6089 comments
2357 subscribers
6230 on Twitter
Subscribe! Feed reader E-mail

Microfinancing

Read technobiography: OT: Jun-jun the Parking Man and think about the poor.

I think microfinancing is a good idea, BUT it must also come with
financial education. Most people are financially illiterate. Heck, _I_
still don’t think I can start up just any company and make it
successful. People with little money have less education. They need
guidance and they need followup. They need to learn not to use
windfalls for consumption, but rather think of ways to make money with
it.

I wonder what would have happened if the group lent the money instead.
Edwin thinks it would have encouraged Jun-jun to use the money
responsibly, and I think so as well. It would be very tempting for
Jun-jun to go and buy things first and then just try to pay back the
loan, failing eventually because his income hadn’t increased
proportionately. He would need to be taught not to use the money to
buy things right away but rather put money into something that could
yield more money later—a bananacue business, if that isn’t saturated
yet.

But yes—you need to teach a man to fish.

What _would_ I do if I had extra cash? I should always keep business
ideas in mind so that I can take advantage of windfalls. I can save
extra money in the bank so that I can make decisions when I have more
money (an investment fund for myself). You need to have a certain
amount of money to take advantage of some opportunities. There are
also ways of making money on top of borrowed money, but I’m not
confident enough to risk that yet.

Tala’s recent “Argh” entry
inspired me, and one of the businesses I’d like to put up is an anger release place. ;)

Hmmm. You know, it _is_ actually a viable business idea. Buy cheap
plates, have people pay a small amount (cost of plate + small margin)
to draw faces on plates and SMASH THEM! SMASH SMASH SMASH SMASH!

You can also have stuffed toys for cuddling–or ripping the stuffing
out of! Mwahaha… Voodoo dolls and the like, too.

I wonder where we can put up a small shop like that. We can call it
“Rage” or something…

I remember reading about the business idea somewhere. It sounds like
something one can set up easily. Get satisfyingly fragile plates,
black markers, a punching bag, paper and tape (put faces on the
punching bag), cheap stuffed toys, maybe even a photoprinter after the
shop is successful (and scissors and lighters, too)… Set it all up, have space
so that you can throw things a satisfying distance, and market it as a
cheap way to protect your valuables from your tantrums! If my sister’s
anyone to go by, there’s a market for a place like that! ;)

On Technorati:

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/2675

On This Day...

  • 2013: Weekly review: Week ending March 22, 2013 — Lots and lots of drawing this week. =) Sketchnoted a conference, made a print, had lots of fun. Blog [...]
  • 2012: Ice cream season and the first seeds in the garden — It’s unseasonably warm by all accounts. The historic average for the next fourteen days is a high of 7C and [...]
  • 2011: The three argumenteers — (Or arguers, more correctly? But Argumenteers is a fun little reference.) Logos, ethos, and pathos. =) W- and I would like [...]
  • 2010: Presentation kaizen: Seven everyday ways to become a better presenter — Talk given at PresentationCamp. Presentation Kaizen View more presentations from Sacha Chua You need to have something worth presenting. Shortest [...]
  • 2010: How to brain-dump what you know — Why You’re going to need it. Why solve things twice? Write things down. You can save yourself the time it [...]
  • 2009: Drupal tip: Test mail sending with Devel — If you don’t want to send lots of mail to your users when you’re testing your site, change the Devel [...]
  • 2009: Outsourcing processes: Wake-up call — Here’s my process for my wake-up call: Every day, at the wake-up time I specified, please: Go to start.sachachua.com and sign in. Sign [...]
  • 2009: Wake up calls — I’m beginning to rather like wake-up calls. I set up a recurring task in Timesvr to have someone call me at [...]
  • 2007: Blogging: not just for extroverts — In the middle of my enthusiastic bubbling-over about IBM’s social software offerings, Hossam Ali-Hassan asked me, “Do bloggers tend to [...]
  • 2007: The magic of connection — There are many business reasons why social bookmarking makes sense, but let me tell you a personal story to show you [...]
  • 2007: It’s spring — Now I can believe that it’s spring. The sunlight is warm against my back. The sun gazes on me and I [...]
  • 2006: When it rains, it pours — Today (Thursday) is the area-level Toastmasters international speech contest. I don’t feel prepared for it at all. Unlike the other [...]
  • 2005: Traffic — Nagje-jaywalk na suso Nakita ko sa Quiapo Kay bilis nyang tumakbo Naunahan pa ako Thanks to Clair for getting tanaga into my head (I [...]
  • 2005: How to hire great people — joelonsoftware has interesting insights on hiring the best people. He pokes holes in hiring fallacies like super-selection: “We’re so good we [...]
  • 2005: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! — Hi Sacha, I just talked to the grad office. They were waiting for me to give my approval, oops. :) An offer [...]
  • 2004: MIT application — Deleted: Lost secret key.
  • 2004: Stanford: Stream data manager — http://www-db.stanford.edu/stream/index.html In applications such as network monitoring, telecommunications data management, web personalization, manufacturing, sensor networks, and others, data takes the form of continuous [...]
  • 2004: Using tla for archives — Look! I’m being used as an example! http://tkd.kicks-ass.net/planner/GnuArch.html That’s it, I’ve got to check out this checksumming thing… My name is [...]
  • 2004: Information retrieval course — http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~ian/irS01/ ../../notebook/plans/2004.03.23
  • 2004: School Bus — It’s not much, but if I don’t force myself to write, I might never get around to it. =) She glanced at [...]
  • 2004: cal-desk-calendar support for planner-diary.el — Travis B. Hartwell wrote: Hi all, I patched what I hope is the most recent version of planner-diary.el from tla to optionally utilize [...]
  • 2003: harvey chua — My mom wants to make sure her friends find her e-mail and our website. Harvey Chua
  • 2003: custom binding — I have bound keycode 131 to ( and keycode 129 to ) on my jp106 keyboard. 131 is the muhenkan [...]
  • 2003: deleting messages after N days — tips — I was somewhat apologetic about the lack of delete-after-N-days features in Linux mail clients, since my mom relies on that to [...]

Get the highlights as a PDF!

Stories from my Twenties: Highlights from a Decade of Blogging

Free sample!