The third of four sessions of the financial literacy webinar for overseas Filipino workers in Qatar was organised on Friday by the Philippine Embassy in Qatar and Overseas Filipino Bank (OFBank).
Gerald Heriales, OFBank’s overseas representative officer in the Middle East, led the third online discussion on basics of investing.
Heriales noted that there are three stages of financial freedom: save, invest and insure, and saving is the foundation to attain the latter two.
“The objective of investing is capital preservation. This is to maximise the value of your extra capital by acquiring additional asset or item for capital gain.”
He goes on to explain that “generating income or capital appreciation” is the ultimate reason individuals invest. Savings are intended to preserve capital, whereas investments are meant to increase capital.
There are four types of investment people can venture into: shares, cash, property, and fixed interest securities.
Other types of investment meanwhile include: foreign currency, collectibles such as art and antiques, and commodities like oil, coffee, corn, rubber or gold.
Discussing the return on investment, Heriales emphasised that it “depends on where you put your money in, and it could be paid in a number of different ways: dividends (from shares), rent (from properties), interest (from cash deposits and fixed interest securities).”
He also noted that people should always consider the “risks” when investing. “All investments are accompanied by risks. An investment is a gamble — you can win or lose.”
“The probability or likelihood of occurrence of losses relative to the expected return on any particular investment: credit risk/default risk, foreign currency risk, inflation risk, reinvestment risk, liquidity risk,” Heriales explained.
Before investing, he highlighted the following tips: establish an emergency fund or savings, examine your requirements and objectives, determine how hands-on you want to be, build an investment strategy, consider how long you can invest, diversify, verify the fees, and review frequently.
The Filipino community in Qatar lauded the initiative of the embassy in conducting the said webinar. Zeina, who’s been working in the country for five years said the webinar is an eye-opener for her to invest. “The webinar is a great initiative to the community towards helping us to achieve financial freedom. I have been searching on the Internet on where should I invest my hard-earned money, and with the webinar, it helped me to decide where and what to invest.”
“I have only been saving but not investing, and I’m looking forward for the last series of this financial webinar. Slowly, it has helped me to decide where to invest and how much should I invest,” said Rex, an engineer who has been working in Qatar for the past seven years.
The final series will be conducted on Friday, July 15, via Zoom and will be live streamed via Philippine Embassy Doha Facebook page.
