Protecting Our Future and Our Family

People who are not learned of Financial Literacy often find themselves going in circles to making ends meet. Trapped in debt and instead of building their wealth, they mistakenly invest on unimportant things. Sadly, sometimes you have to learn things the hard way in order to find out what works and what does not. But like what an optimist would say, if you made 50 mistakes that means you found out 50 ways of how you should not do it.

So how does someone build wealth? We can't build wealth if we are not financially protected. It's like wearing your armor before going to battle. One accident can drain years of savings so in order to avoid that you must protect your wealth or savings with a buffer or protection --and that will be your armor. Here are the things we need in order to protect the welfare of our family in the future.

Eliminate Debts
One greatest common burden each one has is having Debts. Having debt is like walking or running with an open wound - it will keep draining your blood until you die of loosing blood. The only way to live longer is to heal your wounds or tend to them and make sure it will not open again. Examples are credit card debts, car loans, mortgages and other loans that has interest. It was suggested to priotitize the smallest debt and the one that has the greatest interest.

Multiply Source of Income

Increasing the number  of our source of income is the only way we can deal with our increasing responsibilities. So how do we do that? Well, there are ways like engaging on a business, having investments that grow or outperforms inflation rate. It is like making a copy of yourself that will work to gain more income. If you become successful in doing this, you can make unlimited copies of yourself to gain more income which will result streaming income.

Insurance
To protect the family, it is also best if you have an insurance. Insurance is a very good way of protecting our loved ones in case something happened to us (hope not). Why not? We insure our cars and even houses, why not ourselves to protect our family.

Emergency Fund

To protect family's wealth, another way to do it is to prepare an emergency fund. In case an emergency happens like a broken car, fire or you've been robbed or something then you have money to use. This will avoid you from using your family savings and also to protect your properties from being sold. One tip about this, don't put your money in banks - it will sleep there. In our case, we invest our money on mutual fund and SeedIn PH (This is just temporary, we have a project on our mind and it is still on the process). For families, in my opinion, in is best to save 1 month of salary for each member of the family so if you 4 in the family then you have to save 4 months salary. 

Health Care

Lastly, get a health care insurance. As an OFW, we take this opportunity to put some of our money to good use instead of getting a health care insurance since our employers provide us with one. Well, not all OFWs were blessed to have a health care insurance. Here in Saudi Arabia, it is required for an employer to give their employees one.

If you have all of the above, I believe you are ready to retire then. Of course, you could always settle to acquire more income source - it is not being greedy; it's just being prepared for the worst.

So that's it. I hope this has been helpful to you guys. If you like this article, please don't forget to like it in Facebook, share it to people who might need this advice. Comment and suggest if you have some other things that might help others as well. Thank you for your time. God bless.