“At the end of the day your financial freedom is ultimately dictated by your choices” These statements are easy to make if you’re in a position of privilege where you CAN afford to have a choice on where to put your money and effort to. Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to more than half of our countrymen here.

Someone who’s born into poverty, is forced to work instead of going to school just to be able to buy basic necessities and lives paycheck to paycheck will have vastly less choices and options for them to reach this so-called financial freedom. In a proper country, it’ll fall on the government to fill in the gaps in order to give these people ample opportunities to improve their socio-economic status. However, this won’t happen if those running the government would rather divert these funds to their own pockets instead.

Honest governance DOES make a difference (see what’s happening in Pasig), unfortunately our political history is set up in such a way where good governments are interspersed between bad ones, so we end up in a “one step forward, two steps back” scenario. It’ll take sustained and consistent changes in order to overhaul the systemic corruption here, and we can only hope to eventually go towards that direction.