The purpose of this post is to share my experience in what are the things that you can do in order to save a sum of money even before you graduate from your school. The reason for this post is because I have encounter quite a number of people around me, stating that they started off with 0 or with school debt and this gives them disadvantage in reaching their 100K goal before hitting 30 years old. This is especially true for guys because for guys, we will have to spend extra two years in serving the nation and by the time we graduate, we will be at least 24 years old. If we include the debt and some of us might bear the household responsibility, it will be quite impossible to hit that target.
So these are the things that I do personally in order to get a head start as compare to my peers
1. Spend less and Save some of your allowance
Base on the situation, some of you might receive daily/weekly/monthly allowance from your parents when you are studying. With that allowance, if possible try to save around 30% of the allowance and keep inside banks.
For me, I started my allowance saving when I was in secondary school, because of my poor family background, I start my saving journey in secondary 2 to secondary 5 (NA stream) - for secondary school phase.
I receive around $5 per day, and manage to save $1.50 on average per day. so for these 3 years, just saving from allowance, I manager to save around $1.2k. This amount might not be big, but the effort for saving matters.
2. Save Red Packet money
This is a huge portion of your yearly red packet allowance since young. My mum always save this money in my personal bank for my future usage. Few hundred dollars per year and if you calculate, is around 20 years, this amount reaches few thousands dollars and during the process, I have put some in Fixed deposit to earn more interest.
I roughly calculated the amount I have save for the red packet money, is around a bit more than 10k. Understand that most people will use the red packet money to buy their personal stuff, which is valid but if the item is not a necessity, it would be great to save that money for future usage.
3. Go for part time job
Instead of playing games at home, you can go work at some restaurant, even Mcdonald restaurant. This will help you earn some income during your holiday especially those who just finish their O level. During my time, we have 6 months of break so I have use that 6 months to earn some income to increase my overall savings.
I remember the amount is not big but it roughly hit around few thousand dollars. So by that time with my red packet, part time job, allowance savings and bursary, I have accumulate around $15k before I went to poly.
4. Participating in competitions
This is pretty subjective, because not everyone will be rewarded with their work (in terms of money). For me I have won some awards which gives me a substantial amount to my savings. However, I still encourage students to take part in competition not just for money, but for the experience. It is totally different from your regular school work. It is exciting and the learning curve is also quite steep.
5. National Service Allowance
This portion enables me to save quite a sum of money, because I don't have girlfriend at that time and also I spend most of the time in camp (I believe the others as well). Food were provided and lodging we provided as well, so there's nothing much to spend.
I manage to get the officer rank which gives me substantial amount of monthly allowance.With that, I manage to save around $20k during my National Service.
So before I step into the adult world, I already manage to have around 40k (with no debt). So those people who are still young, do try these steps and those who already step into the working world, don't worry, start saving and do proper investment so that you can start growing your money as well!
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