It all started with a piggy

It’s the blue piggy that started it all. I don’t quite remember how only that the piggy was a gift to our eldest son, Jarell, from us, his mom and dad. It turned out the piggy would take permanent residence in our closet.

Piggy has changed our life, or at least it changed our attitude towards money. I guess, it would be fair to say it was Piggy that enabled us to embark on our first travel. Thank you Piggy!

It was during our first travel together to see the old Spanish houses in Vigan, Ilocos Sur that made us realized that travel is something that my husband and I would like to do for the rest of our life. And so we rearranged our priorities and travel every chance we get. Piggy, bless her, haven’t fail us yet. So far, almost all our travels in the country were paid in full or in part by Piggy.

Things just kind of started to get better from there.

The act of saving becomes a habit. We become conscious of the way we spend our money. Now we have a joint savings account where we put in money each month for big emergencies. We call it our buffer money. Sure, sometimes it becomes depleted like when someone in the family got sick. But then we replenish and save up and try not to touch it other than for, well, big emergencies.

Then we each have his and her own personal savings account. That’s were we get the money for spending anyway we please. That’s also where we get the money for travel when Piggy’s contributions are not enough. We call it our pleasure money – our “live the life we want” money.

This December we’ll start a savings account for Jarell for when he needs to have brace to correct his overbite. Also we’re considering between getting him an educational assurance plan or opening a time deposit account where we would put in money every month for his college education. We did have the CAP for that but you know what happened. We’d call these savings our short term “as needed” money.

We have also started dabbling with the stock market. Nothing huge, only a small amount really, just so we get the feel of it. Of course, the results are quite dismal considering the state of our global stock market. But I hope my husband is not worrying, it’s for the long term really.

So that’s how it all started. Life has never been better. It’s kind of wonderful really to wake up each day knowing that you have something saved up for the rainy day. Even better, when the travel itch started bugging me again I and my husband could just pack a bag and go! Not always, surely, but most of the time.

By the way blue Piggy has a partner now – green Piggy, where we put all our one-peso coins to give to all the children who would ring our doorbell and sing us Christmas songs come December.

Thank you, thank you, my piggies!!!