Hobby Reading Stuff About Macroeconomics

This all started with the idea of trying to apply what I learned from the book Economics 101 From Consumer Behavior to Competitive Markets--Everything You Need to Know About Economics
Alfred Mill. I bought the hard copy online and it's been my pocket book for occasions when I have to wait in line for processing documents.

I've been procrastinating my art. The way I do my procrastination is substituting my time with another productive activity.

When I'm into something, I dive into the rabbit hole just to see where it leads me. Now I ended up with more trivia can't even use for ice breakers. I swear I'm fun.

Anyway, it's just for self satisfaction being tied up with my other interests like understanding how money works. Whatever knowledge I get from this book will eventually be wasted if I don't have anything to apply it on so I did some research and landed onto the Philippine Statistics Authority page and checked what's been happening in my country at the macroeconomic level. I swear, I'm fun at parties if you just don't invite me or just leave me at a corner to mind my own business.

Mini Book Review:
It's worth the purchase if you just want a crash course about the subject. It tackles the difficult concepts with clear simplification. Just my type of coffee table book.

Not trying to be a charlatan, I just like to shitpost what I learned and maybe spark up a conversation with like minded folks here.

The more I learned, the more I appreciate how ignorance can be bliss when it comes to not being aware about how fucked some areas in my country really are. We have a 1.9 Total Fertility Rate reported last 2022, which means we're below the replacement level of 2.1 contrary to how a lay person here might think that we're booming in birth rates. This is going to be a problem a few decades later when there's not enough man power to replace the labor force and sustain the economic growth. Not really a surprise when there's a lack of incentive to start a family and raise children at these economic times.

3.4% CPI for Feb 2024 isn't so bad, it's been trending down since the the height and start of post pandemic. The main drivers of the inflation were from Food and Non-Alcoholic Beverages, Utilities, you know I'm not really going to dabble further on the breakdown because you can check the full data here. At this rate, things double in price after 2 decades but the wages and purchasing power of Peso hasn't been doing well.

I'd look at previous economic accomplishments from old administrations and not a lot of investments have been made into public service infrastructure as compared to neighboring nations. We definitely fucked up some economic decisions and this is decades in the making. Even when the times were good, there wasn't long lasting benefits because most of the wins were tied to the political party interests in the short term but that's another can of worms outside the scope of what I want to dwell with my hobby reading.

Real Estate:

Expats would love the purchasing power their currency usually holds when they live here. But the real estate bubble has yet to burst and the good deals are away from the urbanized cities. Did you know that buying a condo in Manila or Cebu can be as expensive or more than buying a place in the US? but this usually applies for the developed cities where a lot of capital flows.

I used to think buying condominiums as an investment was bright idea for flipping or renting. It usually is depending on the location and type of deal. But the returns expressed from friends that did engage in this investment early had mixed results. A lot of the condos aren't affordable for Filipinos and their occupancy rates haven't been great since post pandemic tourism hasn't fully recovered. It's even harder to get rid of these properties without incurring losses.

Savings:

There's nothing attractive about the savings interest rates offered unless you're just after easy access to your emergency funds. Here's a list of digital banks and their interest rates for comparison available. I could convert my Peso into HBD and still get more average returns here than my local banks or mutual funds offered. The usual disclaimer has to be said here, I'm not a financial advisor nor this post should be taken as a financial advice.

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A lot of my time browsing online is spent on reading about these statistical reports and Googling unfamiliar terms. Some of them led me to discover economics tutorial channels over YouTube which led to more knowledge. Studying is fun is your interest is in it. This subject is easy to digest given that it's aligned with my other interests.

Thanks for your time.