Background
About me: Before I decided to stay home as a homemaker , housewife or HDB tai tai in Singapore 6yrs ago, I was an Accountant. In the past years, I have given many financial advice to a lot of my ex-bosses and most of them are related to; how to cut cost, how to save money, how to increase revenue.
My “step-down” from a full time job to be a housewife was not quite planned for. I did gone through the phrase of adjusting to life without income. The first thing I need to apply is, of course, my financial management skill. How to reduce my personal expense? How to get some income even I am at home? How to save money?
Whether you are temporary out of job, looking for a job or planning to retire, I like to share with you how I apply budgeting and some of my one cent suggestions on how to save money. 😊
Emotions
In an organisation, once cost cutting applies the overall morale will definitely be affected. Therefore, it will goes the same for any one of us. Staying self motivated and be positive is very important. Just have to tell yourself, “fighting”, “I can do this”…. Contact all your old and new friends, tell them that you are out of job now. Shout out loud in your social media, nothing to be ‘paiseh’ about. First, you get emotional support from your friends or at least share and hear you out. Second, keeping wide networking helps you to land on a full time job again!
How to Save Money Tips #1: Budgeting (Planning)
Budgeting means planning. List out all your monthly, yearly expenses, GIRO payments, etc. So, what personal cost to cut and what to reduce? Before deciding, you need to group your expenses into 2 big categories, variable or fixed.expenses. Variable expenses are those that you will spend more if you are more active, such as bus fare. Fixed expenses are those that you already committed, even if you don’t do anything, you need to pay. For e.g, insurance, rental, loan repayment etc.
How to Save Money Tips #2: Cut or Reduce
Look at your variable expenses, cut to the basic as far as possible. For e.g. eat simple, cook instead of buying outside. If you need to get out of your house, plan the timing so that you can take discount fare. Do a few errands in one trip.
Since fixed expense are committed you cannot do much about it. However, you may consider to deferred future payments. For e.g, check with your insurance agent discuss if you can defer, reduce any future payout. Same goes to your bank loan or credit card outstanding, if any.
Looking forward, you may want to anticipate and avoid unnecessary future expenses.
How to Save Money Tips #3: How to Cut or Reduce your Dental Bill?
I used to have dental cost covered by my company. My dental bill become very costly to me when I am not working. I try to put in more effort to brushing my teeth daily. For instance, one of the thing I did was I switched to using Nuskin Whitening toothpaste, my teeth not only become white and shinny but gives me lesser dental problems. I cough less often because my mouth is cleaner than before. That’s another way on how to save money! Reduce my medical expense too!
watch a video to findout more: NuSkin Toothpaste
If you are interested in the product, you may contact Jean at: 91003344 or visit her facebook page: www.facebook.com/heartsenterprise to find out more.
To buy: heartsbeautysecrets.cococart.co
How to Save Money Tips #4: How to Cut Utilities bill
A little saving goes a long way….
- Replace fluorescent tube with LED lightings. The saving could be more than 50%. Most ceiling lights can be converted easily by DIY.
- Unplug your electronics when not in use. This was told in school but not many of us actually follows 🙂
- Use paper wiper and reduce wet mopping the floor.
- Use water saving shower heads and tap filter.
How to Save Money Tips #5: Get FREE Samples
Auntie Sam has lots of vending machines across island wide, mostly in shopping malls. If your nearby convenient shopping mall has one, you should sign up to get free samples on a regular basis. The products they have range from snacks to drinks. This can reduce your snacking budget if you are a regular ‘snacker’.
Here are how you can go about getting samples from the vending machine:
- open an Auntie Sam account at : https://www.auntiesam.sg/sign-up/
- use promo code “iloveauntiesam” for 1 premium token
- my referral code is 93535615 (if you need one to sign up)
- login in after sign up
- click on ‘samples’ and choose the location you are at
- choose from the list of samples and select ‘take it’ to generate a QR code
- select the corresponding number on the touch screen of the vending machine and scan the QR code
- wait for sample to dispense and enjoy it!
Aunite Sam samples are nice, free to try, all comes chilled and fresh. But there are many rules to using the vending machines to claim free samples.
Rules to follow:
- once you log out of your account you need to wait 5mins before you can re-login again
- you are only allow to take one each of any sample product
- you need about1 to 3 tokens to exchange for a free sample as stated in your account
How to get more tokens?
- refer a friend to join
- login in regularly to get more points or tokens
- do review on samples that you tried
Extra Income
Shortly after I managed to spend more time with my family to sort out some issues, I started looking out for a temporary job. For short period of time, I tried a few different jobs. On one hand I needed some income to cover my expenses but on the other hand, I felt this is a good time to try out something else. Explore and expose myself to more experience. By getting more exposure you may get higher chance to land on a job again!
You may want to checkout these places to find temporary jobs: Carousell Job search, iTask app, Facebook job search group.
Do check out place where there are staff shortage such as: courier, delivery, etc.
Carousell
While on a temp job, someone told me about Carousell. She was moving house, she sold a few pieces of old furniture. I thought it would be a good idea to clear all my regret shopping stuff in my store room. So, I started listing on Carousell, a handful of about 5 items everyday. Within a month, I collected a few hundred dollars selling some new dresses that I do not need, my girl’s old reading books, out grown old clothings, etc. This extra money helps to cover some of my shortfall in temp job lower income.
Survey
At the same time, I joined some survey companies too. Most of them were not so promising. except for one, YouGov. They pay through your paypal account, 5,000 points redeem S$25. The survey is mostly very short, you can earn range from 60 to 300 points. I usually do them while waiting for someone, waiting for train or bus.
You can get some startup points if you signup using my reference link: https://sg.yougov.com/en-sg
https://direct.yougov.com/signup
If you have more time on hand, there is another survey company that I found recently – Lifepoints. The company has long history and lots of members worldwide. The surveys here are much longer and redeemable from $5 onward which is faster than YouGov. You get paid via paypal account too.
You can fanout more about Lifepoints and how to sign up here –> https://learnbonds.com/make-money/paid-surveys/lifepoints
Other Income Streams
Blogging or Affiliate Marketing
Blogging is kind of fun as it allows you to share what you are good at to everyone or share what you are passion in doing with others. Food is the heart of every Singaporean. For e.g. if you are good at cooking, you can share your cooking skills with others by sharing on your blog. If you have good content and attract good traffic to your page, your blog page can help you earn extra income by collecting advertisement or from affiliate marketing for example. You can google more on how to earn money on blogging.
If you interested to try doing up a blog, wordpress is free for basic blog: http://wordpress.com
Earn from your Property
If you owned a house, consider renting out a room. Its may be inconvenient for you and your family but its quite a good way to ease your cashflow for a short period of time say 6 months to a year.
Improve Cashflow
Insurance Policies
I have a few insurance policies that I have brought during early days when I started working. The saving ones are just like CPF money, you can see but cannot take out and spend. As I have mentioned earlier, you can sort out with your insurance agent on possibility of deferring payment to improve your cashflow. Most insurance agent also allow you to get a loan when you need some cash, though its not advisable but if you really need some money, this is better than getting a loan from the bank.
Conclusion
Whether you are just merely wanting to cut your expenses or out of a job now, I hope my how to save money tips above will give you more ideas and comes in handy for you on how to save money when you need it.
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