facebookMy parents do not seem to have a good plan to finance my university studies except using cash and paying the rest through student loans, which I want to avoid. What should I do? - Seedly

Anonymous

16 Jun 2020

Students

My parents do not seem to have a good plan to finance my university studies except using cash and paying the rest through student loans, which I want to avoid. What should I do?

My parents did not prepare for my university studies through endowment/savings plans or investments like I've heard from other parents. I am quite afraid on taking on debt, seeing how so many US students are haunted by it for years after graduation. Is there anything we could do to start preparing for university fees now? And if a student loan is unavoidable, which are the best student loan schemes?

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I have always been surprised why people are taking tuition loans from DBS, vs CPF.

https://www.cpf.gov.sg/Members/Schemes/schemes/...

If you plan to study local, at an approved institution / course, your parents can opt to pay for payment of university fees via their cpf - what happens is you are borrowing their cpf and would have to pay it off at the cpf rate of 2.5%

There are limitations and restrictions around what the education scheme will cover, but generally if you are going for local education, then it should not matter.

In fact my accountancy course @ ntu was funded this way.

Leow Ting Yang

16 Jun 2020

Business Administration at National University of Singapore

For locals, tutiton fee loans are largely interest free for the public universities until you gradaue.

Hey there.

Putting your savings in high-interest savings account is a way to beat inflation and increase value.

Choices that do not require spending/minimum sum include:

  1. Singlife Account (2.5% p.a, capaital guaranteed, interest non guaranteed)

  2. FSM Auto-Sweep Account (1.05%p.a, interest rates may be revised)

  3. Stashaway Simple (1.9%, capital non guaranteed, interest non guaranteed)

  4. SCB JumpStart (1%p.a)

  5. crypto.com Crypto Earn (Depending on currency, as high as 16%p.a without any prior staking. However, do take note of the volatility of cryptocurrencies)

  6. Vivid Account (1.05% p.a for first 10k, 1.30% for 10k-20k)

  7. CIMB FastSaver (Revised rate of 0.5%, down from 1%)

Hi there,
Personally I faced the same situation as you about 5 years ago.
Maybe just sharing my personal experience on how I managed to pay finish my tuition fees (about 50k sgd) in 1 year upon graduation.
I took up several part time jobs (e.g. private hire driver, event jobs) while studying. As a uni student, we usually enjoy the flexibility of scheduling our own timetable. Thus, it it definitely possible to work part time while studying full time with proper planning. (E.g. Work 2 days and study 4 days)

As I took up a student loan with my university, I do not need to pay any interest for the loan before I graduate. Thus, I was able to invest my money during my school term. You might want to put the money in high yield savings account that can get about 2%/pa. Personally I placed mine in index etfs. (About 4%/pa).

Hope this helps!

Most student in the US move out once the go to university and depend on themselves for living and st...

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