A COUPLE of years ago, writing for a women’s magazine, I was able to interview young stage actress Cathy Azanza. While the interview was basically about her life as an actress and what beauty products she bought, we also spoke about personal-finance matters. (By the way, Cathy has just gotten married to film director/cinematographer Paolo—with our good friend Mr. Caps as ninong—and we would like to offer our best wishes to the couple.)

Most people think that a career in theater doesn’t offer financial stability. There is just not a lot of jobs around to steadily earn from, considering we are a nation of—dare I say it?—cultural illiterates! You can only count on the fingers of one hand the number of theater companies which actually have a regular season’s worth of stage plays.

Between our work, domestic duties, cable TV switched on for most part of the day and the amount of surfing, chatting and playing we do on the Internet, how many of us still go to the theater? And even if we wanted to, tickets don’t exactly come cheap. (I used to buy Rep season tickets until I learned to, ahem, prioritize my spending.) So most of us would rather go to the cinema to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster, or—worse—go to our suki DVD retailer to get our pirate fix.

According to Cathy, stage actors are paid rehearsal fees, usually at the end of each week. The release of “show fees,” on the other hand, depends on the actor’s contract with the theater company he is working with. “Some pay after every weekend run, some at the halfway mark of a run and then again at the end, and still others at the end of a run.”

So, since the salary is not as regular as a 9-to-5 office job, stage actors may find themselves scrounging for cab fare. You may be the next Lea Salonga or Monique Wilson, but how are you going to make it to company rehearsals if you don’t even have transportation money?

“I think everyone who goes into the arts recognizes that it is a financially unstable field. That’s why you have to do a lot of planning. In addition to possessing knowledge about your art, you have to be willing to deal with the mundane everyday things—where you’ll be getting your rent money, how much you need for your phone bills, etc. It’s part of life. You have to recognize the financial constraints of the field and work to overcome it,” Cathy says.

“One of the first things I was told in the Management of the Arts Program of the Asian Institute of Management [AIM] is that you don’t necessarily have to starve to be an artist, and that takes planning.”

In Cathy’s case, she has the privilege of having a parent who teaches her about personal finance. Her father, Rafael “Bing” Azanza, is a well-known professor of finance at AIM, and currently a director at the Bases Conversion and Development Authority. Like many others who have benefited from Mr. Azanza’s tutelage, she calls him a “finance wizard. He gives me great tips on money matters.” (Cathy’s mother is Mila Cruz-Azanza who, until a few years ago, was a health-care administrator at Pilipinas Shell Petroleum Corp.)

Asked how important financial independence is for her, Cathy believes: “To live the way we live, we have to recognize that money is a big factor.  If you plan your finances, though, you won’t need to worry.”

Whenever I talk with my girlfriends about taking responsibility for one’s own financial well-being, most of them will switch off, their eyes immediately glazing over. Like my friend Grace. Over lunch one day, while we were discussing what to do about her condo unit, she told me she absolutely had no patience thinking about money. Sure, she’s intelligent and a damned good writer, but when money issues come up, her mind just goes everywhere else. She earns it and knows how to spend it, but to her, that’s the extent of her financial knowledge.

Which isn’t exactly true because Grace did buy that condo when she had some extra cash, and rented it out while she lived somewhere else. She uses part of the earnings from the rent to defray her family’s expenses.

So even if Grace isn’t aware of it, she actually knows a bit about investing. She leased out the unit and asked for rent higher than the amount of her monthly housing-loan amortization. (She had used the loan to buy the condo.) So she does have an inkling about return on investment, or turning a profit from a small business. I suspect all women do, except that our brains may not be wired to think about money first, or we are the product of our environment.

Most women, like Grace, feel uncomfortable thinking about money or making money. They don’t like discussing it unless they need to badger their husbands to raise the grocery budget. To begin with, unlike Cathy’s father, most parents are not even financially savvy to be able to teach their children the basics of saving or investing. Thus, most of those in our parents’ generation are going to retire, expecting their children to take care of them, while drawing on their miniscule GSIS or SSS retirement benefits. They may have a few savings tucked away, but these may not be enough to sustain their current lifestyles.

Until our mother’s generation, women were also told that they should go out and marry some rich schmuck and not to bother their pretty heads how they’re going to pay for the household expenses or the next shopping spree. It was the husband’s job to think of financial stability and their retirement income.

Even in our generation, most women’s financial literacy extends to making ends meet...like selling beef tapa to their students or coworkers. Many still cannot grasp the concept of setting aside some part of their salary or business earnings to build a nest egg for their own retirement.

In a way, I think most of us women never learned to take care of ourselves financially because we always put ourselves last among our priorities. Let’s face it: women, especially Filipino women, are brought up thinking that we should serve our parents, our siblings, our bosses, our husbands, our children. After all of them have been taken care of, that’s the time we can think about taking care of our own needs. So we give of ourselves too much to too many people that, oftentimes, there is no more left to give to ourselves.

Unfortunately, statistics will show that women live far longer than men. So who’s going to take care of us when our husbands have died (or, worse, have left us for a young floozy), and the kids already have their own families and lives? If we’re not independently wealthy, are not going to receive any inheritance from a rich aunt who just keeled over and are just counting 15 days to the next salary day, then we’re in serious trouble.

What’s more, even if we do start thinking of investing, we don’t ask questions. I know a few women who are now complaining about their investments in mutual funds because their returns are currently low. I’m not saying that investing in such funds is wrong, per se, but I just think that most women will automatically sign off on anything that spells greater financial relief for them (or so they think), without bothering to check the finer details of such transaction.  Do you wonder why most victims of financial scams are women? We are scared of asking questions!

“I’m really lucky my father teaches finance and possesses an artist’s soul, as well,” says Cathy. “He understands what I do and gives me a lot of practical advice. For example, I understand the concept of compound interest. If I put money in investments now, that money will grow at a compounded rate of about 5 percent per year after inflation for the rest of my life. Since I am in my 20s, that means my money will compound for 40 or 50 years.”

According to Cathy, she uses a formula her father made up called ESIDUCR (pronounced “easyducker”) which stands for Earn, Save, Invest, Diversify, Use Compounding, Retirement (which we will tackle in a future issue).  “Right now, I’ve saved 20 percent of what I earn and I invest it in three things: 1)  three months’ value of my expenses in the money market, 2)  longer-term government securities like Treasury Bills and 3) common stock. My father guides me through all this.”

That is not to say that it’s all saving and investment for Cathy. “I like to save what I can of my salary, but I will spend for things and splurge sometimes.  First things I settle are the nonnegotiable bills.”

Don’t think for a minute that you don’t earn enough to be able to save something, and that you are tightening your belt as it is, so you can’t tighten it further. It’s all a matter of prioritizing your expenses and finding one or two items you can do without, especially now that the prospects of a global recession have become more real. Like, c’mon, a Starbucks mocha frappucino isn’t a need!

Think about the future and how you want your retirement lifestyle to be. Become financially independent of your husband or your adult children. No matter what people say about family values or how “charity begins at home,” no one loves a financial parasite. Value yourself above others. Making personal financial sacrifices to make others happy is overrated.

Judy Ann Santos: Someone Great for Cinema

One cannot be a superstar or a star for all seasons now when the mainstream film industry is truly dying. The amount of celebrity that one can create for the industry is an illusion. Gone are the big production units that regularly churn out films each month.

Richard Gomez in a ‘Feud’

BEING on top of the game, or just staying in it, has been perfected by Richard Gomez, be it in his “day job” as an actor for the big or small screen, or his being a sportsman.

Fermentations: 150 Minutes

THE pizza was incredible. Not even the spectacular scenery could distract me from how good it was. Before me, the sea spread out like a sheet of deep-blue silk, flanked by green-crested ridges. Dusk had fallen, painting the surroundings in the magical colors of twilight.

Cooks: Pinoy ‘ensalada’

THE everyday menu of Pinoys is so varied and interesting. I once thought that every carinderia had its own unique style of cooking a dish. Thinking that Pinoy cooks are a very “feeling” lot, one adobo will differ from another.

Stirring Selections

THERE are many misconceptions about French food, says Sommelier Selection wine hunter Jérôme Philippon, and he wants to correct these misimpressions in the latest edition of the France Food and Wine Festival 2008.

Art imitates life in street children’s play

“SAMPAGUITA, mineral water, diyaryo, sigarilyo kayo diyan.” These are words that one will hear from children while they peddle their wares on the dangerous streets of Metro Manila. It is sad that these young kids are either orphans or come from very poor families. Sadder even still is the fact that many of them resort to begging for money in order to survive.

Something Like Life: Emerging from financial illiteracy

A COUPLE of years ago, writing for a women’s magazine, I was able to interview young stage actress Cathy Azanza. While the interview was basically about her life as an actress and what beauty products she bought, we also spoke about personal-finance matters.