Hi all, I am serving my NS and now my dad is about to lose his job due to covid 19. I have 12k savings and some emergency funds. I am looking into investing in unit trust/funds. Are bond funds good?

The need is rather contradictory. If you are certain that you can hold it for 5-8 years without helping out, you can take the stand that losing the job will not affect you financially.

But if you intend to use it as a dire emergency because you foresee that a job search might require a longer time frame, will 2% per annum really make much of a difference? You will be better served looking for alternative sources of income as compared to depending on investing to solve immediate cash flow needs.

If you are in the middle ground, the answers provided are sufficient to give you options. If you are really concerned, holding cash for a year might be better until you can better assess the situation.

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Since you might require liqudity on your funds, I would strongly suggest going for singlife. Standing at about 2% now, there's no withdrawal fee, interest is compounded monthly as well.

First 10k into Singlife with 2% interest(as of November 2020). Then DCA the rest into a solid Index Fund such as ACWI or SPY/VOO.

Do NOT go and get yourself some savings plan that will lock your money up for the next 5+ years (I made that mistake).

Read up on individual stocks while you're in NS, in the meantime, as mentioned above, slowly DCA into an index fund.

Invest safely! :)

No, maybe high interest cash account is better for this possible short term provisioning.

if bond funds then only ETFs, never mutual funds. no high yield ETFs either (risky!

good luck to your father and you, he can be proud of you given your will to support him.

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