YOU CAN’T SAVE YOUR PATH TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM

When I was 20, saving money was my superpower.

I’ve become an expert at finding discounts through a variety of means, including using coupons, membership offers, and email promotions, as well as strategically deploying my credit cards for the right spending category each time. times to get the most out of it.

But after a few years of trying everything possible to save more, I was already spending only S$500 a month on a take-home salary of S$2,000, and it was almost impossible to spend less since I still had bills to pay. pay.

I had to learn it the hard way: you can only cut so much of your costs before you reach an irreducible minimum – a pretty miserable point where you are left with only strictly necessary expenses like housing, food and transportation.

Even this floor keeps going up. In recent years alone we have seen prices are rising for all of these things (and will probably only increase over time).

This floor is also not completely unshakable.

Imagine saving S$300,000 for your retirement years, only to be faced with an unexpected medical bill (a bill that your insurance no longer covers, because you couldn’t afford to keep up with rising premiums during your out-of-work years) .

Or maybe you budgeted to spend S$2,000 a month in retirement on life’s essentials, but over time inflationary pressures caused your monthly spending to rise by 30 percent, even if you don’t spend more than you planned. foreseen.

Cutting costs alone will never give you the financial security you are looking for.