Fresh Grad with some questions on personal finances. Hoping to get some insights!

Hi. I am graduating soon and currently sorting out my finances. I have a couple of questions to clarify. I have decide to segregate my finances into 2 accounts:

1) For Salary & Savings (DBS Multiplier)

2) For Expenditure

I was wondering,

1) Is it ok to combine salary and savings account?

2) which account do I use to pay my bills etc?

3) What bank should I use for the expenditure account?

4) I want to incorporate a credit card. How should I include it in my plan?

Thank you!

DBS/POSB Multiplier Account

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Lee Whee Sheng

06 Jul 2022

Hi Hubert,

Congratulations on graduating!

i would advice getting 3 bank accounts - 1 for salary crediting, 1 for spendings and 1 for savings. Personally i use OCBC for salary crediting, DBS for spendings as there's no min balance for My Account and Stand Chart for my savings. I chose a foreign bank for savings as ATMs are hard to come by.

I personally feel this is an easier way to track AND control your spendings as you will only have a certain amount of money to spend in your "spending account".

As a fresh graduate, you probably won't have that many bills to pay for. Thus any debit card/account to pay your bills will suffice as your main focus should be on saving and stashing away as much money as you can for bigger expenses later on in life - marriage, house, house reno, kids etc.

In my humble opinion, putting all your attention on 1% cashbacks will NOT make you wealthy. Always look at credit cards as a "loan" from the bank - why do you want to get a "loan" from the bank as soon as you graduate? Your main focus should be cutting down on spendings and not trying to meet the min spendings on a certain card or account to get that small amount of cashback/reward points.

Wishing you all the best in your financial journey.

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Justin

Edited 06 Jul 2022

Content Strategist at Seedly

Hey Hubert!

1) It is good practice to separate your savings and spending into different accounts. For me, I believe that a separate account doesn't have to be a bank account. Plus, many banks want you to spend using one account for more interest anyways.

2) As for bills, if it is non-GIRO, I'll figure out which account/card can give me the best rebates.

3) I personally segregate my spending money into GrabPay and crypto.com's VISA card to earn some cashback. I try to use Paylah where possible too to bump my interest to 0.55% p.a.

4) I use the UOB absolute cashback (no min spend and cashback on virtually anything) as I'm a cashback/value kind of person without high spending. This really depends on your own lifestyle! I recommend doing some research to see which card suits you so you can get the most out of your spending.

Hope that helps :)

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