It’s Philippine Labor Day weekend, a time to honor the hardworking people who keep this country moving.

At Dream Bigger, we extend that honor to those who are choosing to get uncomfortable and build something new that will bless the world.

If that's you, we're running 50% off Dream Bigger Membership through May 3 only for aspiring and early-stage Filipino entrepreneurs ready to go from idea to impact.

Claim your spot at dreambigger.ph/laborday.

Now, on to this issue. It's about money.

Most of us grew up hearing the same things about money.

Mag-aral ka nang mabuti para makakuha ng magandang trabaho. Study hard, get a good job. Magtipid ka. Save what you can. "Money can't buy happiness."

All true. All well-meaning. And all missing something.

Nobody taught us how money actually moves. Nobody explained the difference between a salary and a system.

The talent and work ethic in the Philippines has never been the problem. What's often missing is the language and mindset — a way of thinking about money that opens doors instead of just helping you get through the month.

That's what this issue is about.

— Christeen

Here’s what I’m learning about the financial condition of Filipino consumers and their inclusion in the financial system.

On financial know-how: According to the 2014 S&P Global Financial Literacy Survey (still the most widely cited benchmark), only 1 in 4 Filipino adults is considered financially literate, placing the Philippines in the bottom 30% of all countries surveyed.   

On bank access: Real progress has been made and then stalled. The share of Filipino adults with a financial account jumped from 29% in 2019 to 56% in 2021, a historic leap driven largely by the pandemic's push toward digital payments. But the gains didn't hold. By 2025, individual account ownership had slipped back to 50% (BSP 2025 Consumer Finance and Inclusion Survey). Half the country is still outside the formal financial system.

On borrowing: When people need quick cash and can't get a bank loan, they turn to whoever will say yes including a “5-6” lender — borrow ₱5, pay back ₱6, an effective interest rate of 20% per transaction. Approximately 2% of Filipino adults still borrow from informal 5-6 lenders, even though the practice is illegal. That may sound small but applied to an adult population of 75.6 million, it represents over 1.5 million people. And for those families, the debt trap is real.  

On financial resilience: 3 in 10 Filipino adults report that their current finances or savings would last through an emergency up only slightly from 28% in 2021. If they lost their income, only 48% could cover living expenses for at least one month without resorting to borrowing. Investment participation has fallen sharply — from 36% in 2021 to just 23% in 2025 — reflecting constrained disposable income and limited risk appetite. Families are focused on getting through this month, not building for the next decade.

Ten years ago, less than a third of Filipinos had a bank account. Today, two apps are changing that faster than almost anything else.

The numbers are genuinely historic. Before the pandemic, less than 1% of Filipinos had access to investments and only 2% held a credit card. As of January 2025, GCash reported 81 million active users, 9 in 10 from lower-income households, nearly 8 in 10 from outside Metro Manila. It's not just a payments app anymore. GCash now has 15.3 million users saving through GSave and 8.6 million investing through GFunds. Its insurance arm, GInsure, sold 132.6 million policies in 2025, nearly triple the year before. And its lending arm, Fuse Financing, has released ₱362 billion in loans to 10.5 million borrowers, up 65% from 2024.

Maya is taking a different approach. Instead of going wide, Maya went deep, making saving feel rewarding through high interest rates tied to everyday use. Users who transact regularly can earn a boosted rate of up to 15% per year on their first ₱100,000 in savings, far above the sub-1% offered by most traditional banks. It works: Maya reports that user balances more than double within a year and triple within two. By mid-2025, Maya was serving 8.2 million bank customers with ₱50 billion in deposits and ₱152 billion in total loans since launch. Over half of Maya's borrowers are getting their very first formal loan through the app. 

But access and behavior are different things. The BSP (Philippine central bank) concludes in its 2025 Consumer Finance and Inclusion Survey:

Having the app is step one. Knowing what to do with it is another story.

After graduating from UP Manila, Eric Wong thought he'd serve as a missionary. Instead, he felt God directing him into the marketplace. For the past decade, he's been building Bridge Southeast Asia from the inside starting as a product manager, growing into executive leadership roles, and along the way serving on the board of a nonprofit supporting children and youth at risk in the Philippines.

Today, he serves as the CEO of Bridge Access, a workplace financial wellness solution designed to protect the people who need it most. 

Bridge Access partners with Philippine companies to give employees access to low-interest salary loans, salary advances, insurance, and savings tools through a simple app. Because repayment is tied directly to payroll, default risk drops and that's the point. Lower risk means lower interest rates, which means workers can actually repay what they borrow without getting trapped in a cycle of debt. Every design decision is intentional: keep the rates as low as possible, keep the process simple, keep people moving forward.

But the bigger question driving Eric and his team is: how might we help Filipino borrowers become savers and eventually, wealth builders? Salary loans are the starting point, not the destination. Bridge Access is already building toward that next step, designing its product so that every worker who gets access today has a pathway to something more tomorrow.

Learn more at bridgeaccess.life

Most Filipinos are taught to study hard, and get a good job. Robert Kiyosaki's Cash Flow Quadrant provides simple language to expand our understanding of how to make money.

Four ways to earn: Employee (you work for a company), Self-employed (you work for yourself), Business owner (a team works for you), Investor (your money works for you). No quadrant is better than another. Each is a different relationship between your time and your income.

Knowing where you are helps you make clearer decisions. That's it.

But here's the important thing to remember: generosity is available from any quadrant. It's not a reward for reaching a certain income level. It's a heart posture.

And it's rarely just money. It's your time, your knowledge, a connection, an open door, an encouraging word to someone who needed it that day.

An invitation: Which quadrant are you in and what's one way you can practice generosity from exactly that place?

Reply and tell me. I read every response.

How Might We? is published every other Friday. To share this with someone building, hiring, investing in, or dreaming bigger for the Philippines — forward this email.