Planning for retirement (adulting is very hard)

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courtesy of philstar.com

courtesy of philstar.com

My conversation with my friend (see previous entry) prompted me to ponder about my immediate financial future (Will I get a raise after working my butt off for a year and six months? How should i ask for a raise? Shall i ask for a change in contract?). While I did so, I couldn’t help but think of (and act on) my financial future 30 or 40 years down the road.

My mother has scrimped and saved and was brutally frugal when we were still under her roof and she’s now reaping the rewards: she has more than enough money in the bank; a generous retirement package c/o GSIS; and she will be going on an Alaskan cruise, a European religious pilgrimage and a Canadian tour all within this year.

While I don’t plan to have a grand retirement like that, I suddenly felt that I should be saving more than 50% of income for retirement since the SSS is going bust in a decade, methinks, if they don’t mend their ways and be beaten to a pulp to shape up.

The benefit of being a business journalist is that you get to learn more about investing than an average Juan from the streets. So while I was writing about Lehman Brothers going belly up and the subsequent tanking of the markets in September 2008, my mind was whirling and began gathering up my courage. On the second day that PSE was on a tailspin after Lehman, I bought 3 stocks that (having previously bought a power/energy stock prior to Lehman) I knew I could hold for the long-term until my kids enter college (I was 28 years old then and didn’t have kids). So until today I hold those 4 stocks that I bought for dirt-cheap prices that I will never see in my lifetime again. When markets bleed, I buy. When they do a rights offer, I buy. I never sold any of them yet.

Prior to Lehman (around February 2008), I bought myself a traditional insurance policy. A few months after that, I placed a huge sum of money (for me at that time) in a mutual fund.

I terminated that traditional insurance policy last year and shifted to a VUL with several riders in it (I neglected to keep up with my traditional because life got in the way and my insurance agent left the country and was an orphan policy holder until last year). My mutual fund was still intact and in fact it earned well. I just regret that I wasn’t able to top up my investment for the past 8 years because again, life got in the way (high-octane job that made going to the bank for payments a little off-putting) and because my former agent left me high and dry. *Aww shucks for the lost time, I keep telling myself* I got my financial life in order last year and a few weeks ago I just transferred my mutual fund into another fund. Then topped up my investment after the market tanked. I’m hoping the market would tank again by March or by the third quarter (US Fed hiking rates) so I could place another tranche of my savings into that mutual fund.

Last month, I bought my nearly 5-year old twins insurance policies with investment riders that hopefully we could use for their college education (the direct stock investments are for their college funds as well). The other education policies being offered to me were expensive that I felt I would be stretching myself too thin if I was suckered into buying those so I searched for other insurance products that have good investment riders. I would pay for the policies for my kids annually while my own insurance policy is a quarterly thing so my monthly budgeting would be easier.

Aside from my mutual fund and insurance policies, I’ve been putting funds in another savings account that I don’t touch. That is my emergency fund. I want to have at least 6 months’ worth of expenses for my emergency fund, just for my peace of mind. I hope I don’t get to be unemployed that long.

I’m still not satisfied with my investments since I worry about inflation and future medical costs. I’m thinking of placing some savings in time deposits but—bahahahaha! As someone who covered Treasury auctions, I know it’s nearly impossible to make money out of these unless the Philippine government goes back to its bad habits and blows its finances and starts borrowing more than it can collect revenues. Of course I wouldn’t want that. But I can revisit this time deposit option since I don’t want inflation eating into my savings in my regular savings account. Inflation is a brutal animal but at this moment, with oil prices dropping and food inflation a slightly less-than-worrisome issue, I can put it off my mind in the next 6 months.

Or I can go for a UITF. The Landbank Growth UITF looks ok to me (40% fixed income, 60% stocks) but I have to check their performance vs other UITFs. After I meet my desired emergency fund ceiling, then I can go back to thinking about investing in a UITF.

I have two vehicles that are over 5 years old (one is 10 years old and another is 7 years old) but they’re running well and have a couple of more years in them. I don’t see any need to replace them in the near future. I am renting right now but I must think about buying a property outside Manila to be the forever home. How I would budget for that is still a mystery. Either I would have to change jobs again or be brutally frugal like what my mother was, sending us to school while paying for her forever house, which by the way, worked out well in the end.

Adulting is very hard.

Love the profession, not the company

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I have a friend who is so pissed with the raise the company gave him this year. He said: after all the suffering, this is all I get?!

I didn’t have any soothing words to offer him that time because I know exactly how he feels. I’ve also been in his position, giving so much more of myself to a company that didn’t appreciate me at all. It failed me a couple of times and my bosses were too blind to see it. Then they got pissed off with me for leaving.

So I told my friend, “You know, somebody told me that we could love our professions but not the company because it will never love us back. We’re just workers, a means for it to generate profits. So just do what is expected of you but there’s no point in giving too much of ourselves to something that wouldn’t give as much as we do.” And no one is indispensable.

Learned the lesson the hard way.

And oh, I told him, “I’ve also set my expectations much lower than yours.”

Hahahaha. Bitterness sometimes can get you somewhere.

THE AUDACITY OF FAITH

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Joshua had the audacity to tell the sun and the moon to stop. And they did. How dare he order the heavens around? But Joshua knew he could declare the impossible because God told him He’s got his back and said He already gave the enemies to his hands even before the battle has started. Own it. Declare it. As long as you know God has your back, you can make the impossible possible. (Joshua 10:8-14)

Mi Corazon No Entiende (A fiction)

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The raindrops kept tap-tapping on the rooftops outside my window, in a rhythmic pattern in sync with my heart—the heart that has been pounding with such force that i was afraid my veins would just burst.

After a few seconds this lump of muscle broke into a canter and it slowed down to a cadence an old man could follow.

Then it exploded and tore into a million pieces.

I wonder if I should pick them up from the floor. Should I try to put it back together? I stared at the ceiling above me. The fat raindrops outside morphed into a deafening downpour. The raindrops somehow found their way into my eyes and cascaded down at the sides of my temple. The flow just wouldn’t stop, much to my annoyance.

“I got it! I got it! I am finally moving to Switzerland!” I remembered him telling me at lunch break. We had just finished a really difficult training session that morning.

“Oh my gossssssssshhhhh! Finally! I’m so happy for you!” I gushed over my spaghetti alfredo.

I was really happy for him, that’s the truth. But sad for myself. The words echoed within the hollow depths between my ears. The words were like an ice pick that lodged itself somewhere between my heart and lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

Brandon finally got the promotion. The parent company is moving him to the headquarters.

I guess this was God’s reply to my prayers. I’ve asked Him to take away whatever I was feeling towards my friend and colleague because it was killing me.

I broke off an engagement that was going nowhere because of Brandon. Because I thought–just a hopeful thought–that he will see me. Really see me.

Of course he doesn’t know. No one knows. He will never know. Only I know.

And I will take this fact with me to my grave.

“So when will the move be?” I almost choked on my pasta. I pretended to squeak in delight instead.

“December. Boy, am I so excited by this!” Brandon squeezed my shoulders. It was painful, the squeeze. I just couldn’t decide whether the pain emanated from his over-enthusiastic arm or from the ice pick that stabbed my gut.

“Good for you!” I said. “As for me, I am finally making my way to Davao with my new assignment.”

I lied. I was just making it up. But I guess it will become a reality after today. I will raise this to my boss.

“Yeah. Probably it’s for the best, after you’ve been through,” Brandon said, pertaining to my sham of an engagement. Sham of a relationship that was just floating along in the Dead Sea of relationship hell.

Maybe, just maybe, I should’ve let my engagement go on as planned? Maybe I should have…

No. I was flogging a dead horse.

I stopped staring at the ceiling and flicked open my mobile phone. I read and reread all my past Viber exchanges with Brandon.

I resolved never to read them again. Never. Even though these made me happy, even though these became my raison d’etre, I had to stop this illusion.

The gray matter inside my head should take over. It has saved me a million times from disaster in the past. It will keep me alive still.

What about my heart? Shall i pick up the pieces on the floor? Probably I should leave it where it lay.

Because my heart does not understand. Mi corazon no entiende.

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COLD HANDS (A fiction)

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Stuffy. So stuffy.

I had to get out of the windowless hotel room that was to be home for 8 days. A craving for cold milk tea pushed me out of the room and into the humid night.

My search for a convenience store brought me to Chinatown Food Street. It was 10 pm and the nearest kiosk selling a variety of drinks, from Coke to Tsing Tao Beer, has just put up a sign saying it was closed. But the street was still teeming with mostly tourists dining al fresco.

I sat by a vacant table with a bottle of empty Tiger Beer on it after buying my 2.70-dollar milk tea from the nearby 7-11 and took photos of the food street. I was a non-tourist tourist after all.

“Excuse me, this is my table,” a guy with a thick European accent spoke behind me.

“Ooh sorry,” I turned around and saw the guy with ash-brown colored hair smiling at me. Scandinavian probably.

“It’s ok. You’re Filipino, right?”

“How did you know? I always get mistaken for Chinese or something else.”

“I always know. I work with a lot of Filipinos in our ship. They’re a jolly good lot. I’ve always liked Filipinos.”

The writer in me was curious. “Oh yeah, there are a lot of Filipino seafarers. So how long are you staying here?”

“I have a couple of hours before we leave. Thought I spend it outside my cabin and take a break from dealing with all the numbers,” he said. Definitely Scandinavian. Norwegian probably.

He was a first-engineer, whatever that was. Told me he was working on the German ship’s engines, for a German boss who was so gruff and stiff. Oh, the British are also stiff, I countered. No, the Germans are more stiff and are scowling a lot, he said. “That’s why my Filipino crew loves me, I am more relaxed than our German boss.”

Christien. His name was Christien. He had prodded me to give him my name. Lisa. Took me a while before I responded. Because I just wanted us to be nameless. Anonymous. But he managed to get it out of me.

I lit a cigarette. “Sorry, I should kick this habit but I still hold on to this vice to keep stress from eating me alive.”

We talked about my life as a writer and the adventures I had that were later shaped by my words, read by an unknown audience. I was in the city for training for my newish job. He talked about the 10 weeks circling Asia and 10 weeks going around the Mediterranean Sea, hopping from Genoa, to Barcelona, to Valencia, to some North African ports–places I could only pinpoint on the map. He talked about the absurdity of piracy in the 21st century, of having British body guards to keep them safe, of being locked up inside their ship for days or weeks at a time to protect them from those pesky pirates.

Of things in-between our struggles to keep our sanity intact: I in a landlocked concrete hell, he in an endless blue stretch of nothingness.

I painted a rather touristy picture of Cebu and gave him reasons why he should skip Manila, where I spend hours just driving to and from work. That particular dreadful, drizzling night that I was stuck in traffic for four hours. Why a tenth of our population endure months or years away from family. How they kept our economy afloat during the worst and best times.

He said that in his present company, he can be at sea for 2.5 months and 2.5 months off and anything longer than that would drive him crazy. But the Filipino crew, oh it was a different story. The guys told him they’re ok even if they’re 9 months at sea. They needed the money. They can endure, his crew said. That’s why he loved Filipinos.

Christien said it’s hard to keep a relationship when one is often away at sea. Yeah, I could only imagine the hardships my compatriots were going through. He was looking at me with sad smiling eyes. Guessed that he was 35 years old, pegging it on my age; no crinkles yet at the corner of his eyes. He felt flattered so I adjusted it to 40. He was crestfallen. Ok, I said, it was somewhere between. Let’s settle it at that.

“You are very beautiful. Who would’ve known that I would get back to my table to see a beautiful woman sitting there?” has said as he slowly slipped his hand into mine. “Why is your hand cold?”

“It’s from my milk tea bottle,” I said. I bought it two hours earlier.

“So it’s 12 midnight, what now?” Christien asked.

“I have to go back to my hotel. I have to go to our office to work tomorrow,” I gingerly took my black bag from the table.

“Can I come with you to your hotel?” His eyes were still smiling.

But mine felt like huge saucers at that moment. “Umm, no, I don’t do that. Besides, I’m already committed.” I offered him my hand for a handshake.

“OK I understand,” he took my clammy hand and kissed it. “You really are beautiful.”

“Are you sure you’re OK? How will you get to your port? Cab?”

“No, I can walk. It’s just 20 minutes from here.”

“OK bye then. Really nice talking to you. Had a nice time.”

He embraced me. Can’t remember if he planted a kiss on my cheek or on my forehead.

“When are you going back here?” he asked after he released me.

“I don’t know. It depends on when my bosses will ask me again to come back.”

“Will I see you again? Is there a chance that I will see you again?”

“No. Probably not.”

“Are you OK, just walking by yourself?” he called out as I took a few steps to the direction of my windowless hotel room.

“Yeah, it’s just two blocks away,” I said. “Bye, Christien.”

My head was whirling. What was that all about?

I tapped my hotel room key card on my door knob and flopped on my white sheets five minutes later.

I smelled sweet masculine perfume on my cold, clammy hands.

###

OF THE THINGS LEFT UNSAID (A fiction)

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She has always loved the sea.

Staring at it makes her feel like the world is finite…but there’s something that lies beyond what her eyes can see. Something massive and unreachable. Making her restless.

Yearning for something indescribable.

Adrienne continued to stare at the lights winking at her just past the Flyer. Skyscrapers, like sentinels guarding the city’s wealth, were beautifully lighting up the hot, humid night.

There were several teenagers awkwardly doing skateboard tricks on the pavement while cyclists whizzed past her. She then looked at the footbridge wrapped with purple fairy lights, leading pedestrians from Gardens by the Bay towards the Esplanade.

It’s a long walk. But then I have the whole night, Adrienne thought. She just didn’t want to go back to her hotel. Not just yet.

Four hours ago she was frantically typing on her phone, chatting with Rhodora as she sweltered under a canopy next to the domed building, which was one of the government initiatives to make up for the city’s lack of natural attraction.

“He said he would be late. He was just finishing up something in the office,” Adrienne remembered typing on her phone.

“Ok. You’ve been there for 30 mins already. If he doesn’t come it’s either: 1) He’s too chicken to show his face because he still feels something or 2) He has moved on,” Rho replied.

An hour went by and Adrienne sweated profusely. Something important might really have come up, she argued to herself.

Ping. Ping. She looked at her phone.

“Sorry I can’t come. Still fighting this nasty flu. Have to stay in the office.”

There, it was final. Nail on the coffin.

She can recall tasting her salty tears behind her sunglasses. Then came the bitter aftertaste.

She copy-pasted Matt’s text message to Rho.

Ping.

“Sorry, Rienne. I don’t know what to say,” her friend said. She could feel pity behind those black pixels.

A few days back, Matt was agog to play host after she told him she would be coming to the city for business. He told her he would fetch her from the airport. They would be going to some watering hole and catch up. After all ten years is a long time.

She was not the one who sought him out. It was Matt all along who planned her itinerary in the city. Wait, wait, don’t worry about me. I have business to attend to first, Adrienne told him. No no, I have to challenge you to a drinking contest, just as I promised before, he said.

Ding-dong. “In fifteen minutes we would be closing…” the public announcement system rambled on, bringing Adrienne back to the present, back to the steel bench she has been occupying for heaven knows how long.

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Her feet led her to the concrete steps of the footbridge with purple fairy lights. Where would I go? Ah, to the weird durian-looking thing, she decided. Might as well check out life on the other side of the Bay.

But why am I still here, Adrienne asked herself as she looked past the old man on a bike, peddling LED trinkets to tourists. Why am I torturing myself?

She rummaged through her bag for her phone. Nothing. Eerily silent. Damning silence reverberated through her consciousness.

A jogger brushed past her, almost making her lose balance. Yeah right, I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, Adrienne suddenly realized. She took the nearest seat and then she found herself sitting across the regal-looking Fullerton building. Uncannily similar to the Old Post Office back home.

With all the the strength she could muster, she fired up her phone and went to search for her Notes. Scrolled. Copy. Paste on the message field:

“Matt,

What I wanted to accomplish on this trip was supposed to be something that I should have done a long time ago. I left so many things unsaid.

I wanted to tell you over bottles of beer that you were an itch that I had to scratch. And scratch I did. The problem is it took me a decade to do that. I wanted to tell you that I fell in love with a ghost, a ghost that never went away. You were with me but you had never been with me. I didn’t know it then.

I buried you by jumping from one relationship to another, without knowing that it was you who I wanted. I thought of taking a job in this city but I could not figure why I had to abandon all that is familiar to me. I thought I was running away from something I could not fathom. But it was only much, much later that I realized I wanted to run to you. Which sucks, by the way, so I have to get you out of my system.

I do not expect to gain anything from this except maybe closure. I need to move on.

Goodbye and have a happy life. Don’t go looking for me.”

Sent. To Matt.

She remembered a few days ago Rho told her that the note was cruel. “WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THAT?” she told her friend, in all caps. “YOU ARE A SELFISH LITTLE B*TCH. Now Matt will become unstable. Think of the consequence!”

“I don’t know. I just want peace. I want to move on and not hang on to somebody that was never mine and will never be,” Adrienne said with finality.

The ghostly facade of Fullerton was taunting her. Well then, I accept your challenge, old girl. I will walk up to you, she thought to herself. Adrienne was already strolling across another foot bridge to where the Merlion has reigned for so many years when suddenly the Sands’ top flashed its green laser across the bay. Oh, they were starting the lights show, Adrienne grinned to herself.

Ping. Ping.

“I don’t know what to say,” the message from Matt said. Adrienne sucked in her breath. Her world stopped.

“To be fair,” Matt continued, “Yes, I was crazy about you then. You can even ask my family about it. The letters, the exchanges we had were precious to me as well. But then one day you told me that you just got a boyfriend. I told myself, I will give you time. Plenty of time. Then life got in the way. We both went our different ways. Choices made. But there were never regrets.”

The laser multiplied and danced across the Bay.

“Haha, this is awkward. But really, I wanted to say it to your face,” she typed frantically. “I just wanted to be free of you. Close the book. Move on.” She didn’t know if she made any sense at all.

The eerie music accompanying the dancing lights made her hair stand on its end.

Adrienne heaved a sigh. “Well thanks anyway for not being weird about this and all,” she typed. “I’ll be going home tomorrow. Have to sleep now. Goodnight.”

The lights finally made their encore, with the buildings below the Sands all lit up and the green and blue laser lights beaming out across the dark water. As if they were all trying to embrace Adrienne.

Ping. “Goodnight.”

—

The streetlights dotting an already sleeping Manila were like orange poppies blooming in the black velvety meadow, which was suprisingly bereft of the smog that has constantly blanketed the city.

Adrienne has never seen Manila this beautiful and peaceful.

A few minutes later the plane landed smoothly on the runway and taxied its way to Terminal 2. She stared at her phone as the other passengers scrambled to get their stuff overhead or under their cramped seats.

Any moment now Adrienne would be stepping back to her familiar world that has changed a million times since she left three days ago.

Her fingers flicked and swiped over her phone’s screen. Matt’s number and the rest of his contact details appeared.

Delete.

She would be getting a new phone number.

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