Living in Singapore is expensive, so what would you do to make sure that you are able to budget and even save with low income while living in Singapore? What I did was to separate the ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, or ‘survival’ to ‘comfort’. If I did not know what they are, one would find it hard to differentiate.
Be very transparent
First thing first is that you need to write it down what is/are the income(s) and all the different expenses that you usually will spend on? Mine is below;
Income
1) Fixed Salary
Expenses
1) Food
2) Transport
3) Insurance
4) Household
5) Clothes
6) Mobile Phone
7) Your Loved Ones
8) Shopping
9) Hobbies
10) Travel
11) Personal
12) Outing
13) Fun
14) Sports
15) Pets
16) Presents
17) Electronics
18) Films
19) Others
After I listed all the above, I realised that the expenses are about 18 times more items than the income. It simply tells me to have more income. Well, I will be focus on our topic today. The next thing is to pull out those that will appear monthly, here’s my monthly expenses;
1) Food ($450)
2) Transport ($70)
3) Insurance ($250)
4) Mobile Phone ($60)
5) Sports ($140)
6) Others ($300)
Total: $1,270
The $300 under “Others” is for miscellaneous expenses which is more like unexpected expenses. Well, I would have excess of $230 for saving. As my insurance is a yearly thing, so I put aside $500 and have $1,000 to spend monthly.
What can be reduce further?
What’s other expenses can be reduce further? For me, it’s insurance, sports, transport and mobile phone that can’t be reduce further, which will leave me with food and others that can be reduce.
Whatever is left over from these 2 categories, I will put them into savings.
I do hope that this simple transparent way will make you realise that it can be done, all you need to do is plan.
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