How Monopoly Taught Me To Use My Money Wisely

There's a lot you could learn by playing Monopoly, especially the electronic kind, the one that goes on your tablet.  You learn how to spend your money wisely.  You learn that you have enough money to buy realty and land properties, and later on you also learn when to go full force on building your houses and hotels while ensuring that you have enough money for whenever you land on your opponent's lands with his own homes and hotels, and pay fines for landing there.

Well, I could say I know that while I have a lot of money, not to use all of my money at one time.  The Wise Living helps us figure out a set of things that we should keep in mind when handling our money.

I myself need the basic few, which I'm determined to achieve by March 2014:

1. My bank account should have at least 3-6 months worth of expenses as my savings. 

• Truthfully, I forgot what this is for. But I'm looking it up, and I think this is what is considered your base savings.  It's like buffer expenses for when you're out of a job, or buffer expenses for the rainy days, or whenever you don't have any way of getting extra money.  Calculating my Monthly expenses, I have come up with these figures: 

  Expenses Fund	7th Payout	22nd Payout	TOTAL
  Projected Expenses	4860	6900	11760

  So those are my expenses every month.  I need 3-6 months of those in my bank account before I can start investing?? Good thing I'm planning to do this in March 2014!  Otherwise, it's not going to be much help if I start as early as now.  Well, according to the caculations, I'm supposed to have Php 35,280 worth of savings in my account if I'm going to compute three months worth of expenses to save.  But My Timeline tells me that I'm only going to be able to save Php 27,561.00 by March 2014.  That's not exactly close enough.  Need my mental math to help me out here!  I'm Php 7718.50 short of my expected savings! Jeez. Hmm.. Not too good? Plus, I didn't even factor in my daughter's occassional "Mommy I need this for school, Mommy I need that for school".  Just today, she kept asking for me for a red shirt and a Santa hat, something they'll be needing for school.  My goodness, child, seriously?  Oh well.  That's school for you, I guess you can't help it. 
2. A Separate Savings Account For Expenses and Savings 
• This calls for another post on my wall.  Not my Facebook wall, or Myspace wall, or whatever wall, but my ACTUAL BEDROOM Wall.  I've got reminders and Goals listed on my wall. So I need to also invest in my Bank.  This time I've chosen PS Bank.  Why? It's the only bank that would allow me to open a bank account with one form of Valid ID! LOL. I know, It's really lame!
  

  
  
  
  But I'm planning to work that out and set higher goals and hopefully bank with other banks. PNB? BDO? BDO reps can sometimes be jerks.  A really good friend of mine had a very bad encounter with BDO bank representatives.  The moment his bank account went under maintaining balance, they closed the account out.  That's not the root of the problem.  Actually it was a fiasco when he started his account at BDO, and he finally got what he wanted, and they were obliged to open his account for him.  But the moment the account went under maintaining balance, they dropped sh*t and closed his bank account out.  
  
  
  So I want the bank that I'm going to, to treat their customers with respect.  I know it was just a major run-in with personality.  But seriously? That's just a sad display of customer service, and I'm sure they wouldn't care about the single, low-earning people because hello, they've got other people opening dollar accounts, and they've made their name in the industry.  So much for us little people. 
  
  
  Point being, I don't want to invest my money in a bank that treats their customer badly.
3. Learn More Abount My Saving's Account's Yields and Returns
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• I have long determined that keeping my money in an ATM is a good way to save.  But sometimes, just like now, I dipped into my savings, and I still have things to spend. It's so frustrating sometimes that I have savings sitting in my ATM but it's so accessible.  So I think for expenditures, I can live with my Payroll account.
  
  
  My ATM Account - should be my UNTOUCHABLE LIFE OR DEATH savings account.  I need to Split this in two somehow, and to fund for any extra expenses, which I have determined recently I will be needing to set aside for, I need to set aside at least 10% of my bi-monthly salary.  The rest I can keep in savings.  This then puts a sort of dent in my investement scheme.  But's it's a good way to save, and not go out of budget, nonetheless.  To tell you the truth, I'm kind of having a difficult time thinking about it, and will need to allot some part of my time budgeting and budgeting and budgeting. But I need something solid so I don't keep using up my Savings account and going below balance and all that kind of stupid things. 
  
  
  My Payroll Account - is what I use for expenses.  So this, I set aside for usual expenses.  As a matter of fact, my 13th month pay should not have been a vehicle for most of my expenditures.  Just because I get a little extra money doesn't mean I can go a portion of it.  Why? Because it's not like I always get that kind of money! 

So I guess that's it for now.  My mind's running with all sorts of things I would like to do and ensure I finish.  So I'm going to get back to budgeting my expenses, and see what goes.