Money Smarts to says Goodbye

One of my favorite bloggers has decided to say goodbye. Salve Duplito from Inquirer.Net’s Money Smarts just posted that she’s leaving the blog. I’m not yet sure if they’ll actually turn to blog offline or they’ll put a new editor in charge. Let me just take this opportunity to salute Salve for the posts written about practical finance management. If there is a value blog that we can really learn something from, it’s Money Smarts.

Here’s a direct quote of the article:

The best of MoneySmarts and saying goodbye
04/29/09
Posted under wala lang

And so, after 490-or-so articles over the course of roughly two years, I am saying goodbye to MoneySmarts.

It’s a bittersweet spot to be in. I feel like I am letting go of a child that I have nourished and nurtured for quite a while. Although I feel comforted that she will be in good hands and that we will continue to stay in touch, I will sorely miss the great conversations here (especially those hateful comments haha!).

Many are asking why. There’s a time to let go, you know? Moving on has a personal finance as well as an emotional cost. Yet even when the cost can be high, there is reason to raise our glasses and be grateful because much of the growing up that we do over the course of our lives has to do with how well we handle transitions.

In MoneySmarts, I’ve gained friends, earned trust and learned humility, advanced professionally, learned oodles of money tricks, discovered the high finance of parenting, and a lot more. More importantly, I had so much fun.

Yes, frugality and delaying gratification can sound like wet summer when you’re raring to get tanned, but you get to like doing them when you develop the proper frame of mind.

I also learned that it’s not all about the math. It’s more about the attitude, the ability to laugh when you make a financial mistake and to pick yourself up again and again. More valuable are the lessons on forgiving a loved one who has turned a money problem into disaster, or the need for creativity and in-the-moment involvement in teaching finance to a child or a teenager.

Solutions to the side stories are not found in the scores of articles and scholarly books on investing and money management that I have read and written, but are more valuable in the end. The math you can learn. The emotional maze tied to personal finance can take a lifetime to conquer.

How did I get here? Coming from a poor Bicolano family, a single-parent household, and eventually finding myself in UP Diliman to study Journalism on a budget that felt like a bungee jumper’s rope cut extremely short provided me with a rude awakening to the rough transitions that life sometimes brings. I praise God now for that rude awakening, though I questioned Him about it when I was younger.

Then I found myself working in a business newspaper and learned the trade of writing and reporting about business. In the late 90s, OFWs and their role in the economy were more or less ignored by the government and the media. I thought that pretty soon, they would be a force to reckon with, and they needed to learn about how to manage their money. I was no stranger to the financial problems their families got into despite the increased flow of cash; I was related to many OFWs and a witness to the sad stories. Unfortunately, financial services companies then wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole.

That’s how it all began—my writing about personal finance. It’s a service and an advocacy, and not really a job.

All these—my personal journey and the world out there–made me realize early on that life is hard. It’s not fair. But if you try to make the most of it, learning to laugh when you sometimes fail, you’ll be alright. What’s true with life is also true with personal finance.

So, goodbye. But I’m pretty sure we’ll “see” each other again. I’ll watch out for you, in the Internet, somewhere out there. Feel free to drop me a line anytime at lightdream (at) gmail (dot) com.

To those who weren’t able to read the blog through the years, don’t worry. In the goodbye post, there are links to what are considered the “best posts” of Money Smarts. All of them are good reads. If you think you need to learn more about how to handle your money, strongly suggest you head over there and do some reading.