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