[Finterest] Start 2026 strong with these personal finance tips

MANILA, Philippines – There’s a particular kind of optimism that shows up around New Year’s. You open your banking app with the seriousness of someone about to turn their whole life around, promise yourself you’ll be more “disciplined” this time, and then quietly hope that motivation will carry you through February, March, and the months when the calendar stops feeling symbolic.

It won’t. Not because you’re weak-willed, but because good money habits work best as systems.

If you want 2026 to feel different, you don’t need to do some dramatic overhaul of your personal finances. Instead, let’s start with these three boring things done consistently: set a goal you can measure, build a budget you can actually live with, and, if you have room, start dipping your toes into investing with your eyes open.

Tip 1: Start with goals that have numbers and deadlines

Most people begin the year with intentions that feel responsible but are impossible to follow. “Save more.” “Spend less.” “Be better with money.” All good ideas — but unfortunately all directionless.

A useful goal is specific enough that you can’t argue with it. It has a number and a deadline. It is not purely aspirational, but it should still feel slightly difficult, because that tension is what forces you to adjust your spending behavior.

One simple place to start is an emergency fund. The basic target many people aim for is around three months of salary set aside for emergencies.

So, where do you put your emergency fund? You shouldn’t chase yield here or park it in an investment product. Prioritize liquidity because you need speed and certainty of access when something goes wrong. Keep your emergency fund in a stable bank account you can tap quickly, ideally one with reliable online banking and easy ATM access where you live.

But even “build an emergency fund” can remain vague unless you break it into checkpoints. It’s easier to commit to a halfway marker than to a year-long fog.

A goal might look like this: “By June 2026, I should have at least one month’s worth of salary parked in my emergency fund.”

That’s a concrete milestone you can hit halfway through the year, and it’s easy to verify.

Tip 2: Build a budget that matches reality

After goals, most people run straight into budgeting, and this is where a lot of plans quietly die. They pick an overly strict number, decide they will be a new person starting January, and then spend the rest of the month feeling like they failed when real life refuses to cooperate.

A budget only works if it is built on what you actually do. That’s why tracking comes first.

In the Philippines, that tracking can be annoying. Most of the time, you can’t simply link your bank debit or credit card to an app and have everything recorded automatically. You may have to manually log expenses in your budget app of choice as you go, which feels tedious. But just remember you need this data to form a reasonable baseline.

The categories don’t need to be fancy. What matters is that they reflect the way your life is actually structured. For me, it’s groceries, utilities, rent, dining out, pets, transportation, and a small amount of fun money.

That last category matters more than people admit. If you pretend you won’t spend on anything enjoyable, you’ll eventually spend anyway, just messier and with more regret.

Now, after at least two months of tracking, you’ll have an idea of how much on average you spend per category. This can form the baseline for your budget. When setting your budget, the goal is not to squeeze every category to the point of misery. The goal is to make sure you are living below your means in a way that doesn’t rely on constant self-denial.

One practical approach is to treat savings like a bill. Decide on a set percentage of your take-home pay that you will move to savings every month, perhaps up to 20% if you have that room, and then build your budget around what’s left. You’re flipping the logic around from saving whatever remains at the end to spending whatever remains after you saved.

Rent is the biggest pressure point for many people, and it’s also the easiest category to let quietly take over your entire financial life. A commonly used benchmark is to try to keep rent within 30% of take-home pay.

That is not always possible, but it is still a useful reference because it forces you to see the tradeoff clearly. If rent is taking more than that, the question becomes what you are giving up in exchange, and whether the exchange is still worth it.

Tip 3: If you have flexibility, start with small and smart investments

There’s a reason investing advice can feel alienating. A lot of people are still trying to stabilize, and it’s hard to talk about building wealth when you’re busy working to pay the rent.

Not everyone is on the same timeline, and that’s fine. But if you do have some flexibility, investing is one of the few tools that can meaningfully change your long-term trajectory.

You don’t need to start big. Starting with P1,000 to P5,000 can be enough to begin building familiarity, which is a bigger hurdle than most people realize. The first stage of investing is about simply learning how to react when prices move, when headlines feel scary, and when you’re tempted to do something impulsive.

That’s why risk appetite matters. It just means knowing how much risk you can tolerate without panicking. After all, no investment is risk-free. Here’s a quick look at the different types of investments you can get into and their associated risk.

Bonds are often described as stable and low-risk. The simplest way to understand them is that you are lending money to the government or a corporation and earning interest. Usually, they also come with a defined timeframe, which makes them easier to plan around. Save for a financial crisis, they’re usually safe too as whoever issuing the bond wouldn’t want to permanently tarnish their reputation by failing to meet payments. 

The catch is liquidity. If you need the money before the bond term ends, you may have to sell it on the secondary market, sometimes at a discount, and the process can feel less straightforward than selling a stock.

Stocks are a different kind of commitment and are significantly riskier than bonds. They are more liquid and can offer more growth, but they require you to be intentional. Every stock is its own story, which means you need to know what you’re buying and why. Are you buying for growth or for dividends? What industry are you betting on? What rules will you follow for taking profit or cutting loss? If you enter without rules, the market will supply its own, and you won’t like them.

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For people who want exposure without constantly monitoring individual stocks, mutual funds and UITFs can be a middle path. They can help spread risk and allow you to tap professional management, which is useful if you don’t have the time or interest to do your own deep research. Funds can also be a way to get exposure to markets that feel harder to access directly, including US tech stocks, depending on what products are available to you.

But you still need to understand what the fund holds, what timeframe it is built for, and what fees you are paying for that management. Fees matter because they quietly eat returns, especially over long holding periods.

Then there are alternatives assets like crypto and precious metals, which tend to attract people who are bored by slow progress. Crypto can make people rich, and it can also wipe people out, sometimes faster than they thought possible. Gold tends to move differently from other assets and is often treated as a hedge when stock prices fall. These instruments can have a place for some people, but ideally as a smaller part of a broader mix, not the foundation of your entire financial life. – Rappler.com

Finterest is Rappler’s series that demystifies the world of money and gives practical advice on managing your personal finances.

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