Mommy Ginger
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My Love for Personal Finance

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Since I posted that I’ve been buying and trading US Stocks via Gotrade, my friends and my daughter have been asking me about trading. Zeeka (my daughter) came up to me one night and asked me why I constantly check weird lines that go up and down on my phone. I said, “Honey, I’m checking the market”. Then she asked me what’s the “market”. So I gave her a simplified version of how purchasing stocks work, in a version where she put up a hotdog stand.

This led me to think about writing this article. Growing up, I wasn’t really exposed to how money works. I just knew that I needed to make lots of it, because that’s what people do. People around me were always saying they wanted more money, my parents were encouraging me to save, etc. And, having a lot meant I get to buy all of the toys, gadgets and clothes that I wanted.

I knew about savings and my parents taught me to save money in the bank under time deposits. But they never really taught me about index funds, bonds, stocks, mutual funds, etc. I was around 27 years old when I made my first personal purchase of an investment + insurance plan from one of the big insurance companies in the Philippines. Every month I would deposit a minimal into this plan (with no fail), and thankfully, today, I can use it for anything in the future, like my retirement or my kid’s education.

This started my love for personal finance. All of these seemed so interesting! I found friends who I got to learn from and who shared the same interest. Learning about growing money excites me. LOL! I know it’s a weird thing to say, but to me, it’s a game. It’s a game where you’re competing with a lot of different factors, testing out different moves and strategies.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t always fun. There was time when I found myself close to a million pesos in credit card debt. It may be small to a few people reading this, but I’ve never had debt that huge in my entire life. I managed to wipe off that debt in one year, and I’m super proud of this.

I don’t have dreams of becoming a billionaire. I’ve never been that kind of person. My dreams are more for my children (if you’re a parent, you’d understand this) and for the world. I really, honestly-to-goodness want to help in making this world a better place, and I chose my niche. My heart goes out to MSMEs and freelancers out there because I have been where you are at a certain point in time. I understand the struggle, the hustle, the pain and the triumphs that these people go through.

So in terms of personal finance, I’d like to share with you some of the things that I’ve done that has helped me grow my money and not stress about finances in the recent years:

Be Honest with yourself

If you’re in pain because you’re bleeding out money and talking about personal finance gets you down, face the problem and understand why you’re in this situation. What helped me a lot is tracking my inflows and outflows. If you are married or live with your parents or siblings, it’s best to have track household budget and expenses, too. My husband and I track our own expenses using a Google Form. Here is a template that you can use: TRACKER It’s easy to make a tracker like this. Just go to Google Drive then create a Google Form. Once you have created the form, share it with the person who you want to track the household budget with.

A huge part of our revenue goes to mortgage (but that’s a given). What I realized from doing this is that I spend a lot on food. LOL! So from knowing this behaviour, I’ve become more intentional about splurging on food. We only splurge when their’s a celebration and only try to order food when it’s the weekend.

Never compare your life with others

I love looking through Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Youtube and there are times when I honestly compare myself and what I have with others. It’s so tempting, right? When someone else has that new iPhone model, or a bigger house or when someone else has a stock portfolio of a $1,000,000, you can’t help but wish, when is it going to be my turn. But what I have learned is that our lives are different. Whenever I’m tempted to buy, I ask myself, will this be something that I really need in my life (channeling in Marie Kondo). Sure, a few thousands of pesos will definitely bring more comfort. But if you stress yourself out in the journey getting there, is it really worth it?

Rules I Follow when I invest Money

We all know that cash in a savings account is obviously safe, but that’s it. Nothing happens to your money, because interest is so small that you don’t really feel it grow. Plus, over time, money really depreciates in value. So the trick is really to place it in a vehicle that earns more than the yearly inflation rate at least. This is why I have learned to be more open to risks.

My first rule in investing is to know how much risk are your are willing to take. Don’t invest in something that you haven’t researched or read about. Also, don’t invest money in high risk vehicles because you can lose all of this in an instant.

My second rule is to diversify. We scattered our funds and have investments in PH and US stocks, mutual funds, high-yielding savings accounts and crypto.

And my last rule is to never invest in something that you don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be an expert on investing, but read up or watch videos online. There are a lot of resources online that will teach you about investment. Don’t get left behind, too, when it comes to knowing about what’s happening around you. There are a lot of fake and crazy news that you’ll eventually read — a lot of scams, too. So learn as much as you can, ask friends or people who have tried these investments out and practice caution (but not to the extent that you’d rather keep your money under the mattress).

I hope you liked my thoughts for today on personal finance. I am not a financial expert so these are really general tips and the things that I shared and will share with you are really based on my own experience. Having said that, for those who would love to learn about Crypto Trading, you can start by reading this article:

How to Buy Crypto Currencies on Binance

It’s about how to get started on Cryptocurrency trading using Binance. Binance is the main platform that I use.

Let me know if you have other topics (personal finance is so broad) that you want me to discuss, zoom in on, and talk about.I also talk about finance on my TikTok channel so you can follow me here: https://www.tiktok.com/@gingerarboledatv

‘Til next time! Happy investing!

Buy Foreign Stocks with Gotrade

As you all know, for the past month, I’ve been investing in Crypto currencies. I haven’t earned yet, to be honest (haha! I bought half of my coins when the market was high). But the past month, I’ve been learning a lot. Plus, this is such an exciting space. Anyway, I digress. What I wanted to share was that I started Stock Trading in the US Markets, too! We’ve been investing in local stocks for years now. Having listened to financial US vloggers made me curious about trading in DOW, S&P and NASDAQ. Yup, I’m easy to influence! With this, I checked out Gotrade.

I actually signed up for eToro and Gotrade, and decided to go with Gotrade first. The reason was because there were certain stocks like Tesla stocks that I wanted to purchase, but eToro had minimum lot sizes (you needed to invest $1000 to buy into Tesla). Since I just wanted to try trading in the US market first and not jump into it, I went ahead and used Gotrade. Gotrade allows you to invest with smaller amounts.

Signing up and Depositing into a Gotrade Account

When you sign up to Gotrade, you need to have a invitation code. I used my friend, Marvin’s code. For those reading this, you can use this code below.

Gotrade will give you free $5 if you go through the process — signing up, getting verified, depositing $10, and trading your first stock.

For depositing into Gotrade, you can choose instant deposit to Gotrade and transfer up to $1000 or you can use deposit to Gotrade for bigger amounts. For the former, you can use a Unionbank account (instantly deposited with a fee of Php 10) or a BPI account (instantly deposited with a fee of Php 12). For the former, you can use a Unionbank account (3 days to be deposited with a fee of Php 10) or a BPI account (3 days to be deposited with a fee of Php 12). The minimum amount that you can deposit for both options is around $1, so the equivalent of whatever the given exchange will be.

You can also deposit in USD via Swift transfers.

Trading in Gotrade

Just go to a particular stock that you want to purchase and click on trade. When the markets are closed in the US, you can’t trade. I don’t know if it’s just my account (since I only deposited $10 to try it out), but there is no day trading or setting limit orders in Gotrade. You buy the stocks at market rate, which may be to a disadvantage for more savvy investors. It’s simple enough though for those who are starting.

How Gotrade makes money

So to know how this platform earns, they’re very transparent. They actually enumerated these things in the app. I’ll share it with you here, too, just so you know.

These are their sources of revenue:

  • A small fee collected on the foreign exchange from your deposits
  • Interest income generated from cash
  • A premium paid subscription program (coming soon!)
  • Interchange fees on your debit card spends (coming soon!)

My purchases so far and my experience…

I appreciate the fact that the app is very simple to use. All of the features are presented in a way that’s very straightforward. I love the way the sign up process (onboarding process). I just started yesterday and deposited $10, so I will still explore the app further and let you know my thoughts on this.

I bought partial shares of AMC, Amazon and Tesla. Why? Just copied the vloggers that I watch really (so copy me at your own risk, too! haha!). For each stock though, I appreciate the fact that they have a very comprehensive page that shows the market stats for the stock, news about them, and the story behind the company. This is so that users can read up on the company who’s issuing the stock.

So for one day of trading, I grew the $15 ($10 from me and the $5 FREE from Gotrade) to $25.15. This is really because I got into AMC when it was $33+, and with one day of trading, it’s now at $62.55. So this is really not how quickly you earn (for full disclosure). There has been a lot of hype on AMC lately so treat this as an irregularity.

Going back to Gotrade, when you share your first few trades, you earn a dollar for each share. I think I earned a dollar back for the first 3 shares.

Withdrawals from Gotrade

You can enroll your bank account and they will deposit your money via SWIFT. Again, for full disclosure, I haven’t tried to withdraw yet. I’m holding on to the stocks, but once I get to a comfortable position, I will withdraw just to try it out and write about it.

So there you have it, peeps! I hope this article helps. I’ve been doing a lot of financial content on Tiktok, too, so please head on over to: gingerarboledatv on Tiktok (content in both Filipino/English).

Let me know if you have questions or tips for me regarding Gotrade in the comment section. I’d be happy to share it.

Again if you want to join GoTrade, here is my invitation code:

Happy investing!