alternative coin and people invest in those in the hopes that they find one that’s worth a dollar now but will be worth 41 thousand later – those are much riskier investments and the method we’re talking about may not work the best for those. Of course, it’s up to you and your risk appetite if you still wanna invest in that.

[GINGER] Now how do you invest? We advise that you use dollar cost averaging when investing in cryptocurrencies. Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) or Peso Cost Averaging, in our case, is an investment strategy where you invest a specific amount into that investment vehicle in regular intervals. By doing this, you reduce the impact of the volatility on the overall purchase. You won’t get the highest return BUT you also won’t be a victim of the lowest loss. That’s because during the bear or down seasons, you’re able to buy more with the money you invest. During the bull or up seasons, you’re able to buy less BUT the value of your overall portfolio is higher.

[EJ] As an example, let’s use a shorter time frame. Let’s say on January 1, you bought 100 dollars worth of token X at 10 dollars per token – that means you bought 10 tokens. Then on February 1, the prices dropped to just $5 per token – you still buy 100 dollars so you buy 20 tokens. Then on March 3, the prices increased to 20 dollars per share – you still buy 100 dollars so now you have 5 tokens. Over that period, you have 35 tokens for 300 dollars.

In Investing in Cryptocurrencies, we use Binance.
[GINGER] Now imagine if you spent all that 300 dollars in only one buy and not in regular intervals. If you spent 300 dollars on January, when tokens were at 10 dollars per token, you would have had 30 tokens for 300 dollars. With Dollar Cost Averaging you have 35 tokens so dollar cost averaging wins. If you spent 300 dollars on February, when tokens were at 5 dollars per token, you would have had 60 tokens. In this case, investing all 300 dollars would’ve been better. Now, let’s say you spent 300 dollars on March, you would’ve had 15 tokens only. So in that case, dollar cost averaging wins because you have 35 tokens. So yes, you don’t get the highest return BUT you are also not a victim of the lowest loss as well. If you are a person who’s really good at technical analysis and really knows the instrument, you can probably find a time like that February. But if you’re like us and this is not your full time job, you remove a lot of the risk by doing Dollar Cost Averaging.

[EJ] Next, do your own research and read about the token that you’re investing in. Invest in tokens whose intent and purpose resonates with you. The cryptocurrencies will often have a website where they post their whitepaper. Read this and see if you believe in what they stand for and what their plans are. An example of this is we invested heavily on an NFT game called Axie Infinity. We did this, because (one) as gamers, we enjoy playing games, (two) we’ve seen that their team has so far consistently delivered on their promises and (three) regardless if their tokens, SLPs or AXS’ or RON’s prices go up or down, we’d probably still play the game. This tells us that they’re plan is not to turn a quick buck but they’re also looking at it long term, like we do.

[GINGER] Next, DIVERSIFY. Diversification is basically spreading or splitting your investments across different vehicles so that your exposure to any one type of asset is limited. This will help reduce the volatility of your portfolio over time. If most of your money is in crypto, consider also investing in non-Crypto assets. If you’re 100% Crypto, then at least invest in different coins and tokens. Personally, we have different investments spread across VULs, mutual funds, index funds, stocks, and crypto.

[EJ] One important thing to always remember is to have a plan and stick to it regardless of whether the market goes up or down. FOMO is real and when you watch all the crypto bloggers saying buy this coin and that token and that NFT, it’s easy to get swept by the hype and put in 100% of your budget on what they say. This is all speculation though and no amount of well done editing can make up for a loss that you’ll just have to bite.  For crypto, our plan is to invest 90% of our crypto investment budget on the coins and tokens that we believe in, and 10% on new projects that we want to speculate in. So far it has worked for us, there have been some bad calls but since we just invested 10%, they haven’t been that painful.

[GINGER] In a nutshell, how to survive a volatile crypto market is to have a plan, stick to the plan and don’t get too emotional, continue to research and study, diversify and, if you’re like us and this is not a full time thing for you, think more long term.

If you like this video, please hit that like button, share, subscribe and click on that notification bell for more videos like these. 

P.S. The main platform that we use for investing in cryptocurrencies is Binance. If you want to try out Binance, sign up here. To read more about Binance, check out this post.

How to Buy Crypto Currencies 101 on Binance

Our Family Goals for 2022

Recently, I thought about updating my bucket list. A lot of things have changed since I’ve made that list. I’ll probably find time this weekend to update that. But as for our family goals for 2022, we have written it down and cast it in stone (maybe not really cast it in stone! LOL!).

But for those who are curious of what our plans are, here is the Youtube video. Hope you can share it also as we’re targeting to get around 50,000 subscribers this year. 🙂

Here’s the transcript, too, of our video:

[GINGER]: Hi Everyone! We know it’s February already and we’re a bit late in sharing this with you, but we’d still love to share how we plan for the year with you, especially for couples who are watching this.

But before that, for those who are new to this channel, I’m Ginger [and I’m EJ] and we’re content creators and startup business owners who love sharing our experiences on personal finance, investing, business and parenthood.

[EJ]: For today’s vlog, we wanted to share with you what our plans are as a couple. In our previous video, I shared that we, as a couple, go through a family planning session. For those planning sessions, we use this template that we have been using since 2017.

In this template, we first state the Vision and the Mission of our Family. For Team Arbo, our vision is to have passive income of at least Php 250,000 and have ZERO debt. For our Mission, our family’s mission is to be a family that helps people grow and achieve their goals in life – be it through creating content like this or running startups with the same goal.

[GINGER]: Our Vision & Mission hardly ever change. We also keep our Vision/Mission in our template so that we’re always reminded about our purpose as a family. Knowing that is vital in helping us make decisions together or by ourselves – as long as we’re going after the same thing, then we can trust each other to act towards that.

Okay… now, for our Life Goals, we divided these into 7 main categories…

Our Goals for our Daughters

Spiritual Goals

Financial Goals

Fitness and Health Goals

Professional Goals

Mental Goals

Work/Company Goals

We’ll go through each of these categories in a little detail. Do note that sometimes some of these goals have a financial aspect to it and that’s okay – this structure makes sense for us because we want to connect those financial goals to a particular section of our life. Don’t worry It’ll make more sense when we go through them.

[EJ]: First, our goals for our daughters. From a financial POV, our goals for them are (1) to save up for their tuition fee and (2), and this is a bit more long term, to save up for their college education. Zeeka’s Tuition fee is one of our sinking funds. For those who missed out on what sinking funds are, we explained what those are a bit more in our previous video (point to corner), but basically, sinking funds are funds where you set aside a little each month in preparation for a big payment later on. For their college fund, we place it in an investment policy that we have with Sunlife.

This is an example of what Ginger said a while ago about a financial goal that’s under a non financial category. These financial goals serve a purpose and that is for our daughters to grow up to be happy, well-adjusted, emotionally & financially independent adults

[GINGER]: For our Spiritual Goals, we make it a point to pray every evening. When we pray, we focus on thanking God for the blessings that we’ve received, thus adding to an abundance mindset. We’d love for our daughters to have a grateful heart and look at life as a glass half full and not half empty. Aside from that, this year we’d love to get our baby baptized and for Zeeka to finally get her first holy communion & first confession.

[EJ]: For our Financial Goals, we broke this down into 4 subgoals. First Financial goal: to always keep Ginger’s credit card bill at ZERO. Ginger actually had Php 700,000 in credit card debt last 2019 and she was able to get it down to zero in 2020. How did she do it, you ask? We’ll discuss it in another video. 

Second Financial goal: For my credit card bill, I actually have an outstanding debt of Php 600,000 and our plan to zero it out by December 2023. This is also one of the sinking funds that we have where we set aside 30,000 pesos per month so that we get to finally get rid of that.

Third Financial Goal: The other sinking fund under Financial Goals is for our emergency funds. We actually have emergency funds, but we used it for some emergencies the past few months. So this year, we’ll start building our emergency fund again and for that, we’ll be setting aside Php 10,000 every month. Our goal is to have enough set aside to cover expenses for at least 6 months.

And our last Financial goal  is to learn technical analysis for crypto and stock market trading. We would really love to learn more about analyzing charts so that we can make more informed decisions in our investments. EJ knows a bit about fundamental investing but with crypto, we both think that technical analysis is probably more useful.

[GINGER]: Now for our Fitness and Health Goals, we have one sinking fund under this category. This is the sinking fund for Health Insurance. Our health insurance costs Php 183,000 for the four of us for the entire year and this is from Pacific Cross. Most of it is actually for me and EJ, around Php 140,000. We are thinking if the kids need one since they already have an HMO from our corporate HMO. Well, we’ll see if we still need it by the end of the year.

The other goals are going to the dentist at least once this year, work out at least 3 times a week, for me (or probably even EJ) to follow a plant based diet again this year, not to sleep past 11 pm and to finally have an executive check up schedule (if cases of COVID goes down).

[EJ]: Now for our Professional Goals, we really want to be more active this year on Youtube and TikTok. In this channel, Ginger Arboleda or GTV, we have 6000+ subscribers and our goal is to increase that to 50,000. We know that this is quite a feat and will be very challenging, but we have lots of interesting things to share. We hope that you continue to support this channel by liking this video, sharing it and subscribing to it. This will really help a lot with Youtube’s algorithm so that we get recommended to like minded people who may need the little push that we give.

So we plan to make 50 or more videos this year on both YouTube and TikTok.

GINGER: And last, Mental Goals: I plan to attend one webinar every quarter. It doesn’t matter what topic. Aside from that we both plan to read at least 2 books every quarter – doesn’t have to be textbooks, could be fiction, but read at least 2 books.

So that’s it for our 2022 goals. Remember that it’s not too late to come up and write down your goals for 2022. It doesn’t matter if it’s February. We hope you are as excited to make this year a great year! Share with us your top three goals in the comment section and let’s be accountability partners!

How to Manage Finances As a Couple

We recently shared this video on how we, Team Arbo, manage our Finances as a couple.

Sharing the transcript of the video:

Hi everyone! I’m Ginger and I’m the vlogger behind this channel. Today, I pulled in my husband to help me answer a question that I’ve always been asked: how do we handle our finances as a couple? 

Just to put things into perspective, we have been married for 12 years, we both just turned 41, and we have two young daughters, both under 10 years old. One is actually still a baby. We also both founded a tech startup business with 2 other people. We were not born rich and what we have now all came from working in the corporate world, from running a business, and also from a LOT of side hustles. We’re a middle income family trying to make everything work so that we can enjoy retirement later on.

So let’s get to it: how DO we handle our finances as a couple?

QUESTION #1: So what’s our money system?

Ginger: We have 2 joint accounts: one passbook and another with an atm card. The passbook one we use for our savings and the inconvenience of moving money out of that account is a feature. The atm card is more for our “operating expenses.” I also have 1 checking account for my business. We also have 1 “in trust account” for our eldest daughter. I have 2 non-joint accounts in Unionbank (an EON Cyber account) and an ING account. EJ also has the same with ING and Unionbank.

So moving on to our system, I guess we should share our different sources of income.

So we both have our salary from our business which individually goes to our UnionBank accounts. Then I have my earnings from blogging and from her events business. EJ also has some speaking engagements and consulting gigs that he earns from, those go to his personal account as well. For everything that we earn or spend, we log everything into a shared google sheets that we turned into a Google Form. We used to have apps where we track income and expenses, but ended up using Google forms since the pandemic started because the flexibility of a spreadsheet is just unmatched.

EJ: So when it comes to expenses, Ginger and I have assigned expense items. This setup just works for us. As for savings and investment, we have what we call sinking funds for these. A sinking fund is basically a way of setting aside a little bit of money each month for bigger expenses or balloon payments later. In our case, we use it for big expenses like our daughter’s tuition fee – it’s due twice a year so we set aside a certain amount every month so when the due date comes, we have the cash. We also do it visually, with simple boxes which we color each month so it’s encouraging and empowering to see that we’re building up funds slowly for that.

QUESTION #2: Do we fight about finances? 

EJ: I don’t recall any time when we fought about money. Not to say that we don’t worry about it though – instead what happens is that, somehow, we’ve never worried about finances at the same time. Usually one of us gets stressed and the non-stressed person tries to pacify the worried person. And then other times, that role reverses.

Ginger: We are always transparent though and we always talk to each other about our finances. We share not only our concerns or worries but we also share new things that we have discovered like investment strategies, or new ways of handling money. We’re both open to learning new things when it comes to handling our finances.

EJ: I have to say that before getting married, we did talk about money and how we both view finances. Like if Ginger starts bringing in more money than me, how will that impact our relationship? (hint: it doesn’t) Big questions like that. We made sure to talk about these things as part of this pre-wedding Discovery Weekend that we attended. If you’re getting married – we highly recommend attending that.

QUESTION #3: What are your investments?

Ginger: As of December 2022: 70% of our investments are in mutual funds and VULs (Variable universal life insurance), 14.70% are in Stocks, and 6.30% are in Cryptocurrencies and NFTs. We set aside money for investment after we‘ve placed money into our sinking funds.

QUESTION #4: Advice that you can give other couples?

EJ: You should be aligned on how you both view money. What is money to you? How important is it to your relationship? When you’re all out, are you willing to get from family? How do you both think about that? Big questions like that. If there are any other couples out there what other big money question should you both answer? Share those questions in the comments!

On a more regular basis, Ginger and I also have family planning sessions every year to align what our financial priorities are for the year. That way, we’re on the same page on our goals and if there are any new realizations, we also share them with each other so we help each other get better as well when it comes to handling money.

Ginger: Know your partner intimately when it comes to handling money. As you’ve noticed, we are in sync when it comes to planning but we both maintain our own separate accounts. We found that this kind of system works for us since we both know that each one is responsible when it comes to handling our own money. You have to be open to talking to your partner about your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to handling money.

That’s it for today. We hope that this has helped couples who are watching this in managing their own money. We actually enjoyed recording this episode, so we hope you enjoyed watching it! We’ll be doing some more of these kinds of topics that can help couples with their journey to financial freedom.

If you would like more videos like this one, please hit like, share and click on the notification bell to be notified when we release another video like this. Feel free to let us know in the comment section what other topics you’d want us to talk about!

5 Safe Home Remedies For Coughs and Colds

This new year is anticipated by many wishing for a safer, healthier, and more fruitful year for themselves and their loved ones. However, as the year began, COVID-19 symptoms swept the country and infected households one by one. Many isolated themselves and relied on medication and home remedies to curb their symptoms and speed their recovery.

With COVID-19 and its new variants still present, it is crucial to keep our households clean and sanitized to reduce the growth and spread of all sorts of disease-causing viruses. And if we have loved ones who are recovering from symptoms, here are five safe home remedies that may help them cure their colds and coughs faster:

Honey

Honey isn’t just great as an affordable substitute for sugar for those on a diet or who need to regulate their sugar levels. It adds flavor to hot teas and fruit juices while also helping suppress coughs in both adults and children. In a study quoted by Mayo Clinic, children aged 1 to 5 with infections in their upper respiratory tracts were given two teaspoons of honey before bedtime. The children had reduced coughing and improved sleep after days of taking honey.

Another study found that honey is as effective as dextromethorphan, an ingredient of many common cough suppressants. From a house for rent in Pasay, there are several grocery stores and convenience stores where families can easily purchase honey and add it to their home remedies.

Mint

The chilly and refreshing flavor of mint is perfect for any hot, sunny day. Menthol and peppermint extracts are excellent for decongesting stuffy noses and soothing sore throats. That said, drinking mint tea and adding a few drops of peppermint oil to water to make vapor steam are two effective ways to use mint as a remedy for coughs and colds.

The healing properties of mint, menthol, and peppermint also help people function better during the day. Think of this home remedy similar to the decongesting of Metro Manila traffic through the building of the Mega Manila Subway. According to the latest Lamudi trend report, this project will cut travel time from Quezon City to Taguig from 1.5 hours to a mere 30 minutes. With traffic jams reduced, future residents of a house for rent in Cubao or a townhouse for sale in Makati may access different shops that sell mint.

Chicken Soup

Chicken soup is a perfect comfort dish during colder seasons. Besides being delicious and hearty, chicken soup is a staple home remedy for colds and coughs. You can try different recipes to create the best chicken soup to help you cure faster. Add thyme, ginger, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, and rosemary to your soup. You can also experiment with different herb and vegetable combinations for more nutrients and exciting flavors.

Chicken soup is a light meal that nourishes you. You’ll feel full and hydrated while soothing your sore throat and decongesting your nasal passages.

Pears

In Chinese medicine, pears are hailed as a natural remedy for coughs. In addition, pears have properties such as clearing phlegm from the respiratory tract and moistening the throat and nasal passage. 

A traditional method of using pears as a home remedy is turning them into a paste and mixing it with teas and soups. You can add honey and lemon for your natural cough and cold medication for more flavor and nutrients.

Salt with Water

Saltwater is an excellent home remedy for soothing canker sores (singaw) and sore throats. Simply mix ¼ to ½ tablespoons of salt in a glass of warm water. Gargle the salt water mixture to alleviate a scratchy throat. Gargling salt water is also shown to reduce symptoms of the common cold and the growth of infections that may lead to coughs and flu.

These five remedies are just some of the most affordable and accessible ingredients helpful in relieving symptoms and preventing them from getting worse. Check your kitchen for these items and maximize their healing properties to cure your coughs and colds while staying safe at home.

SOURCES:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common-cold/in-depth/cold-remedies/art-20046403

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/12-tips-prevent-colds-flu-1

https://www.everydayhealth.com/cold-and-flu-pictures/home-remedies-for-cough-1028.aspx

https://www.healthline.com/health/allergies/best-natural-cough-remedies

Pear Soup for Lung Health

One Word for 2022

I’m finally posting my one word for 2022 article! I usually post my one word article on the first week of January, but this year made it seem impossible to be productive during this first week. I’ve been reading a lot of posts of family, friends and random people sharing that either they have COVID or people that they know have COVID. In our case, our house helper went on vacation and was supposed to come back this second week of January. During her quarantine period though (we asked her to isolate herself first in a different place), she found out she had COVID.

Zeeka also had fever last Friday, which led us to think if she may have contacted the virus during one of our get – togethers with family. She’s better today so we’re 80% sure that it’s probably not COVID. Although, we will still have her tested this Wednesday (that’s the earliest schedule we could get) for us to know if we still need to continue isolating her and daddy from me and the baby.

So about my one word for 2022, I was thinking long and hard of what that word may be for this year. This first week of January might have inspired me to choose this word.

My one word for 2022 is tenacity.

To tell you honestly, I really felt like a slacker in 2021. 2020 was all go-go-go and rah-rah-rah for me. Last year was a bit of a challenge.

Yes, I could blame the fact that for the first quarter of last year, I was so nauseous because of the pregnancy that I could hardly do anything. I could also blame the fact that during the last trimester, I was having a hard time moving because of the weight. BUT, I now that I could have done better. I know that I was excusing myself from achieving things because I was pregnant. My husband would definitely argue though and say that “making a human inside my belly” is a great thing! 🙂

But this 2022 though, I am bent on making things happen. Tenacity is the quality of being very determined and I am that now. It’s also the fact of continuing to exist. I really want to make my presence felt this year though the work that I do.

I am so excited for the things that I have planned for 2022 for my work in Taxumo, for my relationship with my kids and husband, for Manila Workshops and for my career as a content creator.

I know that 2022 will be a great year even if we had a rocky start!

How about you? What is your one word for 2022?

Check out my past one words… (I started writing my one word yearly since 2015)

One Word for 2021: RESET
My One Word for 2020 – Commit!