Pala-isip

(First of three parts) “It was just too much to bear,” said Edna Roxas, a 45-year-old mother of two, upon hearing the bad news that Prudentialife Plans Inc. (PPI) had collapsed. Roxas, who worked as a midwife in Libya from 1991 to 2001 so she could send her daughter and son to college, said she had spent nearly P400,000 over a five-year period during her overseas employment to pay premiums for two educational plans she had bought for them. “I did not mind going to the Middle East and working in long-hour shifts because I wanted to support my children and make sure they go to college,” Roxas told the Inquirer. Her job, she recalled, would often require her to work 24 hours. What she thought was a valuable investment proved to be good in helping pay the tuition of her daughter only for the first year in college. Her son, who would be in college next year, will never benefit from the educational plan. Minerva Lubong, 61, who owns an eatery in Nueva Vizcaya province, expressed sho...

MANILA, Philippines -- Families of overseas Filipino workers must always prepare for the day that remittances from their loved ones would stop coming so they can better manage their finances, international personal finance advisor Suze Orman said. Orman, who hosts her own show on CNBC and is a favorite resource person at Oprah, said that families who are dependent on remittances must always think that the money will not flow forever because their loved ones can lose their jobs abroad, can get sick, if not die. “Anything can happen at any time and the problem that is going on out there [abroad] when one person from over there stops sending money in here, you’ve not only affected one person there but also four, five or six people over here. Then that starts the very dangerous possibility of things going wrong,” Orman said during a briefing on Monday hosted by the Bank of the Philippine Islands. OFW-dependent families have to understand where that money comes from in order for them ...