When I was a girl, my mom constantly lectured me about spending less and saving more. I waved it off then and added to cart bits and bobs that would only catch dust in my room. But she wasn’t nagging, I now realise in my mid-twenties. She was preparing me to be a financially stable adult with a secure future.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no finance whiz who cracked the code to profitable property investments. I’m not even good at math. What I am, though, is my mother’s daughter. Her life, a study of prudent financial decisions and savvy investments, became a compass that led me to invest in a condo at 23.
1. Live within your means
As a family who migrated to the most expensive city in the world, living within our means was less of a recommended lifestyle than a means for survival. Every cent Mom and Dad made went to school fees, which were sky high for foreign students (and there were three of us kids), rent (also sky high), food, and transportation. Nothing was spent on what wasn’t absolutely necessary, and they didn’t borrow money just to achieve a glamorous lifestyle.
2. Spend on what you need, not what you want
Mom never spent on non-essential things, though she might have loved to. She cut her own hair and gave herself a mani-padi instead of spending hundreds at the salon. Apart from the rare trip back home, which was always for settling important paperwork, she didn’t go on a holiday (even though she deserved it the most). Neither did the family, for that matter. We only started travelling when I, the youngest, graduated from university and Mom and Dad no longer had to bankroll our tuition.
3. Track your spending
The “close one eye” method doesn’t work for long-term financial planning. Keep both eyes peeled to where your money goes. Setting a budget on your digital bank apps is a good way to get alerted to all outgoing (and incoming) funds.
4. There’s no shame in secondhand
Mom rarely bought new clothes, but if she did they were thrifted. She never ventured into Crate and Barrel to make our home look boho chic or spent hundreds on silverware that would inevitably get cracked with all the people we had over. Our sofas and dining sets were often gifted to us by friends who no longer wanted them because they didn’t match their new interior design.
5. Regularly review financial goals
At the start of every new year, Mom would sit the whole family down to talk about goals. Each person had to share what they wanted to achieve in the next 12 months so everyone could find ways to help each other. Though knowing how OCD she was, it was likely a way for her to keep tabs on everyone’s lives and ensure we, as a family but also us siblings, were heading somewhere in life.
While financial and career goals were essential to the annual plan, she also encouraged us to identify how we could improve our health and even our relationships.
When the year ended, we would regroup and update each other on the status of our goals, what we’ve achieved, what we’re still working on, and what we look forward to in the following year.
6. Generosity is priceless
You reap what you sow. Though Mom never said this to me verbatim, I learned it through watching her live generously. She would send funds to her family back home, often for the upkeep of their childhood home in Manila, her brother’s medication, and even for the things she wasn’t required to help out with. But her generosity went beyond finances; she often hosted friends over to provide a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on.
Mom was generous not to receive anything in return, but that’s what often happens when your generosity is genuine. My family and I are recipients of Ohmyhome’s generosity. When Mom underwent chemotherapy and radiation, the Ohmyhome team (in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore) banded together to raise funds for her, which eventually exceeded our target.
7. Investing isn’t just for the wealthy
Mom was not rich, but she consistently made the right decisions when it came to managing her money that built a solid foundation for financial stability, which allowed her to invest in properties. As she always said, “You don’t need to be rich. You need to invest to be rich.” She purchased a condo for me and my brothers in our names through which we’re earning passive income, and while she’s no longer here to see it, her legacy lives on in me as I continue what she started, taking the plunge to invest in a condo on my own with the help of Ohmyhome.
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