5 Tips and Tricks to Save More Money

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My family and I live in Singapore and although we are no longer the most expensive country in the world, we are still in the top 10 in terms of living cost and with the raising cost of living and our expenses increasing but pay not increasing, we have to find ways to save more money and earn more money. Ever since COVID, most of the industries are facing a manpower labour shortage situation and labour cost has increased drastically but unfortunately our pays are not increasing as companies are not making enough money to cover.

For me, ever since 3 years ago from the time we had a little one, we started spending a great deal on him as well and with the ever increasing expenses we are struggling to save every month. I am still learning how to save every month and cut down on the expenses, therefore I have listed down 5 ways that I am trying at the moment for these couple of months and to keep myself accountable as well. If you have any other ways please feel free to share it with me so that we can all learn together. 

1. Track Expenses and Savings with an App: 
2. Get discounts from Shopping Mall Apps
3. Search for Free activities
4. Prep for grocery shopping
5. Minimise Restaurant Spending

Lets go in depth on the 5 tips:

1. Track Expenses and Savings with an App: There are many many applications out there to track your expenses and your monthly loans. You must look at your cashflow in the “eye” to understand where your cash is. I am at the moment using Money+ (not sponsored) which is a very cute app to track my spending but I might change it. I love cutie stuff and this app is beyond cute and you can change the colours according to your mood as well. Being able to track your expenses you know where and when your money comes in and goes out. I started tracking my expenses very earlier on but I couldn’t keep up with the monthly expenses and then I ended up not knowing where my money went. Discipline is the key to go! Record the expenses every time you pay for something. 
2. From Monday to Friday there are certain Shopping Malls that we frequent and it is a good thing that now they have applications for each Mall that you can download and earn points from there and then those points can be exchanged for rewards. Some if not most of them have advertisements for discounts on some special occasions that you can watch out for as well.
3. Searching for free activities in Singapore used to be difficult but now it is getting easier. I always thought that with a kid and to keep them entertained you have to spend money on those indoor playgrounds and activities with admission fees. True to a certain extent because those activities are really fun but there are activities that are free like those outdoor playgrounds at the shopping malls. Usually we would budget in when we get our pay to do a indoor playground and the rest would be free activities. If you need some ideas, check out “free things to do in Singapore”, and then if you have a kid you can check out this on for “kids friendly fun activities to do in Singapore.”
4. Prepping for grocery shopping is a great tip for me because without a list I would just go to the store and grab whatever I think I need. But when I reach home I realised that there is a lot of things that I did not need. Writing down a list of what you need to buy actually saves time and you do get to write down what you actually need and not spend unnecessary money as well. Every supermarket also has some app or discount and it would be good to check out the discounts before heading down. 
5. Minimise restaurant spending is another great way to cut down on spending because in Singapore our restaurants include 7% GST and 10% service charge to the bill and it would cost a lot more to eat in the restaurant then at a coffee shop. For my family, we usually have to go to the nearby malls to get our dinner so we had to try to limit our restaurant spending or head to the Food courts for a cheaper option. There are menus that have discounts or credit card discounts that you can look at when you order the meal. We usually do not order desserts because it would have an additional amount of money. 

There are still a number of other ways to save money and I will try to compile as I go along. Thank you for reading and if you have any other really good tips, please feel free to comment and share with me so that I can share with other readers. 

Love your life,

authentically.adrina