Hey guys, T here.
I hope everyone have been staying safe out there recently. Since I have been stuck at home and had a little time on my hand, I decided to write a little continuation from my previous post, and elaborate on how I started building up my savings when I was serving my national service.
As a preface, I would like to add that I did not assume a leadership role as an NSF, and my vocation was non-combat as well, hence my pay was the lowest one would get as an NSF. I believe being discipline with my spending gave allowed me to emerge with a rather healthy amount of savings. I also did managed to travel twice (albeit in Southeast Asia) and ordered food into camp occasionally.
This is budget that I have been sticking with for quite a while:
Spendings (incl. Transport, Food etc.) : $260
Savings: $200
POSB InvestSaver: $100
*Stashaway: $100
*I only begin my contribution to Stashaway recently after the allowance of NSFs was recently increased.
Before I enlisted, there were many people, including friends and insurance agents, who told me it was really difficult to save up after BMT, with the temptations of ordering in and eating at canteens etc.
Hence, I realised that I had to make it work by making my savings ‘disappear’ at the start of every month. Whenever I receive my allowance, I would transfer my savings immediately into my savings account (CIMB Fastsaver), and I also made an arrangement for my bank to automatically transfer the $100 to Stashaway every month on my payday. Thus, leaving only my budget for spendings and the $100 I have allocated for my POSB InvestSaver(which will automatically be withdrawn on the 15th of every month) in my bank account. For my POSB InvestSaver, I put in $100 every month to buy the STI on a dollar cost-averaging basis.
Furthermore, I was able to save up more as I was a stay-in personnel, hence my spendings on food and transport were really low. Even so, I was not perfect with my savings and have needed to transfer money over from my savings account to my spending account a couple of times, but this method of allocating my money serves as a good visual reminder whenever I was running low on money towards the end of the month, that I was possibly overspending beyond my means.
Another tip I would offer those of you who are just starting out on your journey, would be to meticulously take down every one of your spendings for the first few months. While this was really tedious for me, it was important for me to find out exactly where my money was going to, so I could find out where I should cut down my spendings. Without this knowledge, I would be doing so blindly, cutting down on my expenses with no real plan.
While I was never perfect with my savings, these tips managed to allowed me to save up to a healthy amount during NS, even after going on 2 overseas trips in between.
O: As a side note on top of T's account of saving during NS. I also used the POSB SaveAsYouServe to enjoy a higher interest rate. They offer interest rate up till 2% on the account. However, one is not able to take the money saved inside for the period of 2 years. You can experiment the interest earned with the calculator that they provided: https://www.posb.com.sg/personal/deposits/savings-accounts/says
You can also change the amount of savings to be put in as your allowance increases through your NS.
Furthermore, the SAFRA DBS Debit Card also offer rebates of up to 2% (contactless spending), with no minimum spending (specially for NSFs). You can redeem the cashback by converting the SAFRA points to cash on the DBS ibanking website.
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