Basketball and building wealth in the Philippines

Before anything else, let me make it clear: I love basketball. I play the game 3x a week. It is one of my greatest passions in life. However, i feel time is beginning to catch up on me. One day soon, i'll be saying goodbye to the sport. But not before i give the Filipino youngsters out there a piece of my mind. 

"one of my personal joys"

The Pinoy male reader will definitely relate to this post. The female ones, my apologies if you cannot. 

Something’s really wrong with the below scenario:

Almost everyday at around 3pm, a group of  basketball playing guys travel to an unfamiliar barangay to look for worthy opponents. This is called “dayo”, in street language. Normally, the hosts (the ones dinayo) would agree to play but with a bet, to which the visitors (the dayo) accept as this is their intention in the first place – to try to win games so as to bring home cash.

So the exciting game begins.
Hence and forth they run and pass and shoot and run again and pass again and shoot again. Every once in a while, somebody gets hurt from a bad foul committed either intentionally or not. Eventually, a team wins, and takes home cash. P100 in coins and bills perhaps? Or if lucky, twice that (P200), with each player getting his share of either P20 or P40.

On their way back home, assuming they win, they pay P10 pesos each for fare (note, before that, they have invested already, an initial P10 each for their fare going to the “dinayong” place. But before they go their separate ways to return to their wives and kids (I’m talking grown men here), they couldn’t resist the call of the nearby sari-sari store for a round of softdrinks. Here they talk about the details of that recently won game – how good teamwork they had; how good the best player was, etc. Eventually, they settle for gin and pulutan. Of course, the packs of cigarettes had to be present too. They contribute P20 each for this victory treat. Anyway in their minds, they won a very hard-fought game, and made cash out of it.

Then they go home finally around 8-9pm. The next day, they do it all over again, hoping maybe a fortune awaits them if they continue doing this for a long time.

What’s wrong with it? Everything. You do not waste time, energy and resources for stuff like this. You do not risk getting hurt or injured for stuff like this. There is a lot more ways you can earn your P20 than that. It’s just so wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

My point? Stop wasting time, guys. And girls, make sure your men do not fall to this trap. Value your time, coz what they say about time being gold is true. The real goal in life is to build wealth to be financially free. If your time gets wasted that much, or your strength, or your resources, quite soon, you’ll end up poorer than before. I’m not even talking life-changing injuries here.

So there. Our lesson for the day.

You see, in the Philippines (at least for the most of us), it takes more than lectures to educate people on Wealth Creation. There are socially-related matters we almost always FAIL to point out. The journey towards the millionaire's mindset will have to begin from the very basic stuff. We all need to make that U-turn: differentiate early in our lives what is important, and what is not. Only then can we effect changes.       

PS

I play basketball for the sole purpose of exercising my body, and relaxing my mind. I do not bet. I hate it when my teammates or opponents require bets. 

Pass the word, people. Betting is bad. Wasting time is bad.