Filipinos carried away by online shopping offers

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

Financial planning and management involves the entire family and this must be learnt both within the confines of the home and supported by the educational system.

Dubai-based entrepreneur/financial business coach Francis Errol Medina and Goodwill Insurance Brokerage LLC advisor & international director Dr. Sanjay Tolani expressed these views via separate virtual platforms.

Tolani was the speaker on “The Future of Financial Literacy and Financial Planning, the first pre-conference lecture at the “International Conference on the Future of Learning and Skills Dubai 10X” of the University of Dubai-Centre for Executive Development” some time in June. Medina was the featured guest at the Saturday weekly “Mama Is Home” Facebook live-streaming of former print/broadcast journalist-turned-financial advisEr Malou Talosig Bartolome and former Commission on Filipinos Overseas/former United International Private School (Dubai) Community Relations manager Jennifer Gonzales.

Tolani said children – whether with “itchy or smart hands” – must be taught and oriented on where/how/why money should be budgeted and spent on because of uncontrollables namely sickness, death, forced retirement and “where your children will be in the future…My grandfather sat me down when I was 17 and told me that money is not good, money is not bad. It is power that will achieve multiple things and whatever we want in life.” For him, the future of financial literacy and planning would be incorporated within the curricula of universities as governments are on the track of encouraging more independent choices such as the basic health insurance.

Medina, Bartolome and Gonzales discussed the penchant of Filipinos towards mall-wide sales through the topic “Nabudol Ka Na Naman Ba Ng Sales At Discounts?” (“Have You Been Conned Again By The Sales and Discounts?”).

The topic was so as even through these Novel Coronavirus trying times, Bartolome had noticed the intoxicating interest of Filipinos in online shopping that offers huge bargains. She was informed by a Filipina that in a recent sales-capade in Qatar, many bought by the bulk mid-range bath and body toiletries for cargo and re-sale in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the 2017 ResearchGate study “Consumer Behaviour Among Filipinos: A Quantitative Study About Vanity, Materialism and Gender Differences” conducted among 200 participants had demonstrated that both Filipino men and women shop not for functional goods but for vanity purposes.