Ipon Challenge (Trash to cash)

For this blog entry, I'll try to tell you how I indirectly teach my tiny tot about the importance of money.

As a mom, I have to always deal with budgeting our finances to survive week by week. It is exhausting and frustrating and no one prepared me to do these adulting stuff. Although, to be honest, I have already learned how to manage my finances since high school but I can't seem to make them last. Because of this dilemma, I see to it that my kids don't make the same mistakes I did when it comes to managing hard-earned money. 

My daughter, who is turning 5 next year, requested to have a bicycle for her birthday. Unfortunately, kids' bicycles do not come cheap, especially if you're considering to buy very quality bikes with different famous movie characters design. Unfortunately, she (my daughter) got a bit spoiled by everyone around her since she is the first grandchild in my husband's side and she is the first grand-daughter in my side of the family. As a result, Yza can easily get what she wants. 

Of course, until now, she still gets what she wants but this time, we try to "negotiate" with her. Now that we have a little boy in the family, we need to learn to prioritize and for this journey, we included her in the project. I was somehow able to ask her to help us save money for her bicycle. 

For our fund-raising activity, we turned our attention to selling recyclable things like aluminum cans, PET bottles, boxes, and other plastic materials. In our family, we always buy gallons of water for the kids' consumption, milk cans/cartons, and other packaged food. And every time we consume things, we have the habit of segregating our trash  (thanks to my father's junk shop business before). From these, we have accumulated a lot of stuff and if there's a chance, we try to sell them to those who roam around our barangay. 

Last week though, we tried selling our trash in a different place - SM. Every first Friday and Saturday of the month, a recycling market opens in SM Rosales' parking area wherein people can sell their trash. They accept things like waste paper, plastics, PET bottles, broken wooden furniture, and even computer monitors. They don't accept most electronics, especially the ones with batteries, for safety reasons. Before going there, we prepared and sorted out the things we wanted to sell. We though electronics and other appliances were accepted so the majority of the junk we brought were old and broken appliances; however, upon arriving there, we were informed that these junk were no longer bought.

Still, we were able to sell our aluminum cans and cartons and we were able to earn 133 pesos! It is true: "May pera sa basura!"

As I have mentioned, this was not our first time to sell trash so, in total, we were able to earn around 700 pesos. I think it's not a small amount coming from trash! I hope we can keep this activity up and earn more so we can use it for more things.