Not so long ago, my P100 got me a full meal, a movie ticket, and a jeepney ride home. Today, I showed one to the barista and all I got was a sympathetic nod and a small glass of service water.
Oh, my.
When I first covered the financial beat as a youngish reporter, the wages were starvation-level, but I was happy because I was learning. In Room 501 of the then Central Bank of the Philippines, where monetary policy decisions were first announced by the big boys, macroeconomics was this giant of an idea that appealed to my unlettered mind. Hey, where else could you learn for free that PhD-level economics is murder?
This was also when I took out a housing loan on a journalist’s paycheck and the world turned mad, charging me 17 percent. In a household where tuition always trumps amortization, I quickly learned the art of refinancing and proved to be an outstanding student. I was so good at it that they threatened to take the house.
Did you know that financial reporting teaches you things about your relatives?
No, not the engineer cousin who belonged to the initial batch of OFWs building pipelines in the Middle East, vacations once a year, and promptly squanders a fortune at the casino. This one relates to the insidious, stealthy kind. The kind that appears around the fifth of each month, announced by a kind uncle who speaks softly and has lately carried a big stick.
My wife calls him the uninvited relative.
He comes knocking and insists on staying, whether you like it or not. He has driven the wife nuts, consuming 25-gram buns that cost the same but are now infuriatingly smaller than a baby’s fist. She grabs a bag of Boy Bawang garlic-flavored mixed nuts for relief, only to be confronted by a convenience-store receipt for P54.
Maanghang!
My friend Jet, who lives in Phase 3 of our subdivision, sadly quipped that buying onions at the talipapa on Thursdays feels like making a down payment on a condominium unit.
I fear borrowing from banks.
Not even from the lender whose former CEO is now a senior board director and generous with his time and expertise. For several years, this lender sent me checks bearing big, bold, princely sums representing preapproved loans. I reached for the car keys one time, but the wife, the self-styled budget guru of Marilao, glared at me, and that was that.
“To borrow money from the bank, you first must prove to the bank manager, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you do not actually need the money,” she said.
She reminds me of my Grade One teacher, the soft-voiced Mrs. Urgel, and of the hurdles faced by public school teachers like herself when seeking formal financial access. They are slapped with an absurd documentation spiral just to obtain a basic loan. Don’t get me started on IDs, of which there should be three, proof of billing, and, of course, your blood type.
Then they give you the math.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s only 0.025 percent,” one is told.
If you are not careful, your P10,000 loan could cost you a seemingly cheap P2.50 in interest for a year. That same P2.50 might be manageable for a month, but it becomes expensive when charged daily.
Which is why my neighbors find digital financing platforms attractive.
My experience has been that the guys are polite, extremely efficient, and fully appreciative that you bring them business. The service, of course, is unlike Ka Doming’s pork-strip barbecue on a stick for P25, and you can have four on the basis of “Pautang muna, bukas na lang ang bayad” because he sees you driving a new hatchback.
I actually opened an account with one of them, putting in P200 but initially getting credited with only P102 for the trouble. That transaction happened beside a pile of fresh fruits, eggs, and cheese, not too far from rows of cash counters where I was told cardholding shoppers could deposit or withdraw money.
Santissima Trinidad!
I’m a long way from the days when I deposited a week’s worth of baon at the municipal post office and had my cheeks pinched for being a good boy.
Or, in college, claimed a telegraphic transfer at the bank for a month’s worth of allowance and stood in line for maybe an hour or two to update a passbook.
These days, you deal with a machine with a touch screen while soft-rock music plays in the background.
Progress, apparently, has a touchscreen.
I save when I can, wherever I can. I have an account in a cooperative bank, another in a regular bank whose branches relocate suddenly just when I muster the courage to ask for a loan, and they require proof of billing and the birthdate of the housecat, so wag na lang.
I have accounts with three of the fintech guys, in modest amounts to be sure, for when the going gets tough and some expense requires urgent attention.
I like it that I can transact inside a convenience store, in a shopping mall or even on my phone, never mind the occasional dread when the loading wheel spins at the cashier’s counter and the madame with three carts full of mall whatnots behind me stares at the sales lady.
You know the look.
It says, without saying a word: Kuya, pera mo ba ‘yan?
And suddenly the P100 in your account feels like a family heirloom.
The Pedantic is a weekly commentary by Jun Vallecera, editor of Context.ph, sometime cat father to 12 puspins, and a 38-year veteran of watching the Philippine economy misbehave. He does his own laundry, which may explain his continued employment at home, and occasionally wonders why his wife has not left him yet. His views are entirely his own, although he remains unconvinced that anyone is keeping score.
