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 Final Journey Home

When Ramon Cutillas was hit and killed by a pick-up truck while cycling along a street in Edmonton, the event spawned some problems for his community and for his family back in the Philippines.

Cutillas left his wife and four children in the Philippines some three years ago to work in Edmonton under Canada’s temporary workers’ program. He was jobless when he died, and didn’t have any savings nor unemployment insurance. The family couldn’t afford the expense to have his body shipped home, and were seeking financial help from the Filipino community in Edmonton.

According to Edmonton’s Serenity Funeral Homes, the process of getting a death certificate and obtaining documentation from the Philippine Consulate in Vancouver, plus preparing the body for shipping, to finally loading it on a plane to Manila usually cost between $8,000 and $9,000.

I have no doubt that the Filipino community will come through for Cutillas and his family, as they have always done in situations like this. They will not rest until enough money is raised and Cutillas’ remains is sent off to be reunited with his wife and kids back in the Philippines. These people understand a family’s emotional need for reunion and closure.

I can fully comprehend this need myself. Having been away from my three girls for many years, I would love to, at least, pass away in the Philippines, surrounded by them, and leave peacefully after saying my good-byes. Failing that, I’d try to make sure that my body is shipped home and buried in the family plot.

Wildly romantic, says a friend of mine, and totally unpractical. He added that in view of this, perhaps I should start saving. This friend doesn’t subscribe to the idea of spending thousands of dollars on shipping someone’s lifeless body to some country, when her survivors could otherwise make better use of that money.

Meanwhile in Vancouver, another close friend recently died of cancer. Everyone who knew this woman visited her in the hospital. When the time came for her to go, we were only grateful that her sufferings had finally come to an end. She was married but childless. Her husband had her remains cremated and ashes packed in a special container; he then obtained a special permit to carry the package in his backpack on board the plane for burial back in Iloilo, Philippines.

The total cost he paid for cremation and documentation: $775, GST included. Getting his wife interred back in the homeland: priceless.

This amazing disparity between the cost of shipping an embalmed body and a cremated one, however, raises some important questions in my mind. I’ve since asked myself: do I really want to spend $10,000 dollars to get my frozen dead self back to the Philippines to get buried, where I won’t be able to hug or talk to my kids anyway; or, send them an urn containing my ashes along with $9,000 in cold cash? Will it make any difference to me whether they mourn over my actual body or my powdered form?  I don't think so. I will be dead by then and probably couldn’t care less. The children, however, may beg to differ.

But speaking of Ramon Cutillas' case, wouldn’t the same amount of money be more useful to his family, the same family who has now lost its breadwinner? Another friend, a European, thinks so. And despite myself, I agree with him. But it’s not for my friend nor me to decide, right? The Cutillas family had spoken and they wanted their husband and father’s body back. They wanted him there so they could say goodbye properly, mourn his loss adequately, and bury him at the place they could visit every now and then. And talk to him, even with the knowledge that he would never again answer them back. The future can take care of itself.

Let’s be practical for a moment, though: how much would $9,000 Cdn be in Philippine pesos, based on the current rate of exchange? That’s about P400,000, give or take a few pesos. Enough to buy a small house in a rural area or start a small retail business. But in times of death and bereavement, it’s not something people think about.

A very Filipino thing. Even a cultural thing. Definitely an immigrant thing. Because if you’re a Filipino working or living overseas, and most of the members of your family are still based in the Philippines, wouldn’t you want to go back home to them when you die, to know that they will feel some form of closure, rather than an eternal sense of loss because they’ll never see your final resting place?

Lately, I’ve been thinking of this more and more. The best thing to do, isn't it, is to get one's affairs in order before death comes along? It would save one's family a lot of anguish and even guilt, because then they wouldn’t have to choose practicality over personal wishes, because you’ve made the choice for them.

(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, May 15, 2010 issue)