mutual funds Archives - Mommy Ginger

Ginger Arboleda April 8, 2019

Understanding Mutual Funds and FAMI’s Smart Women Invest!

In celebration of Women’s Month last March, I took time off to go to First Metro Asset Management Inc.’s (FAMI) event called Smart Women Invest. I loved it that they had an event that encourages women to understand more about saving and investing.

With Rose Fausto from FQ Mom and Marcie Linao

As women, I think that understanding how investments work is important. This is not only for our own personal benefit, but to secure the future of our loved ones.

I remember the first time that I was exposed to investments. It was already late in my life. When I was 27 years old and working in a bank, I got my first exposure to investments and investment vehicles. Prior to that, my parents placed my savings in a time deposit account. Not to say that this was not important. It was, and I appreciated it. Looking back though, I should have taken bolder steps earlier to understand how money works and how I could have earned more if I had invested my money.

Today, I have 5 different policies and have tried multiple kinds of vehicles. I tried different kinds of investments because I wanted to choose the perfect one that fit each of my investment objectives. One of the investments that I have had since three years ago is a mutual fund under First Metro Asset Management Inc. or FAMI.

What is a Mutual Fund?

For those who want to know what a Mutual Fund is, a Mutual Fund is an investment vehicle made up of a pool of funds collected from many individual investors for the purpose of investing in securities such as stocks, bonds, money market instruments and similar assets.

Check out this video:

What is a Mutual Fund?

Why should you invest in Mutual Funds?

There are several reasons of why you’d want to invest and you can check it out here to see if it’s something that will fit your investment objective.

It is professionally managed. The investment decisions are based on extensive knowledge and research of market conditions and on the financial performance of individual companies and securities. You need not research on what’s happening in the market because it’s managed already by people who know what they are doing.
For Diversification. We all know that you should not place all your eggs in one basket. Since Mutual funds is basically a diversified portfolio already, it reduces the risk of losses from securities with gains in others.
Offers Liquidity. You can convert investments to cash anytime. I remember withdrawing from my mutual fund some years ago since I badly needed cash. Now, I’ve managed to pick it up once more by regularly putting in money into it again.
Safe investments. Mutual funds are regulated by the SEC or Securities and Exchange Commission under the Investment Company Act and its implementing rules and guidelines.
Shared information. FAMI shares information about the NAVPS or Net Asset Value Per Share every business day.
Its Tax Free. Income generated from mutual funds are exempted from capital gains tax as stipulated in the Republic Act No. 8424 Section 32(B)(7)(H).

Check and see if these features are aligned and will eventually help you with your investment goals.

For my own personal investment, I opened a Save and Learn Equity Fund. Here are some information about the fund that I have:

What I loved about this is that the minimum investment is at Php 5000 and I could add to it anytime. And the minimum additional investment is at Php 1000. The way I purchase units is via Bills Payment in the UnionBank Mobile App. This makes it more convenient for me to add funds (purchase units).

Here are the details of the other funds / products that they have.

I was also given the opportunity to open a First Metro Consumer Fund (see details above) when I attended the FAMI event. The fund is comprised of stocks capitalizing on a consumption theme, with high revenue exposure to key PH industries benefitting from the structure of the Philippine family’s consumption expenditures.

Check out the video of Rose Fausto, taken during FAMI’s Smart Women Invest Event:

Smart Women Invest

Let’s see how this fund performs.

If you have any questions about FAMI’s products and services, please feel free to visit https://fami.com.ph. You can also visit https://www.facebook.com/firstmetrofunds/

Ginger Arboleda December 22, 2016

5 Tips on Investing Money for your Child’s Future

It’s that time of that year again when people love to reminisce and plan. December is a month when everyone scrambles for a planner and tries to fill out their Starbucks, CBTL, Seattle’s Best Cards to get a planner that they can start writing on. In my case, I have two planners. I have one planner for my mommy duties and one planner for my work and business duties. As to why I have two, I have no clue, but it works for me. How your plan (or not plan for the next year) is really up to what feels comfortable for you. I can’t really tell you how you should plan, but I can share things that worked for me. This is also true with investing money for your child’s future.

The topic of investing money for your child’s future has been talked about several times. Oftentimes, I wonder why we always talk about it. I would think that with the plethora of articles out there about investing money, we would all be experts already. The reality though is that only a few really take investing to heart. The reason may be, because before we grow our money, we need to have enough money set aside as savings.

Honestly, I admitted to a few friends recently, that I am not good with handling money, so I need to have a system in place. I don’t splurge on things for myself, but I love buying other people things. I think it’s a way I show others that I care for them. The problem though is that I forget to keep track of my expenses, and before I know it, everything’s gone and I don’t know where it goes. So, since I know this about myself, I have developed a system a few years back that works for me. I hope that these tips work for you, too!

Step 1: Challenge yourself!

The picture on top is the vision board that I have for myself. At the lower left side is a chart of all my sources of income and my specific financial goal for each source. As I mentioned, I have a competitive nature and everything is a challenge to me. With this staring at my face every morning, I get challenged! I look for ways to achieve these goals and really make sure that I achieve these cash inflows! All of these initially goes to a savings account. Again, this kind of visualisation tools works for me, because I love hitting targets and even surpassing them!

Step 2: Determine your “investment goals or objectives”

I tie up every cash inflow / income source with one investment objective. For example, the funds that I earn from blogging is linked to my investment objective of building up funds for my daughter’s college education. The one for Manila Workshops is linked to my investment objective of having enough funds when we retire. So you get the idea, right? I have always believed that once everything is clear in your mind, all of your efforts (even unknowingly sometimes) tend to go to that direction.

Step 3: Choose an investment tool or vehicle

The word investing can be so daunting. It sounds so complicated and boring, but believe me when I say that it is actually fun and satisfying. For those who are first timers in investing, you need to know what kind of investor you are. This means knowing your investment objective, what your threshold for risk is (meaning at what point will it be okay for you to lose money — the greater the risk, the greater the income that you will get), how long do you plan on investing, etc.

As a mom, I usually just go with investing in mutual funds. To understand what mutual funds are, check out this video:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mutualfund.asp

I really don’t have time to monitor each and every fluctuation in the stock market, or even monitor what’s happening to different factors that can affect my investments, so I leave it to money managers to do that for me. There are different kinds of mutual funds, depending on what type of investor you are. To know what kind of fund you should get, just go to:

http://bit.ly/mginvests

This goes to the Philam Asset Management Inc. (PAMI)website. (I made it easier for you to remember the link).

The PAMI website will then show you the type of mutual fund that fits you. These are the available funds. What I like about investing in mutual funds is that you can open a fund with only a minimum investment of Php 5000! How cool is that? Also, you can put in a minimum of Php 1000 to buy units anytime you want.

Step 4: Investing Money is a Habit one should build.

I opened a mutual fund account for my daughter when she was born. That was 3 years ago. The lesson that I learned in investing money is not the amount (how big of an investment you make) that you invest but at the consistency of putting in funds into your account. This 2017, I plan to make my investments more regular. After making the investment, forget about it! In no time, you will see that your money has grown and you’ll have enough for your child’s future.

Step 5: Investing Money should be fun!

When it comes to earning, saving and growing your money, we always fear that we don’t have enough. For a time this year, I had this kind of mindset and every thing went wrong. Writing this article made me realize that I have got to get back to my previous mindset about handling and dealing with money. Piling up money for the future is fun; it shouldn’t be a burden. So to make it fun, everything should really be intentional in creating wealth.

Let’s make tons of money this 2017! More than that, let’s have fun earning, saving and investing it. Wishing everyone a prosperous new year! Happy planning.

Love lots,

Mommy Ginger

*P.S. Thank you Philam Asset Management Inc. for the information that you have shared!

Ginger Arboleda March 14, 2016

On Business and on Mutual Funds: Mutual Fund Awareness Week

Working has opened my eyes to a lot of things. I loved working, but the problem is, with working, there is a cap on what you can financially achieve for yourself and for your family. Earnings increase only when you get promoted or when you get bonuses. Working for a bank really helped me a lot in seeing the value and importance of saving and investing. We are lucky that there are different kinds of investment vehicles that we can use to grow our funds.

Business is something I want to earn from. Business is a form of investment, but it is an active investment. You need to put in time and effort in order to reap financial rewards. What I like about a business is that the more you put in these things, the higher the likelihood that you will achieve greater financial rewards and there is no ceiling on how much you can earn. I like it also because I know that as I grow older, I want something to keep me busy and something that would practice my brain (too much Grey’s Anatomy! haha!).

But I also use another kind of vehicle that I use for my investments. It’s called Mutual Funds. A mutual fund is an investment vehicle that makes you invest with other people (pool funds together) so that you can invest it on securities such as stocks, bonds, money market instruments and similar assets. What I like about Mutual Funds is that the minimum investment is normally just around Php 5000 and you can just add and add without having to worry about the funds. This is because mutual funds are operated by money managers, whose main responsibility is to manage the pooled funds to help us, investors, earn income from the funds that we put in.

Sounds interesting? 🙂 Lucky for you! You can learn more about Mutual Funds during this one day celebration of Mutual Funds Awareness Week (I didn’t even know this existed until recently!). You can attend the free sessions that will be put up by the Philippine Investment Funds Association or PIFA on April 9, 2016.