RPF0434-Ruby_from_the_Philippines_Interview
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00:00:29.800 | Ruby, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:00:36.280 | Oh, thank you.
00:00:37.280 | So I'm excited about this interview because you are a relatively new immigrant to the
00:00:43.400 | United States.
00:00:44.400 | Correct.
00:00:45.400 | And I love immigrant stories.
00:00:46.400 | So I think unfortunately, white US Americans are probably destined for poverty in general
00:00:55.880 | and immigrants seem to be destined for wealth for many reasons.
00:00:59.080 | That's obviously an overstatement, but I very much always love to hear the stories of people
00:01:05.120 | who are moving to the United States and all the things that they're learning because you've
00:01:09.320 | immigrated from the Philippines.
00:01:10.520 | Correct.
00:01:11.520 | So your perspective is going to be so refreshing to hear.
00:01:14.280 | So tell me the story.
00:01:15.280 | How did you and your husband wind up in the United States?
00:01:17.280 | So for me, I worked in a multinational bank.
00:01:20.960 | So they gave me an opportunity to move to Jacksonville, Florida, where I currently live
00:01:24.440 | right now because they're like expanding their operations there.
00:01:28.360 | So they're like, "Would you like to come to the US?"
00:01:31.120 | And here I was thinking, "Hell yeah," because in the back of mind, it's money.
00:01:36.680 | I come from a relatively third world country.
00:01:40.360 | We're not really rich.
00:01:41.840 | By the way, I have been to the Philippines.
00:01:46.080 | Yeah.
00:01:47.080 | The fact that I'm moving a few thousand miles away to earn a bit more money and finally
00:01:52.720 | get some time back to myself to travel and do other things, and there's a whole lot more
00:01:57.400 | opportunity in the US, that was a good opportunity for me.
00:02:01.920 | And my husband, he actually was born and raised in what was called Czechoslovakia.
00:02:07.320 | His parents entered the green card lottery when he was nine.
00:02:11.560 | They eventually won it when he was 12 and then he moved here.
00:02:15.480 | So we met each other through work.
00:02:17.560 | Here in the United States?
00:02:18.560 | Yes.
00:02:19.560 | Wow.
00:02:20.560 | Okay.
00:02:21.560 | I thought you had moved together.
00:02:22.560 | I thought he was Filipino.
00:02:23.560 | No.
00:02:24.560 | So you have a Filipino background.
00:02:25.560 | He has a Czech background.
00:02:26.560 | No, he's actually Slovak.
00:02:27.560 | Okay, Slovak.
00:02:28.560 | Yes.
00:02:29.560 | Slovakian background.
00:02:30.560 | When you were in the Philippines, was the bank that you're working for an American bank
00:02:33.960 | or was it a Filipino bank?
00:02:35.560 | It's actually a German bank.
00:02:37.040 | Okay.
00:02:38.040 | And so were you recruited to come to the US?
00:02:42.000 | And the reason I'm asking, sorry for interrupting, that's not common.
00:02:46.240 | Obviously there are many people in the Philippines who work for large multinational corporations,
00:02:51.080 | but to be able to be offered a position to the United States, you did a lot.
00:02:54.640 | You've obviously done some excellent work that got you that opportunity.
00:02:58.160 | So the backstory of that was in 2007, I was a recent graduate and the bank asked if I
00:03:06.840 | would join their graduate program.
00:03:09.080 | And here I was, I have no banking background, I'm a computer scientist, why would you still
00:03:15.080 | want me?
00:03:16.080 | And they're like, "No, no, no, we can train you to learn the bank and then you can choose
00:03:20.400 | which department you want to be in eventually."
00:03:23.120 | I landed into a job into accounting and my boss at the time decided to leave the bank
00:03:29.800 | and move to Singapore.
00:03:31.640 | So there was an opportunity a year later to go to the UK and they picked me.
00:03:36.840 | So I showed I can do what my boss was doing in a relatively short period of time, they
00:03:42.360 | were happy with that.
00:03:43.360 | They invited me back to the UK in 2011 and then after that I'm like, "I'm not going to
00:03:49.680 | go home."
00:03:50.680 | If they find an opportunity for me anywhere in the world, I'll be more than willing to
00:03:55.400 | move.
00:03:56.520 | And then two years later they came back and then went, "Would you like to come to America?"
00:04:01.480 | At first they were offering me India, but I'm like, "I don't think so."
00:04:06.480 | So America seems more of an ambition because it's like the American dream, right?
00:04:14.640 | So it's very hard to come to America, to be honest.
00:04:19.200 | So I said, "Unless you get married to an American that you know from abroad."
00:04:25.880 | But getting recruited, wow.
00:04:27.980 | So I took the opportunity and then just landed the gig.
00:04:30.880 | Awesome.
00:04:31.880 | Congratulations.
00:04:32.880 | Why did you not want to go back to the Philippines?
00:04:35.560 | It started when I was in the UK, when I was sent there.
00:04:39.600 | All these people around me were talking about traveling.
00:04:42.640 | So one girl in particular, she's still working with me, she struck a chord in me when she
00:04:48.360 | asked me the question, "Have you been to Santorini?"
00:04:52.000 | I'm like, "Wow, that sounds so foreign.
00:04:55.400 | I've never heard of it."
00:04:56.600 | And she was describing how beautiful it is and it didn't cost them a lot of money and
00:05:00.600 | they only went for a weekend.
00:05:02.560 | And something clicked in the back of my head saying, "If these people who are just a bit
00:05:08.600 | older than me can do all these things, why can't I?"
00:05:12.780 | And then I realized, "Oh, I'm not earning as much money as these guys back home, but
00:05:17.000 | then I really wanted to make it work."
00:05:20.520 | So that's how I really wanted to get out of the Philippines and then try my luck somewhere.
00:05:26.320 | Because we are putting in the same amount of time working at the same company, let's
00:05:31.200 | say from nine to six, minus the travel time to and from work, but I get paid less than
00:05:37.600 | 20% of what my peers in the first world countries are working for.
00:05:42.480 | And I'm like, "Well, if all our time is equal, why can't we be paid as fairly as everybody
00:05:49.160 | else?"
00:05:50.160 | Did you know that when you were in the Philippines?
00:05:52.160 | I kind of landed it by mistake because I saw the contract that said, "If you bring this
00:05:59.840 | work from the UK to the Philippines, this is how much we are going to pay you, the Philippine
00:06:04.640 | counterpart."
00:06:05.640 | And it was a substantial amount of money, but I don't see it because most of the money
00:06:10.960 | is being pocketed by the company as their profit.
00:06:15.360 | So I'm like, "Well, if I can't work in the Philippines, why can't I just move somewhere
00:06:21.160 | else?
00:06:22.160 | I know it's hard, but I'm going to try to make it work."
00:06:26.400 | I don't know.
00:06:28.240 | My knowledge of Filipino culture is more than some other Asian countries because I've spent
00:06:32.720 | a while there, I spent about a month in the Philippines.
00:06:36.360 | But one of the hallmarks of the Philippines is a lot of Filipinos expatriate and go abroad
00:06:45.560 | to find work.
00:06:46.560 | The economic opportunities in the Philippines are relatively much smaller and it seems like
00:06:54.200 | so many people go abroad.
00:06:56.000 | And the reputation of Filipino workers around the world is fantastic in terms of Filipino
00:07:03.960 | workers in high demand in a lot of different industries all around the world.
00:07:08.280 | So I've often wondered about what it would be like to go abroad and then think about
00:07:12.520 | coming back and exactly what you're describing.
00:07:15.760 | So that's the thing.
00:07:17.140 | Most Filipinos go abroad, but one thing we lack is financial education.
00:07:22.560 | Most people who go abroad send money back home to their relatives, but the relatives
00:07:27.600 | back home do nothing.
00:07:28.840 | They just spend the money.
00:07:30.400 | They go out shopping, they have severe lifestyle inflation, and then the dad or the mom or
00:07:35.520 | whoever's abroad comes back home and then sees just a big house full of stuff and they
00:07:40.720 | go, "Did you not save for our retirement?"
00:07:43.520 | I do want to go back home and live in the Philippines to retire, but then if you spend
00:07:48.240 | it all on stuff, then I'm forced to go back to where I am from and work a bit more.
00:07:54.400 | So I'm like, I do not agree with that culture, which is kind of odd of me because I was an
00:07:59.680 | outlier back home too.
00:08:02.000 | Because I'm like, if you had this opportunity and you can earn, let's say, 80% more than
00:08:06.440 | what you are earning back home, why don't you want to save it for your retirement?
00:08:10.960 | Why would you want to work until you're 65?
00:08:13.720 | Or why would you want to spend a long time away from your family and then only to come
00:08:18.760 | back and not have any retirement savings?
00:08:21.560 | So we call them like bums back home where your wife is just busy shopping her way or
00:08:27.800 | you're... yeah.
00:08:29.440 | So I'm like, I don't agree with this culture.
00:08:31.480 | I don't think it's fair because the other guy is sacrificing so much.
00:08:36.560 | Did you say that you would like to retire back to the Philippines?
00:08:39.120 | We would like to retire in a lower cost country, be it the Philippines or Slovakia.
00:08:45.800 | We haven't decided yet if we're going to do it, but with the geographic arbitrage, I think
00:08:51.560 | it does work.
00:08:52.560 | Because it's good to work in the UK or the US where you earn so much more working and
00:08:59.360 | then going to like a dollar a day for food in Thailand or something.
00:09:03.200 | I think it's great.
00:09:04.720 | So tell me about your and your husband's plans and your financial independence goals and
00:09:09.960 | your journey.
00:09:11.240 | So actually my husband was the one who found financial independence.
00:09:15.160 | He was browsing blogs when I was so stressed out one day, I was so burnt out.
00:09:20.560 | I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore.
00:09:22.920 | And so he Googled something funny.
00:09:24.800 | He's like, how do I make money without working?
00:09:28.680 | So I think he landed like blogs that say like, this is like how you do it, passive income,
00:09:35.960 | portfolio and like index funds.
00:09:39.640 | So he started reading more and was starting to tell me about it.
00:09:42.800 | At the time I came to America, I didn't know what the 401k was.
00:09:45.680 | I didn't know what an IRA was.
00:09:46.920 | I didn't know what Vanguard was.
00:09:48.800 | The IRA was putting all my money in the bank account, which is what I was used to in the
00:09:51.880 | Philippines, which is like paying what, 0.05% if you're lucky, which is like nothing.
00:09:58.120 | You're basically losing money every year.
00:09:59.720 | So he was the one who introduced me to this.
00:10:01.920 | So we slowly started maxing out our 401k, which we are doing now.
00:10:07.040 | We are going to max out our IRAs, Roth IRA, and then I convinced him to open up an HSA
00:10:14.400 | instead of the PPO that he was doing.
00:10:17.000 | So yeah, and then we're slowly doing rental properties.
00:10:20.240 | So we bought like our house a year and a half ago and we bought another house like three
00:10:25.440 | months ago.
00:10:26.440 | It was great.
00:10:28.080 | You've been in the US for three years?
00:10:29.760 | Yes.
00:10:30.760 | And you own two houses?
00:10:31.760 | Yes.
00:10:32.760 | And you're maxing out your 401ks and Roth IRAs and opening an HSA?
00:10:36.320 | Yeah, that's like, oh my God, that's like an American dream, right?
00:10:40.000 | I'm like, here I was working in the Philippines for seven years and I know I don't even have
00:10:45.160 | enough money for a down payment for a house of my own.
00:10:48.780 | So I'm like, wow, what a difference three years would make.
00:10:52.300 | And then I also learned about travel hacking, which we didn't have in the Philippines.
00:10:57.040 | So I'm like, wow, America really can like open doors for you if you know like where
00:11:02.800 | to look for it.
00:11:04.200 | So it is true.
00:11:05.200 | The American dream really is true.
00:11:07.640 | Do you and your husband have a specific timeline that you're working towards?
00:11:10.560 | So we want to retire like since I started late because I only went to America when I'm
00:11:16.560 | nearly 30.
00:11:18.160 | So we have a timeline of like 15 years.
00:11:20.640 | So we're like 12 to 15 years away from FI.
00:11:24.760 | So we really started like pushing ourselves, like seriously doing this like two years ago.
00:11:30.480 | So he's like, well, it's better late than never.
00:11:33.440 | And here we are reading like all these articles saying, oh, we retired at 33.
00:11:37.720 | And I'm like, darn it, we're never going to do it.
00:11:43.120 | There is probably an over amount of attention paid to young retirees where it's almost a
00:11:49.080 | competition to say who can do it the fastest.
00:11:51.160 | Yeah, that's the thing.
00:11:52.160 | And I'm like, oh, yeah.
00:11:53.160 | And when I was 22, I didn't know what I was doing was earning 20% of what I was earning
00:11:58.200 | now.
00:11:59.200 | So I'm like, give me some slack.
00:12:02.680 | And tell me your goal is to continue saving and your 401ks and your Roth IRAs.
00:12:07.420 | And then your goal is to continue accumulating rental real estate.
00:12:09.760 | Is that the plan?
00:12:10.760 | Yes, for now.
00:12:11.760 | And then like when we're done with like seven properties, and once we reach our FI number,
00:12:16.720 | which is like one mil, we're going to travel the world.
00:12:21.300 | So that's what I really, really want to do.
00:12:24.640 | I have always wanted to travel.
00:12:27.280 | But like in the Philippines, we had budget airline carriers.
00:12:30.000 | So I would save a substantial amount of my salary and just fly somewhere for a weekend.
00:12:35.480 | Because we have this opportunity that our parents didn't have when we were younger.
00:12:40.580 | Because they said that airfare and everything else travel related is like an expense that
00:12:45.220 | is too much for them.
00:12:47.180 | So I'm gonna like push for it.
00:12:50.420 | Where and how do you and your husband live?
00:12:53.580 | So we live in Jacksonville, Florida, which is relatively low cost.
00:12:56.740 | We don't have state tax in Florida.
00:13:00.340 | State income tax?
00:13:01.340 | Yeah.
00:13:02.340 | We do have federal tax and sales tax, but pretty much it's a low cost area.
00:13:07.100 | We like it.
00:13:08.100 | You live in a small apartment or you live in one of your houses?
00:13:09.900 | We bought a townhouse.
00:13:11.700 | So we don't really have single family homes, but we live in a townhouse, which is like
00:13:16.420 | we pay an HOA and they maintain everything outside for us.
00:13:20.060 | So we only maintain the inside.
00:13:22.620 | Nice.
00:13:23.620 | We're here at Camp Mustache, Southeast 2017.
00:13:27.160 | Have you done any other or implemented any of Mr. Money Mustache's other advice?
00:13:32.300 | We are a one car family.
00:13:33.660 | Nice.
00:13:34.660 | How do you manage that?
00:13:35.660 | At first it was a headache because it's also like when my husband was working in a different
00:13:41.140 | building than I was, we have to coordinate perfectly.
00:13:45.620 | Every day he would drive himself to work and I would get the car and I would drive myself
00:13:49.140 | to the other building and then come back to pick him up.
00:13:52.480 | So there's times when I have to work late, he would have to wait for me because we're
00:13:56.580 | only one car.
00:13:57.580 | And it doesn't make sense to do Uber because that's $10 every day when he could just sit
00:14:03.140 | at work and then do more productive things.
00:14:06.260 | So we try to make the schedules work.
00:14:08.620 | That's awesome.
00:14:09.720 | When you look around at the US American culture as an immigrant and being married to an immigrant,
00:14:15.860 | what do you think?
00:14:16.860 | What do you think about white people like me and what we do?
00:14:21.260 | Those who are not in the FI circle, I think it's a bit of too much.
00:14:27.860 | Too much house, too much land, too much stuff.
00:14:33.020 | You would see all these sales and while if you need something and buy something on sale
00:14:38.060 | then that's good, but stocking up on 200 pieces of toilet paper when it's on sale and using
00:14:47.420 | coupons, the opportunity cost of your time is not really worth it.
00:14:53.460 | So that's what I noticed.
00:14:55.540 | And then people have huge houses here, which it's okay, but to each their own.
00:15:02.060 | What was the most shocking thing to you about the US American culture?
00:15:05.460 | Oh, TV.
00:15:06.460 | How do you mean?
00:15:07.460 | You guys like watching a lot of TV.
00:15:11.100 | All my colleagues would go home after work and then just watch three hours of TV every
00:15:17.700 | single day.
00:15:19.180 | And then I was thinking, well, three hours could be a good side hustle time where you
00:15:23.020 | could do freelance and then earn more and then put that towards your retirement savings.
00:15:28.940 | I realized I have a lot more time in the US than when I had back home because I don't
00:15:33.540 | commute as much.
00:15:35.100 | So yeah, you get more productive use of your time here in the US, but I think most people
00:15:40.340 | are just not using it wise enough.
00:15:43.300 | So that's just me.
00:15:44.780 | How do you interact with your family in the Philippines?
00:15:47.020 | Skype, Facebook.
00:15:49.140 | So are they jealous of you?
00:15:52.180 | No.
00:15:53.180 | My mom is very happy that I moved because, as I said, it's very hard to move to America
00:15:59.780 | organically like I did.
00:16:01.460 | Most people marry into an American guy or a girl and then just try to become one.
00:16:10.140 | And then they have severe lifestyle inflation when they come here because they're like,
00:16:13.700 | "Oh my gosh, all these things that I could get."
00:16:16.500 | I was watching this show on TLC, The 90 Day Fiancé, where there's a Filipino girl who
00:16:22.100 | kind of came from a background close to me, but she married an American guy, but then
00:16:26.180 | she wants this huge 3,000 square foot home.
00:16:29.020 | And I'm like, "Dude, you can't even afford that.
00:16:32.140 | You don't even have a job yet.
00:16:33.460 | You just came to America and you're demanding all this.
00:16:36.140 | Please, please don't cast a bad light to us.
00:16:40.620 | We're not all like that."
00:16:41.620 | Of course you're not.
00:16:42.620 | There's a TV, you've got to have some drama.
00:16:45.580 | Tell us about your website and what you're doing there.
00:16:48.100 | So it's like a journey to financial independence because we really want to do full-time travel.
00:16:54.740 | So we do a journey to full-time travel through financial independence.
00:16:58.900 | Because a lot of the travel blogs that we read is like, "Oh, quit your job and do this
00:17:03.380 | and that so you can travel the world."
00:17:06.100 | We don't agree with that because there are other ways to travel the world full-time,
00:17:12.140 | but we don't have to quit our job right now.
00:17:14.160 | What if we do it with a purpose, like getting to FI?
00:17:18.220 | So with blogging, you can come and go whenever the wind blows.
00:17:25.080 | So with these other bloggers, they're like, "Oh, quit your job."
00:17:28.580 | I'm like, "No, we are doing it with a purpose.
00:17:31.700 | If we reach FI, then we have enough reserves coming back to."
00:17:35.460 | It's not just like, "Oh, just because I don't like working anymore."
00:17:39.620 | So it's just a bit of a sacrifice now by working now and then eventually not needing the money
00:17:45.540 | in the future to work.
00:17:48.580 | Are you aware of anybody in the Tagalog or Cebuano-speaking writing world in the Philippines
00:17:55.020 | who's talking about personal finance the way we do in the English-speaking world?
00:17:58.420 | There was this one guy who these people follow.
00:18:02.500 | I think his name is -- I forgot his blog.
00:18:05.940 | But he would be teaching them savings, like save a peso a day and you'll save 365 more
00:18:13.980 | than last year.
00:18:15.380 | I'm like, "But that's really not enough."
00:18:17.740 | But if it's like slowly teaching financial education to the Philippines, then that's
00:18:22.820 | great because we never really get taught this at school and as I said, most people in the
00:18:27.980 | Philippines don't really know financial education.
00:18:30.580 | So I'm like, "That's a step."
00:18:32.540 | So if these people still continue to just listen to them and then apply the steps that
00:18:37.860 | he's outlining, then hopefully more and more people back home would be more aware of what's
00:18:44.820 | around them and that everything has a time and a money consequence.
00:18:51.060 | So it's not just about the money, but it's also an opportunity cost.
00:18:55.540 | Have you thought about doing anything in that market to help people?
00:19:00.020 | Not yet back home.
00:19:01.220 | No, that's like -- everybody back home is buzzing about travel blogs.
00:19:05.900 | There's this one couple who travels the world full-time and they were backpackers and now
00:19:12.060 | they're luxury travelers because 200,000 people follow them.
00:19:16.620 | I'm like, "Of course, you're going to get luxury travel and sponsors because 200,000
00:19:21.860 | people want your life now."
00:19:24.620 | So it's all about the soap opera culture back home.
00:19:27.540 | If they see a rags to riches story, they would actually follow you more.
00:19:31.820 | They don't really want to be educated this much.
00:19:34.660 | So if you start preaching to them, they're going to go, "I don't want to listen to
00:19:37.380 | you."
00:19:38.380 | So if you show them it could work, then maybe they will start to follow in your footsteps.
00:19:44.500 | But if you try to teach them, they might not listen to you.
00:19:49.140 | Well, I'd love to see you work.
00:19:53.660 | When I travel, one of the challenges that I often think about is I've been so richly
00:20:00.500 | blessed and we, especially in the English speaking world, have been so richly blessed
00:20:09.700 | with a cultural heritage of knowledge and of insight.
00:20:14.620 | And we draw from that cultural heritage for many of our things, especially in this aspect
00:20:22.220 | of finance.
00:20:23.780 | And often when I look at other cultures and other countries, I look and I think, "How
00:20:29.980 | could some of what I know or what I do be applied and how could it be taught?"
00:20:36.380 | Because there's just this massive disparity in wealth that exists in the Western world
00:20:43.940 | versus many other parts of the world.
00:20:47.220 | And I don't know.
00:20:49.860 | I don't know how to crack that nut, but I want to see more and more people like you
00:20:54.060 | work on it and try to seek to help to invest into people all around the world in other
00:20:59.900 | languages because the charlatans, the scammers, the scammers are doing it.
00:21:07.300 | They're everywhere.
00:21:08.300 | No, but there aren't enough people going and crossing over and saying, "Listen, let me
00:21:12.700 | teach you the principles.
00:21:13.700 | Let me put it out there."
00:21:15.580 | And then profiling the success and demonstrating in a culturally relevant way, meaning, "Okay,
00:21:22.780 | you're in this place, in this culture, with these opportunities.
00:21:25.980 | Here's how you take the principles and apply them in the local culture."
00:21:30.580 | So I'd love to see you and many more people in my audience take that and translate that
00:21:35.540 | into other cultures and do that.
00:21:37.460 | I don't know how to do it.
00:21:38.460 | I always look and think about it, but I don't know how to do it.
00:21:41.100 | But I'm fascinating.
00:21:42.100 | I want to profile and support people who are.
00:21:44.780 | So your blog is ajourneywelove.com.
00:21:48.500 | Any other actions that you want my audience to take after hearing this interview or any
00:21:52.820 | other final pieces of advice you'd like to give?
00:21:55.300 | Well, as JD Roth said, always have a goal and you have something to look forward to.
00:22:03.340 | Like our goal is what was started as a hobby eventually became our full-time goal, which
00:22:07.740 | is we want to travel full-time.
00:22:09.380 | We don't want to be shackled to a job that would make us work nine to six.
00:22:13.980 | So if you can find the steps to reach that goal, be it through financial independence
00:22:19.620 | or be it through starting baby steps like saving more or learning more about your IRAs
00:22:25.420 | or 401k, then all the more for you.
00:22:29.580 | Invest in your education basically.
00:22:31.060 | Because who better to educate yourself than yourself?
00:22:35.980 | Words of wisdom.
00:22:36.980 | Ruby, thanks for coming on.
00:22:37.980 | Welcome to the United States.
00:22:38.980 | We're so glad you're here.
00:22:40.180 | I'm thrilled.
00:22:41.180 | And thank you for sharing your wisdom with my audience.
00:22:43.060 | Thank you.
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00:22:54.060 | Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little