A Progress of My Mom’s Ipon Challenge

Last February, I suggested my mom to start an Ice Candy business. She started with an initial capital of 300 pesos and rolled the gains all over again. It was late March when I gave her an “Ipon (Savings) Challenge” coin bank wherein you just have to save and shade the corresponding coins/bills that you put inside.

After more than a month, my mom had to open such coin bank since it is already full. I just advised her to save it in the bank for the moment while filling another coin can. Curious about how much she had saved for the past month?

Well, here’s the breakdown:

That’s a total of 5,338 pesos or 107 USD! For someone who just stays at home, saving this much is already a great financial milestone.

My mom just can’t contain her happiness after knowing the exact amount she has saved during the past month. She’s been working all her life as a private school teacher but she never managed to have some savings. And now that she’s an official homebody after retiring early, she could save all the proceeds of her mini business for herself. No need to worry about the bills mom, let me handle it.

According to my mother, her aggressiveness in saving leveled up when I gave her this coin bank:

So what’s really special about this mere tin can?

^{Source: Peso Sense}

This Ipon Challenge is being promoted by Peso Sense, a facebook page that campaigns financial freedom for the Filipinos. This Save and Shade type of saving does not require any fixed amount for a specific schedule. You just have to shade/document whatever amount you have deposited in such coin bank in order to track your progress. Once you complete this challenge, you could have a total of 53, 750 pesos or 1,075 USD.

As what my mom said, she got addicted to saving her extra money instead of spending it all to splurges. Being her daughter and her financial advisor, I am more than happy seeing my mom being inspired by her journey of building the habit of saving. At the moment, I am giving her several investment options to make her savings grow even more and right now, we’re eyeing on FarmOn.ph, an agricultural crowdfunding investment.

^{This is a good start, Ma. I can’t wait to see more of your financial milestones in the following months. We may have argued about money a few months back due to my frugality, but now, it seems like you have surpassed my thriftiness. Nevertheless, I know this just proves that the family that saves together, always stays together.}