Adulting 101: How I Grow My Money 💰

Hey friends, previously I shared about how I allocate my monthly savings and today I’m gonna dive more into investments! These are all investment tips that I learnt over the past few years to grow my money 🌱 & hopefully it’ll help you in your finance journey too!

1) Fixed Deposit / T-Bills 🏦

-with rising interest rates in sg, it’s definitely worthwhile parking your emergency cash into bank’s fixed deposits or govt treasury bills! You’re basically placing your funds for a fixed tenor & interest rate, and at the end of the tenor, you’ll get back your principal + interest. Interest rates are currently around 4% p.a, which is about $400 interest for $10k of savings 🤑

Applicable for: short-term goals e.g wedding, housing, renovation

& don’t worry if you have to break your FD, cause there’s no penalty involved except that you’ll forfeit the interest!

Apply for a fixed deposit account at your preferred bank & select your desired tenor. It can be done online as well, super fuss free!

2) Endowment Plan 💰

-this was something I decided when I started my full time job. Parked $200/month into an endowment plan that’s suppose to yield 3%~ when the plan matures once I reach 50.

Applicable for: long-term goals e.g children, retirement

On hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have chose such a long tenure but then again it’s just $200/month and ultimately this sum is for my retirement and it definitely beats saving in an ordinary bank account.

Do note that you’d have to commit to it fully and there is a penalty if you break halfway! That’s the only drawback imo, but this also serves for me to stay rooted to my goal 🎯

3) Unit Trust & Stocks 📈

-started investing during the Covid period and I’ve had my fair share of ups and downs. Investing in unit trusts and stocks are definitely riskier and requires active monitoring on your end. When you start investing, you’re basically buying into a counter at the current unit price & are hoping for the price to go up!! However if it goes down, then you’d have to ask if you have the capacity to hold and wait it out for the price to recover. I do have a few funds and stocks that are still in the red >2 years 💀

Unit Trusts are basically funds that invests into lots of diff companies with your money. It’s super transparent & you’re paying a fee for the fund managers to manage the fund. Started on this with my POSB iBanking under the Investments section & selected the funds of my choice!

Stocks are individual companies that you’re investing into, and for beginners I’d recommend going for blue chip companies, such as banks. This is a pretty safe bet as the 3 local banks are more resilient in SG’s market and are not as volatile as the US market.

💁🏻‍♂️ One pro-tip I’ve learnt is to not be greedy!!! Your investments may be in the green today but it can also flip the next day. So set an amount that you’re happy with and once you’ve reached that level, sell it off to realize your profits!

Hope that this beginner guide helps all of you out there who are looking for ways to GROW YOUR MONEY!! 🌱 drop any questions you may have and I’d do my best to answer! 😉 keep hustling!

#lemon8finance #Adulting101 #financesg #tipsandtricks #hacks #moneyhacks