The Frugal Celebrity: Give up the glam, buy a house in the US Edition

GMA artist Kris Bernal and her sister in her ~$600k California home. 

Working in the media and entertainment industry exposed me to how it was pretty much a boom and bust situation. When it's good, it's really good. You get projects left and right and one after the other, then it's forty years wandering the desert and the seven plagues the next. Since it's the first industry I worked in, I learned early how to budget my money, how to make it last until the next payday which may be a month, or two, or six months away. Who knows. 

That's why when it comes up in the news, I always have a soft spot for people who can forgo the trappings of celebrity--buying all the designer goodies, #travelgoals, the big muscle cars--and scrape and save for a future when the spotlight is no longer trained on them. One of the first entries on my blog when I returned to blogging was about Scottie Thompson, who saved up his basketball money to put up his own business. 

Recently, there's Kris Bernal, a GMA artist who saved by not hiring a glam team and driving herself to work and then using that savings to buy a house in West Covina, California. Primarily, she got the house because she has a sister working there as a nurse who then fell ill and Kris Bernal thought it would be nice if her sister didn't have to think of making rent on top of health concerns. 

Bernal often taped three times a week, especially if working on a soap opera, and having a glam team--stylist, make up artist, hair stylist--and a driver to bring her to work and back home, are considered necessities. But what gave her pause was how much having this team would cost her in the long run. "Pag inipon mo kasi yun, its very expensive, e." She pegged the driver's salary in a month at PHP10,000, that adds up to PHP600,000 for five years. Add to that the salary of a stylist and a hair and makeup artist. So that makes the celebrity life really expensive indeed. 

She put her money in a time deposit so that she wouldn't be tempted to spend it. (Of course, I think that time deposits don't really do much, but hey, if it worked for her, you do you, ate.) She built her savings for a decade. Recently, she also opened a Korean BBQ restaurant. "Hindi siya ano, na bigla na lang dumami ang pera ko. Hindi nila alam na sobrang tipid ko, as in ang dami kong tinipid at tiniis para lang mabili ko itong bahay, mapatayo ko itong House of Gogi, yung ganun." 

She bought the house in April 2018, and according to Zillow, modern-minimalist home has a lot size of 3,750 square feet and a floor area of 2,022 square feet. Pep.ph, which ran the article, found out that "four-bedroom homes in West Covina are priced from $500,000 to $600,000." So Ms. Bernal's five bedroom home with a loft cost her around $603,000 or PHP32,121,207. If she saved for it for a decade, she was putting aside ~Php3M/year. She's right to be proud of her purchase. Really frugal indeed. 

That's around PHP26M to PHP31M.But based on our research, the house was

Top 10 Highest Paying Jobs in the Philippines

The Department of Labor and Employment recently bared a list for the highest paying jobs in the country. It was based on the study made by the Bureau of Local Employment, and they defined the current Pinoy workforce as made up of "young, creative and dynamic people." 

I was not surprised that "geologist" made it to #2. There aren't that many geology majors in the country,  which makes their rarity and brand of expertise extremely prized. (I know or knew one geologist in real life.  He died. But when he was alive, his consultancy fees from mining and oil companies certainly were his bread and butter--not the teaching job he held at the university. Anyway, RIP Geologist. But don't worry, kids, his death had nothing to do with rocks. Science is cool; geology rocks!) 

But I certainly wasn't counting on "art director" to be on top of the list. So what does an art director do, exactly? The BLE has an answer: 

"[A]rt directors in the film industry typically work with production designers and serve as the head of the art department. He attends production meetings, oversees the film sets and special effects, supervises the production staff, and is responsible for allocating and maximizing the budget for the art department.

It added that depending on the qualifications and experience, art directors could earn a monthly salary of as much as P70,000, particularly those who work in big budget films."

Again, I've worked in that creative industry and production designers earn enough to buy a van and a house with nine rooms. But that is for someone who has worked for a long time, so this is not necessarily true for everyone. Perhaps the rates are different in commercials, but film and television, probably not as much. This somehow makes me consider the veracity of the BLE's study. 

If you would look at the list carefully, almost all the jobs require a very specific area of expertise which most likely requires higher education. The bare minimum would be a college course with a healthy dosage of science and math (geologist, pilot, mining/metallurgical engineer*, statistician, system analyst, computer programmer.**) 

DOLE Secretary Baldoz admits as much, that "the salaries and jobs identified are not entry-level wages. She says, “The compensation are obtained after years of work experience and after attaining some level of competency, as most employers in the identified industries would require. Also, occupants of these high-paying positions need to have bachelor’s degrees related to the field, at the very least." You can't just apply and say, I can do that. It needs real skills and a diploma. Imagine if your surgeon says he studied heart bypass operations in the internet. You wouldn't trust him with a cross-stitching needle, what more your heart. 

I might be wrong with this, but I think "General foreman" is a job you can learn from the ground up. You still need (construction?) skills and then build on that experience. 

Of all the top jobs, "call center agent" is the most free-wheeling. A decade ago, call centers (or BPOs) were just starting to get attention. They recruited college graduates who knew how to operate computers. But mostly, one must have a command of English. Accents are neutralized, and because Pinoys are great mimics, so that's a piece of cake. Also, you need a great deal of patience. You guide people through what needs to be solved, and there will be "irate callers" who will demand to talk to the manager and a hefty refund. 

It's a nice job to have if you don't mind the tedium and the hours--you have to follow Eastern or European time. It fills the bread basket and gives young people a job. But what happens when you no longer want to be a vampire on night shift? What other options are often? 

I might be the last person to champion a skills-only education, but now I can also recognize that not everyone needs to go to college. We put such a high premium on a college diploma that we lose sight of the fact that a country can't all be made up of desk slaves. But we've had enough of by-the-numbers people. We can't be all accountants.  Look where bureaucracy has brought us. If not everyone has the aptitude to study rocks, then we need to push technical vocational courses. 

And yes, we do need artists and poets and historians. But that's for telling the story later. If there's an apocalypse, what will happen to us? For that, we need people who know how to build bridges, operate heavy machinery, cultivate crops so we won't go hungry, save lives in case of emergencies. For that we need our scientists and skilled laborers. 

But we can't all be singing when the ships go down. Some of us would have to use labor and skill, some need math and sharp logic, some will have to write it all down. So really, a well-rounded education still wins the game for the country. 

*Entering college, I knew two people from my school who elected "metallurgical engineer" as their major and we were all, "What is the hell is that?" Later, the guy spent a lot of his time in a rig in the middle of the sea. 

**Some people would argue that all it needs is a decent computer and the internet and in the spirit of free knowledge sharing, one could learn to code and program on one's own. But in a country that has STI and AMA colleges on every corner, I would like to think that people go to school for that as well. Also note that most computer colleges boast of programs where they have E2E or enrolment to employment protocols, ie, they guarantee that you can get a job immediately afterwards. It won't be a well rounded education, but most people don't go to college now just "to learn." And that's sad.