My name is Romie Cahucom. I am an avid student of investment, an OFW micro-investor and an investment literacy advocate for OFWs, their families and for Filipinos who want to improve their lot. I founded the OFW Investors Society (OFWINS) in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in year 2000 to pursue my advocacy. The organization regularly conducted savings and investment seminars in the Kingdom’s Central and Western Regions. I left the Kingdom in 2003 and some of my friends and colleagues took over OFWINS and picked up where I left.
Although not an OFW anymore in a strict sense, I consider myself a lifetime OFW. My wife was an OFW and my kids were born in the Kingdom to OFW parents. I think, feel and breath the pained and sometimes fiery breath of an OFW. The blood of an OFW runs in my veins.
One may agree or disagree with my thoughts in this blog but I swear in Heaven’s name, that these thoughts evolved from years of licking my cracked and sunburnt lips in the desert sands of Arabia and from devouring hundreds of investment books to ease and alleviate the loneliness of being an OFW. While I have been passionately involved in many OFW issues, and have been very active in OFW organizations, there is nothing that excites me more than OFW investment literacy.
I am a former banker, a former long-time financial analyst and one-time Legislative Officer and Executive Assistant of a Senator. I was Senior Relationship Manager of a major Saudi bank by the time I left the Kingdom. Now, I do some financial consulting work and maintain a modest portfolio in fixed income while maintaining the itch to get back into mutual funds and the stock market. I finished Business Management from the University of the Philippines.
Pingback: Why We Need a Comprehensive OFW Economic Reintegration Legislation? « Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) Empowerment