Sending all your money home? Expensive. Saving some for yourself? Priceless.

I have simple needs, and I've never paid too much attention to money, unless I was thinking of spending it. Until today.

One of my part-time jobs is coordinating activities for foreign live-in caregivers (LICs) and temporary foreign workers (TFWs) for a non-profit organization. I help plan educational workshops, organize sports competitions, fundraising and other group events, all of these tailored to arm the workers with tools to adjust seamlessly to their new environment. These activities also help provide newcomers with a sense of belonging to a community, a sort of family away from their families.

Getting twenty or more foreign live-in caregivers in one room for two hours on a Saturday, however, is not an easy job.  These men and women are the hardest-working people I know, and most of them are out on weekends, working part time to make extra money to send home to their families. Money to educate their kids, pay their rents or mortgages, or support aging parents. Sometimes they get so caught up in making money because the need is too great, that two things get neglected: their health and their own financial future. Many of these workers have no savings nor insurance, the importance of which only gets noted when the ability to work and earn money fails.

I know because I've seen it happening and I've been part of the community that helped raise funds for a few unfortunate members of this group, those who might have suffered a severe or fatal illness, and those who passed away. With no money for expenses or repatriation of their remains, it becomes the community's job to help finance their hospitalization or repatriation.

In response to these circumstances, I organize workshops that encourage them to put away some earnings for such a rainy day, or buy insurance to fall back on in cases of illness or death. Morbid but practical.

My boss, the president of the non-profit group that I work for, is very passionate about getting LICs and TFWs to upgrade their skills and become financially independent. He believes that financial security is the number one reason why everybody comes to Canada. To help make things easier for some of these people, my group worked with a school to get our members discounted tuition fees, and with a bank to get them low-interest caregiver education loans. We invited representatives from both the school and the bank to give talks and answer everyone’s questions about how these deals work. The first batch of our students graduated last August. A new batch are in the process of enrolling.

The school director called me recently to say that out of twelve enrolees, six had pulled out. They told her they’d changed their minds. We needed twelve students to proceed with the weekend curriculum that the school had specially set up for them.

A few days ago, the bank officer in-charge of releasing caregiver loans took me aside and told me in a grim and urgent tone: “We need to have one of those financial literacy workshops really soon. We have to get the newcomers as early as we can, before they can develop some bad spending habits.”

Apparently, he had declined the application of five of the caregivers we sent him for educational loans. The applicants whose names he kept confidential, already have incurred too much debt, even before they've become landed immigrants. Now I know why they cancelled their enrolment.

O the perils and pitfalls of easy credit. The intense attraction of acquiring material things. The joys of shopping for what my boss calls ‘anik-aniks’ (shiny, expensive, but ultimately useless items). And the guilt that comes from denying your relatives back home what they ask for, when you yourself live in a country of plenty. Those are the hurdles one has to get over, to achieve financial security in a new country.

First and foremost, my banker wants to address the danger of credit cards and bad borrowing habits, because he understands how easy it is to get mired in debt if one isn't careful.

“Letting them hear how credit cards really work will make them think twice before acquiring one,” says my banker friend. I totally agree with him. I’m already planning that financial literacy workshop as we speak.

My own advice: put away a small portion of your money regularly, in a place where you can’t easily touch it. Also, avoid credit cards like the plague. Take it from me. I once had two credit cards, so I know what I’m talking about. 

(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, September 2013)

The Holy Week: Sunny with a chance of Easter Eggs

The Lenten season is upon us, and Christians all over the world are celebrating the life of Christ; how He lived and died to save humanity from the eternal fires of hell. How the Easter Bunny and the Easter eggs got into this picture is beyond me, but I won’t question the wisdom of western traditions.

Rather I’ll take you back to the days of my childhood in rural Philippines, when my parents and others of their generation celebrated the Holy Week just as differently, and perhaps as weirdly, as hunting for coloured eggs on Easter Sunday morning. Not for my village folks, though, was the unbridled physical display of piety seen in other Philippine towns: no self-flagellation, no wearing the crown of thorns, and most of all, no nailing of anybody to a wooden cross.

My village's Holy Week officially started on Palm Sunday, when people carrying intricately woven palm fronds go to church to commemorate Christ’s entry into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.

The real action began on Holy Thursday. One of the well-off families in the village would host a reading of The Passion of Christ, and invite all the usual suspects, regular passion readers who did this sort of thing every year. My father was one of them. These readers would sing, not read, every stanza in the Book, using a well-established tune. One reader after another, man after woman, stanza by stanza, until they reached the very last line. Then back again at the beginning. This went on until the morning, or perhaps even up to 3:00 in the afternoon of Good Friday. When a group of singers took a break, another group would pick up the tune. A huge dinner of meat stew and rice, along with an endless amount of brewed ginger tea would be served. A regular infusion of ginger tea kept the singers going. Neighbours and relatives dropped in regularly to listen and partake of the food.

In those days, life at my village came to a standstill at the stroke of 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday. No more singing, no bathing, and no physical work. No going to church. Just praying at home, sometimes with lighted candles. Jesus was dead and we were showing respect.

Activities get re-started early in the morning of Sabado de Gloria --- the Saturday of Ascension. Jesus had gone up to heaven to join the Father, and we were free to do as we wished. Mother would sweep the yard early. Being a tiny kid, I got picked up by my ears by various adults, then hoisted up to the heavens a few times first thing in the morning. I was told this would help me grow taller. I’ve often thought about reminding my big brothers that not only did they fail to make me taller, I could also have lost an ear and it would have been their fault.

After breakfast, my mother would cook sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, which were then eaten with sweet coconut syrup. Those cakes made the Holy Week worth waiting for.

Easter Sunday was the day of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: The more pious villagers would hire a jeepney to go to church in the city to celebrate Jesus’ return to life. A lavish, church-organized ceremony took place at 4:00 in the morning every Easter Sunday in our city. The event featured two processions starting out from two different parts of the town. One was headed by the statue of the Virgin Mary on a float, her face covered in a dark veil. The other was headed by the statue of Jesus Christ in another float. The two processions met at a thoroughfare, under a structure where an angel lay in wait to snatch away the Virgin Mary’s veil to signify the joy coming back to her life. The two processions then merged and headed back to church where a mass would be held to celebrate the Resurrection.

My mother never went to church on those occasions, and I loved the extra time I got to snuggle with her. By Monday, the passion books were all put away and everything was back to normal.

After my parents and their contemporaries have all passed away, passion singing went out of fashion in my village. Now all I have are childhood the memories. Back here in Vancouver, the Easter eggs are calling my name.

(previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, March 15, 2013 issue)