I'm already 27 years old but compared to my peers, my savings are very very low, feeling abit desperate to grow my savings, anyone has any advice pls!

One way that I use to build up my savings is the concept of "paying myself first."
I started saving 10% of my income before CPF contribution when I first started working. I transferred those funds into a savings account which I have no access to. No ATM card.
When I see the savings account grow, I started to save more and more aggressively till 30% of my income. This strategy works well for me and I manage to save and work within my budget.
Budgeting is tiring. But when you pay yourself first and budget with the rest of the funds, you will be able to find more joy seeing your account grow. This will motivate you to save more.

If you want to supercharge your savings, perhaps your food and entertainment can cut down.

Simple example calculation here: Lunch $5 + Dinner $5 =$10 a day. 30 Days, $300.

Why didn't count breakfast? Buy a loaf of bread + butter or peanut butter, even nutella also can. 1 Week 1 loaf of bread = about $2 a week.

You need some entertainment, maybe a movie a week $10. Restaurant don't eat so expensive, can go those $20-30 range.
I think you can cut down your $800 food/entertainment as a single. No starbucks, no bubble teas :)

I read to the answers of the others before replying. Most of what they say is right. One way to cut a large cut out of your expense is to move to a place with lesser rent. Think a room rent in HDB flat, in say Yishun or Sengkang is about $400-500. But this is subject to your current contract.

I’m assuming your Budget above is not what you’ve been spending but what you are proposing cause if you have followed it you would have saved more than $20k already. Looks good for a starter. If you keep to it. But follow the advise of others if you want to save more

Hi anon,

I recently answered a similar question, you can have a look at my analysis here: https://seedly.sg/questions/i-have-been-working...

My additional advice for you would be:

1. YES, keep those impulse purchases down. I'm quite a shopaholic as well tbh (used to be a super reckless spender too), but I try to keep my expenses at bay by following the following tips:

• Cook more often to save money from eating out! Meal prepping is really helpful at saving money + attempting to be healthy haha.
• Find free activities to do in your spare time, there are plenty in Singapore!! There are blog articles and Telegram channels sharing deals, promos & events in Singapore which are free or really inexpensive. Here’s a Seedly article compiling all the Telegram channels in SG that you should follow!
• Use money saving apps & tools to help you save a little while you’re spending. Check out our Seedly article on money saving tools a Singaporean should use! My personal favourite is Shopback for online shopping & ShopbackGo for meals.
• Do your expense tracking. Of course, I would like to plug the Seedly app for expense tracking because we have a really intuitive & user friendly interface! You can also set limits on certain categories of expenditure (this is how I limit my Grab rides haha).
• We all grew up with the 3Rs in Singapore, yeah? Environmentalists believe in 2 additional Rs: Refuse and Repair. Refusing is the way to go if you wanna control your expenditure, especially if it's a want instead of a need.

2. Follow our Seedly salary allocation model diligently!! It's a good tool for starters beginning their personal finance journey. Thereafter, you can plan for the other components of your personal finance too, i.e. debt and insurance.

3. Read up! Like many other answers, you should definitely read to beef up your investing and personal finance knowledge. You can learn more on our Seedly blog for FREE! We've got plenty of articles on all 5 verticals of personal finance :)

Hope this helped! All the best :)