Been working for 4yrs but clueless on investments & proper savings method, how do I get started?

Been working for 4yrs+ now but I don’t had a savings or investments plan. I am only monitoring my expenses by making sure I don’t exceed certain amount for cc bills. Always wanted to set up a separate account to set aside money monthly for savings yet I don’t want to fall below the account balance required to get the higher interest in my main UOB One Account. I’m also keen in investing but am quite risk averse. Would love to seek advices from the Seedly community~

Discussion (11)

What are your thoughts?

Learn how to style your text

MT2020

26 Feb 2020

Before you even start to invest, please make sure you have enough money for your rainy day fund as well as your daily expenses. Once done, you can look at options such as robo advisor or regular savings plan.

Save

Lim Chun Long Jimmy

26 Feb 2020

Co-founder at PolicyWoke (Traded Endowment Policies)

Assuming you do not want to build your own diversified investment portfolio, there are many ways you can start investing, including but not limited to:

Robo-advisors and digital advisors (click here for article, here for reviews) for pre-built diversified investment portfolios.
Advisor-assisted brokerage such as iFast Global Markets, where you have an advisor tagged to you to advice you on building a customised investment portfolio based on your risk profile.

Save

Frankie Rappaport

13 Feb 2020

ETFs are already super diversified f.ex. SP500 or MSCI World.

If they drop after buying just have patience, after 2-4 years everything went fine at least in the past. donate also...

Save

Tan Li Xing

12 Feb 2020

Financial Consultant at Prudential Assurance Company (Singapore)

Hi Anon,

You have great intend in what you just asked, and based on what you are sharing, you have good discipline when it comes to money and I respect that.

I think having 2 accounts is a good plan, because it does enforce us to have a spending and a saving account, and subconsiciously it also becomes a discipline as well. I heard someone mentioned before, the most important things to us should be auto-mated, so that we can use that focus else where and not worry.

If you tend to be risk adverse, I think you can consider getting a savings policy as these kind of policies are participating policies, meaning part of your premiums are used by the insurer into safer investment ratio so that most of your capital is protected, but yet there is returns from the slightly riskier form of investments. Of course there might a downside in getting a savings policy from insurers because you lose that liquidity, unless of course you are looking to save for a period of time and get a lump sum at maturity of the policy.

But of course I'm not asking you to put all you savings into a savings policy with the insurer, the wiser choice would be to save some in the bank and some into such a policy so that you have both liquidity (bank) and also better returns (savings policy)

Save