Business, Balance, and Beyond: 3 Women Share How They Empower Themselves Through Financial Planning

For beauty queen Sam Bernardo, her personal financial journey started after her stint in show business, and amidst the global pandemic. “During the pandemic, our industry was not stable,” she mentions. “That’s when I started my business, Dream Queen apparel, and I was able to help a lot of Filipinos and seamstresses have jobs.”

As a new business owner, Sam was faced with a lot of challenges trying to manage her personal life, her career, and her path as an entrepreneur. “With our jobs, especially as a model and as an event host, it’s not always that you have work,” Sam explained. “If you don’t get into financial planning early in your career, you can find yourself in a loophole. You work, pay debts, and the cycle continues.” 

Despite these challenges, she eventually found balance through having proper systems set in place for every facet of her life. Striking a balance has become the cornerstone of her financial strategy and overall well-being, and was one of her main priorities now that she had multiple responsibilities to her career in the entertainment industry, to her business, and as a wife. Here, she turned to her financial advisor at Sun Life, where she was able to properly manage all her assets, and to help her achieve her goal of becoming debt free. 

“I remember calling my financial advisor really early, and I [told] him these were my goals for this year. I’m also having my rent to own, and [asked] him how do I save or allot for this? That’s when I realized you really need to have a proper system,” Sam explains. “Without financial planning, I couldn’t imagine how I would juggle everything, and I wouldn’t have the life that I have right now.”

“At 14 years old, I already realized the repercussions of a lack of financial preparedness,” says Ginelle Sequitin. From a young age, she had experienced many hardships after growing up in a tough environment. After her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis and the loss of her father’s employment, Ginelle was inadvertently exposed to the many challenges of resource mismanagement, leading her toward a path that would see her becoming a financial advisor herself. 

Based on her own personal experiences, she now wanted to share her own story to inspire and advise other women to avoid the same challenges she had to face growing up. As a financial advisor at Sun Life, Ginelle hoped to do two things, which was to teach others about the importance of managing their assets, and to dispel the many rumors and misconceptions people have about this subject. “[There] is this pressure in our generation, which is to have certain purchases or acquired assets before 30 that show the world that “we’re doing well in life,” she remarks. “It is a challenge to live in a consumer-driven and fast-paced economy where you are bombarded by trends from social media which pressures us to keep up.” 

“There are no ‘best’ investments,” she explains. “There’s only the ‘right’ investments for you.” This has served as the backbone for her ethos as an advisor and with this, she explains further about how financial planning should be simple, yet adaptable, allowing plans to diversify into aggressive, moderate, and conservative methods. Ginelle now hopes to impart her own knowledge toward other women looking to take that extra step toward securing their futures, with a centralized message where she begs the question, “How would I want to enjoy life once I stopped working?”

Maria Elena Espeleta’s journey into financial planning has been a transformative experience. As a public school teacher, she often faced financial challenges, stating, “Our salary is not sufficient for our daily expenses.” This reality pushed her to explore smart financial planning strategies, leading her to set specific, measurable, and action-oriented goals.

One of the key steps she took was to focus on building an emergency fund. “This allows me to stretch my budget until I reach my payday,” she explained. This monthly financial goal became a foundation of her financial strategy, helping her navigate the persistent challenges of never-ending payments, fluctuating family financial status, and inflation.

In 2019, she discovered the Sun Life Foundation’s Sun Pera-Aralan, a financial management program that led her to the Peso Sobre tool. This program was instrumental during the pandemic, teaching her and her daughter the importance of saving and financial responsibility. “Sun Pera-Aralan assists me by aligning my financial strategy with my values and aspirations to achieve financial freedom,” she stated. 

“Being financially literate allows us to strengthen our financial habits of planning, budgeting, and saving,” she noted. Through continuous education on budgeting, saving, investing, and retirement planning, she equipped herself with the knowledge needed to make informed financial decisions. She emphasized the importance of setting both short-term and long-term financial goals, such as building an emergency fund, saving for her children’s education, and planning for retirement. Maria Elena Espeleta’s own journey underscores the importance of financial literacy, community support, and continuous adaptation in achieving financial wellness, with her story serving as a testament to the transformative power of smart financial planning in the lives of others.