From ‘Loan-doon’ to London
One of my dreams is to shop without checking the price.
Even now that I live overseas, I still check prices. I wish I could stop checking the prices when I go grocery shopping at M&S. My girlfriend often reminds me that we are not in the Philippines. After living in England for over a year now, I still convert British pounds to Philippine pesos. I can’t help but convert and compare. For example, bottled water costs 1 pound here while it only costs P20 (0.30 pennies) in the Philippines.
Growing up in a single-income household together with my four siblings, I understood at an early age how hard and important it is to manage money. At a young age, the word loan became familiar because, at times when our family fell behind on the bills, my mother relied on them.
When I told my sister-in-law that we were moving to England, she jokingly said that she and Ma always visit London. I wasn’t sure if I would burst into tears or laugh because I understood what she meant. She was referring to “Loan-doon.” For teachers like my mother and sister-in-law, London isn’t London. Sometimes, it’s a combination of the English word “loan” and Filipino word “doon” (there). When I was young, I didn’t understand what a loan was. To me, it was something good because we would get money from it.
“Utang” is the Filipino word for loan. I knew since young that utang was something borrowed and had to be returned but I didn’t realize that loan was the same as utang. I knew utang because we had a list of utang at my aunt’s sari-sari store.
When we didn’t have rice or ulam, my mother often asked me or my siblings to borrow food supplies from my aunt. For me, utang was like borrowing and returning. I didn’t know that when we borrowed food supplies, there was this mutual agreement that there would be an interest—an additional payment equivalent to the agreed percentage of the borrowed goods. My mother used to repay our utang on her payday. I misunderstood utang then; I didn’t know about interest rates. I thought it was just borrowing and paying when we got the money for it.
The loan process before was extremely slow. Ma needed to take a day off from work or process her loan on a Saturday because it took half a day to do it, plus the two hours of commute time back and forth from our house to the loan center in a nearby city. I was always excited when Ma would tell me that we were going to the nearby city because I knew what our agenda was. We didn’t usually go to the nearby city unless we needed to. To me, it was like a fun excursion that was different from my mundane weekends. We would go to the loan center early because we needed to queue together with other loan applicants.
After finally getting the money from the bank, we would usually go for a late lunch at a carinderia or sometimes fast-food, which felt like a luxury. We would also go for a quick grocery shopping for essential goods and then wait at the bus stop before finally heading home.
Having been exposed to the loan process when I was young, I was ignorant of the concept of savings. Savings were only for those people who had extra money to spare. In school, I learned the saying “Kapag may isinuksok, may madudukot” which literally means when you tuck something away, there will be something to retrieve later. But I didn’t understand the meaning of it because we didn’t practice saving money as a family. Our budget as a family came from my Ma’s salary and my Pa’s part-time jobs. We didn’t have extra money for savings because the money my parents earned was just enough or sometimes a little bit behind. It was really difficult back then.
I can’t imagine how my parents managed all of the expenses needed to raise me and my siblings.
I believe that a child matures quite fast when they understand their parents’ struggles. The situation I was in certainly molded me into the person I am today. Nevertheless, I am so lucky to have been raised by my parents, giving their all. I’m so thankful for the loan center my mother and I went to.
Everything looks better now that I’m an adult—we no longer borrow food supplies, fast-food doesn’t feel like a luxury anymore because we can afford to go to fancy restaurants, we can spare money for savings and we no longer rely on loans. I owe my younger self this aspiration to be financially stable by my standards.
Although I get to walk past London Bridge often, I still carry with me the experience I had when my Ma and I went to “Loan-doon.” It’s a memory engraved at the back of my head. I hope I’ll save enough money in the future and be able to buy goods without looking at the price. How I wish I could win the lottery.
For now, I hope that I’ll stop moaning about how expensive everything is nowadays. And I’ll continue to convert the pound to peso.
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Gio Cortez, 26, is a young professional who recently moved to England with his girlfriend. He enjoys cooking, mobile games, and traveling.
