Investing 101: Pay Yourself First

Pay Yourself First

Most people would pay everyone else before paying themselves.  At the end of the month, they hope that some money will be left over to put towards savings and investments.  However, this rarely happens.  Paying yourself first means putting a percentage of your paycheck into savings or investments the moment you receive it and before you start paying bills, going grocery shopping, filling your gas tank, etc.  If you do this, you will never go a month without saving money!  At the end of the month, you will probably spend all your money, but the savings will already be safe in the bank.

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Investing 101: Time Value of Money

This series will present fundamental principles everyone, especially the young, should know when it comes to personal finance.

The Time Value of Money

Money received and invested today is not the same value as that of money, with the same face value, received in the future.

Most would think that a hundred pesos received today is the same as that of a hundred pesos to be received next year.  This assumption is wrong simply because of all the ways you can make the money grow during  that gap.  Just by putting the 100 pesos you received today in a savings account, you'll at least earn interest on it, thereby increasing its future value.

Here's a simple formula to determine the future value of funds compounded annually given a specific interest rate:

FV = Future Value
PV = Present Value
i = interest rate
n = number of years

Example:
If I have 69,500 pesos and I allow it to compound for 31 years at an annual interest of 9% per annum, the future value of my money would be

FV = 69,500 (1+.09)^31
FV = 1,005,092 pesos! (A million pesos!)

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