Any financial planning tips for someone who just ORD and going to university?

You should have at least 10k from NS (ahem...), by right. You can put those (or the remainder) in high interest savings account such as POSB SAYE/CIMB FastSaver/etc as emergency funds. Save about 70% or more of your income (leaving some to invest), and the remaining 30% for your necessities and splurges. Try to apply for scholarships no matter what results you got, those can help save a lot of tuition, computer, daily fees.

Hi anonymous, thank you for your question and sorry for the late reply. My son is going to ORD in a week's time and will be going into the university in Aug. He has been saving since he was serving NS. My advice to him is:

1. Find work from now till Aug. But in looking for a job, look for one that you can learn the most and not one that pays you the most. This is not the time to find the highest paid job but to find one that learn the most.
2. Put some of your cash into SSBs.
3. Make sure you have a suitable hospitalization insurance policy, if you do not have obe already - Integrated Shield Plan.
4. As you earn and income, invest it into low cost ETFs or Dimensional Funds. Low cost = less than 0.5% p.a. in terms of management fee.

As a start, here are a list of equities ETF you can consider:

1. SPDR S&P500 ETF - US, a proxy to develop markets
2. SPDR Straits Times Index ETF - Singapore market
3. Db x-trackers MSCI Pacific Ex Japan UCITS ETF - A proxy to Asia

By investing in then, you will be broadly diversified across different geographical regions. There are enough studies to show that it is very difficult to beat the market by trading and there is really no need to. The driver of returns for stocks is earnings or profitability. As long as world population continues to grow (and it is!) and people have needs and companies continue to exist to meet the needs, stock prices will (and have) gone up over the long run. Yes, some companies will fail but most will continue to be around. That is why you should invest in a broad diversified portfolio.So stay invested. Do not get in and out based on views or news. That will be gambling.

Hope this helps.