Accounting 101

Being a hater of math and anything with numbers, I am not given to paying attention to accounting. This little ‘drama’ of mine has been a life script I’ve been running unawares inside of me. My motivation? I knew math is an academic handicap, so I’d rather not show it, for fear of being discovered to be not that intelligent, after all. Pathetic, right? Who was I trying to impress anyway? But enough of my cheap and shameful egoism.

I had realized this great, great blind spot of mine, finally with newfound gratefulness, after I chatted casually with this female friend who was an accountant. I had almost nothing in common with mathematicians, I thought, but here was a woman who shattered my self-imposed delusions.

It so happened that I found myself in a nice dilemma at the time: I was unemployed, but there were two opportunities at my feet, and I couldn’t make up my mind which one to choose. So I asked her to do math for me because I didn't trust my algebra. My friend helped me decide by asking me pointblank a series of questions.

Yellow pad and pen in her hand, she listed down my answers. This is what she asked, to my embarrassment. (You see, I had to confess certain figures, which I had never revealed to any other soul.)

-        Salary?

-        Rent?

-        Gas (LPG)?

-        Electricity (Meralco bill)?

-        Water (Maynilad bill)?

-        Phone bill?

-        Rice?

-        Food (other than rice, that is)?

-        Groceries?

-        Location?/Transportation?

-        Meals at work? (How?)

-        Work on Saturdays/Sundays/Holidays?

-        Overtime pay?

-        Tax deductions?

-        Benefit deductions (SSS, Philhealth, other insurance, etc.)?

-        Hobbies (movie dates, etc.)?

After the cringe-inducing interview, she did some additions and subtractions, while I fidgeted over the possible results like an election candidate.

Meanwhile, I noticed that she didn’t mention the fringe benefits and other unwritten benefits that I valued so highly at work:

-        Office amenities?

-        Workplace environment/corporate culture?

-        Fun, exciting co-workers?

-        Professionally run? fair and just working policy?

-        Vision-mission that matches mine?

-        Etc.

And we haven’t even mentioned one little item called... ‘savings.’ (Other hidden expenses we didn't touch on were, because we were active church people, tithe, and allowance for parents, even siblings.)

Nevertheless, my eyes were opened wide enough. To my horror, I discovered, for the first time in my working life -- and I’ve been working for about decades -- that I had been spending more than I was officially earning. In short, I was not living within my means.

How did I survive through the negative cashflow? I’m not sure if it is safe here to reveal my secret, but here it is: I got my extras from my sidelines, chiefly freelance writing and other such ‘rackets’ or ‘gigs,’ as though I was like some poor indie musician or band sessionist. There. (For the record, each published article is always slapped with a 10% professional tax.)

Before my friend and I parted ways, I was stupidly blissed out, reduced to looking at her in awe, as though I knew her only for the first time. As much as I was humbled by my profound ignorance and dismayed by my financial statement, I felt rewarded.

So I was officially poverty-stricken – and if not for the ‘underground economy,’ I would have subsisted on instant noodles and canned goods. But it’s a miracle how I survived my hand-to-mouth existence for long without going through such a wringer as the (free) accounting assessment I had just subjected myself to.

Like all other things essential and uncommon, Accounting 101 proved to be only common sense, and thus should have been indispensable all along. Lesson learned for me who is among those Bo Sanchez correctly calls the majority of Filipinos to be: "financially ignorant." I think that, if I only got rid of my bias against math as mere numerical hocus-pocus, I could have done the same calculations myself. After all, I, too, passed all my math subjects in school (almost) without cheating.