By Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   Have you heard of Elon Musk?  He’s a nerd who always dreamt of changing the world. And change the world he did.  (Much of the details on Elon that follow are from the Bloomberg Risk Takers documentary, Elon Musk Profiled.) For all intents and purposes, Elon is the real [...]

By Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   Two of the three major credit rating agencies in the world, S&P and Fitch have confirmed that indeed the Philippines is investment grade. It will be no surprise if the third one, Moody’s will soon follow suit. But shortly after, S&P warned the country of the possibility of economic [...]

Insular Life launches a new structured variable unit-linked insurance product which participates in the promising performance of Asia’s emerging companies– the small-capitalized companies (with market capital of USD300M to USD2B). Branded as I-Dollar Asian Gems, the product provides the opportunity to diversify your assets and to earn potentially higher returns for your dollars. Starting at [...]

By Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   Lately, I had been getting requests for the construction of comprehensive financial plans for 40 year olds.  The common reason they give me for wanting their own plan is that turning 40 years old made them realize that they were at the half-way mark of their lifetime and that [...]

Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   In the first part of this blog, I talked about how compounding can be had in stock investing, whether directly or indirectly, with or without interest or cash dividends.  I did promise to discuss how compounding can be had from pooled funds and stock trading. But I also promised to [...]

Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   People have often asked me how compounding works in stock investing. Before I answer this question, it would be best to first define what compounding means.   The very basic definition of compounding is to put together. It’s like playing with Lego, those colorful interlocking toy bricks that kids place [...]

Leading Filipino life insurance company, Insular Life, reported a consolidated net income of P3.2 billion in 2012, an 11 percent increase over the previous year’s income.  The company’s net income has consistently increased every year, securing its foothold among the top three most profitable companies in the entire insurance industry. In a statement released by [...]

By Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   I have been conducting personal finance education training since 2004 and so far it has been a bumpy ride. Employers tend to question spending on teaching their employees personal finance skills that are not directly related to their work.  Plus, many employers feel that giving a salary or wage [...]

By Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   When I was much, much younger, we would gather around in a circle and play a game that went like this:   Player 1: Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar? I think number 2 stole the cookie from the cookie jar. Player 2: Who me? Player 1: [...]

  By Efren Ll. Cruz, RFP   Last Wednesday, Fitch Ratings, one of the three ratings services (i.e. the other two are S&P and Moody’s) watching our country gave us a rating upgrade.  It was by no means an ordinary rating upgrade because the upgrade finally brought the country to investment grade. And it will [...]