Hi, i’m currently serving national service with about $500-1000 of spare cash. I’m looking for short term investments. any suggestions? I’m also currently investing in etherum. any thoughts?

Hi anon, there are many great answers that already answers your question. Thus, I would like to offer an alternative insight. I would suggest that you should invest for the longer term and not look to make quick profits.

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Considering that you are in National Service, I will be making a few assumptions that you do not have much savings. Thus, while ethereum may have extremely high potential returns, it may not be suitable for you.

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here are some alternatives that you can consider

If you do not need the money in the near term, dollar cost average into an ETF tracking the S&P500 or world index. this will give u decent growth over a long period.

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However, if you need some dividend payout, I would recommend investing in a REIT etf or singapore blue-chips.

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Alternatively, you can opt for a mix of the two (like 70-30, 60-40 ot 50-50 allocation)

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If you really need the money in the next few years and cannot afford to lose anything, stick with kenneth's suggestions.

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As I am unclear about your investment objectives, I am merely giving you suggestions based on my experience, choose something that you are comfortable with and matches your objectives. hope this helps!

Hi anonymous,

So many questions, dude.

Without knowing what you mean by short-term (1 year? 2 years? 5 years?) and looking at the fact that you have $500 to $1,000 (is this all the money that you're ever going to invest? or are you looking at a lump sum kind of option?) and you're investing in Ethereum (a cryptocurrency)...

I'm gonna guess that you're looking at financial instruments which you can grow your money quickly within the next 1 to 2 years? Probably for life after NS? Maybe to fund your studies or as allowance.

Since you're going with short-term, I'm going to leave out stocks and bonds because that's a much longer-term game.

Note: the following suggestions are purely my own opinion, so make sure you do your due diligence before getting into any of them!

1) High-interest savings account

I know. Not the most popular now given the low-interest rates, and the banks cutting them too.

So if I would go for a high interest savings account, I'll choose something that's fuss-free. Meaning I don't need to credit my salary, pay 5,000 bills, and invest 2 arms and a leg just to get a pittance of a bonus interest.

And since you're in NS, you should be below 26 years old. This means you can qualify for the Standard Chartered JumpStart account (1% p.a. on the first $20k).

There's no minimum daily balance to be met too and no fall-below fee. So if you want something fuss-free. This is probably it.

2) Fixed deposits

With $1,000, your best bet would be DBS. It's 1.3% p.a. for 18 months.

3) Short-term endowment plan

You could go with the SingLife Account.

They're offering up to 2.5% p.a. for the first $10k. That's pretty decent given this low-interest rate environment we're in right now. Take note that the returns are non-guaranteed tho, and they are calculated daily but credited monthly (you can login everyday and literally watch your money grow).

The best part is that you can set everything up online so you don't have to go down to the bank or whatever.

Oh, there's also Dash EasyEarn (1.5% p.a. guaranteed + 0.5% p.a. bonus for first year) but the minimum deposit is $2,000. So that's out of the question for you.

Alternatively there's Gigantiq by Etiqa (min $50) which gives you 1% p.a. guaranteed + 1% p.a. bonus for the first year.

If you're interested, we did a comparison between all three.

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