Mutual Fund Investment in the Philippines - A Personal Experience
Its been a while since I last posted anything about Mutual Fund investment. I actually think that everyone should start investing in it rather than putting your hard earned money in the bank. Of course there are other use of banks but this one is particular on just parking your money. Let me share this personal experience of mine which proved that Mutual Fund investing is a way better alternative rather than putting your money in time deposits.
One time, I accompanied my wife Aileen in the bank to update her ate’s passbook. Turns out, her ate has made a time deposit of P100,000.00 a year ago. Guess how much interest it earned in a year’s time? A measly P3,000.00 net. Further investigation led me to this computation. The interest rate was 3.75% PA (per annum). Less withholding tax of 20%, that gave P3,000.00.
That incident pushed me to look for other alternative how you can park your money and at the same time using the leverage of time to earn. That’s when I discovered mutual funds. At the early part of 2008, I started putting in money in mutual funds. In one of my mutual fund investment, I started with P5,000.00 then made only 3 succeeding investments of P5,000.00 each totaling to P20,000.00 actual investment. To tell you frankly, I actually forgotten that I made that investment. I just remembered it when I get the snail mail update of the mutual fund current value. In a year’s time, P20,000.00 investment valued to P24,798.00, making an earning of P4,798.00. That’s 23.99% interest in a year compared to the 3.75% if I put it in time deposit in the bank.
What if I put P100,000.00, that would’ve earned me some P23,990.00. Surely, anyone would think twice. It’s just that mutual fund investing in the Philippines is not very popular, that’s why you’d hardly hear anyone talking about it.
But what if you can have the edge of being one of the few people who knows about mutual fund investing. Would you rather stick to your old ways of parking your money or would you study a little about it and benefit from it? I made my move a year ago, how bout you? When are you going to make yours? Today, tomorrow or never?
Garry, so I can invest as little as PhP5,000? Sige, join ako. Where did you invest?
That’s a very good news! I have my first mutual fund investment too but sadly, I think my investment timing was not good. Though I haven’t closed it yet, at least for now it’s already slowly recovering.
@ Madz,
Yep, you can start with as little as 5,000, others like Sun Life Prosperity Funds starts at 10,000. I actually have several now - Sun Life Financials, Phil Equity and Optima. Where do u plan to have yours?
@pEDO,
Just don’t redeem while the NAVPs are low. It will surely recover, just a matter of time. BTW, what fund have u invested in?
encouraging…i’m thinking of ALFM, what do you think? how does it compare with sun life and philam?
Hi Tani,
Haven’t really looked at the figures of ALFM, but a quick glance showed they just started their Balanced Fund this November 2009, so pretty young I must say.
You may try to look at the figures yourself at http://www.icap.com.ph - There’s a history of figures there. Hope it helps in your decision making.
ciao!
thanks for you prompt reply, Financial Guru. so ALFM is too young. i’m going to follw your footsteps and start small with sunlife. so how does an OFW like me make an investment in such a company?