Why SG men should start saving early
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4 Reasons Why Singaporean Men Should Start Saving Money Early
You know what people say about boys maturing slower than girls? Boys stick to their toys when they are little. When they become working young men and are able to afford things for themselves, they not only stick to but also constantly upgrade their fancy gadgets. Shiny game consoles or turbo-charged computers - all the stuff that doesn't come cheap, men want it.
Young men also spend a lot of money to impress friends, particularly females, but never seem to be worried about whether they have any savings. They impress their way through life as though they could fund their lifestyle forever.
But seriously, if you are a young man in your early career, you should start saving money today. Your lifestyle is not going to stay the same forever!
As the focus of your life shifts, you will need to save money for a lot of more important things in your near future. You will also want to prepare for rainy days.
At GET.com, we've come up with the 4 main things you need to consider before you spend your money recklessly:
1. Engagement
You can wait until 35 or even 40 years old to get married.
Compared to women, there's not that much pressure on you if you stay single that long. But unless you are determined to be a bachelor for life or retire to a monastery, you will probably get married at some point in time.
And who knows when your dream girl might just turn up?
When that time comes, the first big thing you need to spend on is not your wedding, it's the engagement ring for your future wife.
What kind of woman doesn't like diamonds - those sparkling stones which are supposed to be rare but there's always a glut of them and they are always overpriced.
Believe it or not, women use the size of the engagement ring to measure how much you love them (yes, they deny it - but believe me dude, they do!).
If you are naive enough to think your fiancee is probably not the stereotypical stone-loving woman, try your luck and ask her if she likes Meghan Trainor's song "Dear Future Husband" (she sings proudly "Buy-buy me a ring!").
2. Wedding
The big wedding is the next thing you need to keep in mind.
Don't even bother to ask your future wife if she's ok with having a wedding at a roadside restaurant. You will even have a hard time trying to convince yourself.
A wedding ceremony with a big budget is almost a must, because that's your face on the line. None of your friends or your wife's friends are going to pour praises on you for your frugality.
Yes, I know you can use your credit card to buy a huge diamond ring and pay it back by instalment, even with 0% interest. You can also call the bank to temporarily raise your credit limit so you can fund your wedding banquet with a credit card. You can then pay it back with your Ang Bao.
But a wedding always involves a lot of things and you shouldn't expect everything to go smoothly according to plan.
When the time comes, you will be thankful to have some savings you can use to pay for some of the cost upfront, or to make up for the difference if the total cost goes over your budget.
3. Raising A Child
We are lucky to receive subsidies from the government for raising children. The baby bonus and the subsidies for child care can help you offset some of the cost, but don't depend on the subsidies for everything.
There's the medical cost of regular check-ups during your wife's pregnancy and then the delivery.
Add to that a ton of things you are going to buy for your baby, and you begin to see how some extra money could come in handy at that stage in your life.
4. Rainy Days
You might think you are still young and that as long as you take decent care of yourself, you will always have your health. But you'll meet surprises - pleasant or unpleasant - at every turn of your life.
In this fast-paced society, things change fast. So don't get too comfortable even if you are working for a big company.
What we have learned from the past is that despite the fact that Singapore's economy is highly developed, it also has its vulnerabilities. When a crisis hits, even big shots have difficulty hanging on to their jobs.
You can use credit cards in a smart way to help you get that engagement ring, pay for a wedding or raise a child. But you won't be able to use them when you lose your health or your job.
So start saving money as early as you can, you never know when the rainy days will come.
>Make it a habit to save money and look at it as your insurance for whatever financial challenges that might come up. You will thank yourself someday.
This article was originally on the GET.com blog at: 4 Reasons Why Singaporean Men Should Start Saving Money Early .
#thehorror
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good info ^^
