Saving money is essential because somehow it gives us financial security and we do not know what expenses we might encounter in the future. Perhaps, we get sick, and we need money for hospitalization or when we need to save money for the education of our children or when we plan to venture into investments – there is a whole lot of reasons why keeping is critical to one’s financial security.
For Overseas Filipino Workers who left their homeland and worked overseas, saving money is a more significant undertaking. Working abroad is difficult – you get separated from your family, you have to adjust to a new culture, and of course, the standard of work overseas can be different and frequently daunting. OFWs, for sure, do not want to end their lives working abroad. They dream of coming home to their families and enjoy the benefit of their labours. But to get to that point, they must first learn how to save. So, here are some tips on how to save money as an OFW.
OFW Guide: How to Save Money While Working & Living Abroad
1. Save Money Before You Spend
For most Filipinos, the general attitude towards saving money is that we only get to keep what is left from our salary after having spent it on so many things we do not need. As soon as we get the paycheck, we feel the need to spend for things that we want instead of things that are necessary for our survival worse, we forget to save a portion of our income and we still even ask why money runs out so fast. A typical rule of thumb is once we receive our salary, 20% of that should immediately go to our savings. Fifty percent (50%) should go to our family, and the rest (30%) is for our personal needs and other matters. By practising this savings model, we can be sure enough that at least a fifth of our income is left unspent.
2. Needs vs Wants
It is easy to get enticed by things we see in the malls or on online shopping platforms. The drive to impulse buying can be difficult to suppress at times, perhaps because of the feeling of deprivation or the lack of opportunity to buy expensive and high quality stuffs before earning decently. However, OFWs should learn to distinguish between needs and wants. Needs are things that are necessary for survival while wants are those that we can live without. Frequently, the things that we wish to do not bring us assets but only liabilities.
3. Earn More to Save More
Saving money is important. No matter how small, as long as you consistently save money, there is no other way for your savings but to go up. However, if we want to save more money, it makes sense that we earn more money. Some OFWs do sidelines and part-time working opportunities as additional sources of income.
4. Investments
Some financial gurus say saving money is not an ideal attitude towards money. When you save money, what happens is that your payment is just sitting in the bank doing nothing. If you want to exponentiate your savings, it is a good idea to instead put them in secured but stable investment programs such as mutual funds, UITFs, or index funds. The good thing about investments is that they compound with interest, let alone the dividends that you can receive once the market goes on your favour.
There are many other ways to save money. The most important thing is that we do not wait for the perfect moment to do it. The earlier you start saving money, the sooner you will become financially secure as long as you apply the right strategies. For OFWs, working abroad can be an emotionally exhausting journey – nothing beats the hardship and sadness of being away from your family. But if we learn to save, we can cut down the time that we need to work abroad and be with our families again.