Her Rice Business Taught Money Management the Practical Way, Losses Included

In a first-person column published Oct. 10, 2026, in The Manila Times, a woman in the Philippines describes starting a small rice retailing business in April 2025 with ₱100,000 (about $1,700) in capital. Her goal was to give her mother the chance to leave her job and run a business of her own.¹

Most business plans name a product and a customer. This one also included a career change for somebody else. The writer says the point of the venture was her mother’s independence, with rice as the vehicle.¹

The column is her own account, and it offers no sales, profit or growth figures. It says the business had moments of loss along the way, so this is a story about getting started and keeping going, not a big payday.¹

What she says she learned

As a first-time owner, she writes, she found that having enough money to open was only one part of the journey.¹ Her column draws out a few habits:

• Save what you can. She says she learned to save whatever she could.¹
• Watch the money closely. She says she learned to manage her finances carefully.¹
• Start before you feel ready. One lesson the column draws is that you don’t need everything figured out before taking the first step.¹
• Trust small steps. She writes that small steps could become something bigger.¹

Where financing fits in

The column says the experience changed how she thinks about financial support. It describes access to appropriate financial resources as one of many tools that can help women entrepreneurs build and sustain their businesses.¹ That section is an argument for financing, and the column may be promoting a lender or a financing product.

The column frames the story around the role women-owned and women-led small and medium businesses play in Philippine entrepreneurship.¹ A separate Manila Times column cited a 2021 report finding that 66 percent of micro, small and medium enterprises in Southeast Asia are women-owned.³

A useful caution about small starts

Stories that begin with a modest sum are encouraging, and they can also leave things out. In a Manila Times column published in September, Reynaldo Lugtu Jr. argued that tales of launching a business on a small amount can mislead, because they often skip over family support and financial cushions that helped behind the scenes.²