"Why do you bother to do all these. You don't save a lot, you could get so much more if you found a job"
I mean like... It's very little returns but a lot of small little things.
Let's not talk about investments. Cos that one a number of normal people do it...
But like,
1) Cashflow management using the credit cards, this nets me the additional 2.43% interest from the UOB One account. This is just under $100 per account per month. ($200 x 12 per annum, total $2400)
2) Hitting minimum spend of $500 per month on the UOB One card, this gets me $50 per quarter per card so it adds up to $50 x 4 x 2 ($800).
I even bother to travel down to PWC building at Raffles place to prepay my SP Services using this card, cos that's the only way to use UOB One card to pay SP Services, you have to pay at the counter. This helps me to clock the spending which I may not be able to hit every month to hit the $500 monthly spend per card.
3) Most of you know that I spend around $3-$4 per month on my handphone bills. I think I can get it to under $2.50 per month with extensions and all that but I won't go into detail cos it's just penny pinching at this point.
The gist of it is that I have a prepaid card for phone calls and I have a data SIM for data.
I used to get a 1GB data SIM from M1 cos I subscribed to their home internet. But they reduced it to 500MB.
Then recently Circles Life gave a free data SIM for free. They will mail out the data SIM.
I signed up for it. I get a free data SIM, 1GB data + 30 minutes talk time, 10 SMS monthly.
So now I am back to being able to use 1GB of data per month instead of 500MB per month...
But for my "troubles"... I save around $20 per month, considering that the cheapest SIM only plan is around $25. So I save around $240 per year for my efforts.
4) I search online for which petrol station gives away petrol vouchers.
When a petrol station is planning to undergo renovation, they will give out a voucher booklet which can be used for the next 3 months to keep the customer pumping the same brand of petrol.
The booklet usually has 4 coupons per month and each coupon gives a $5 off every $50 pump. This is on top of any credit card promotions.
I've driven to various parts of Singapore to collect these vouchers when my booklet is about to finish. I've even specifically driven to Yishun to get a booklet... Cos... why not?
I save $20 per month and a booklet has coupons for 3 months, so that's $60 savings per booklet.
I usually can finish using the whole booklet unless I'm traveling heavily.
Anyway, this equates to $240 savings every year.
5) We proactively milk the AIA Vitality app which my wife has.
Basically, we make an effort to ensure that we get the $10 per week so that we can spend in Cold Storage.
It's an effort. I know a lot people who can't be bothered to make the effort to clock the required number of steps to get the vouchers. Cos... it's only $10 such a small amount.
And once again, for our efforts, we get an additional $520 per year.
6) I go and spend some time collecting free fruits and vegetables at Pasir Panjang or Little India.
The activity isn't free. I spend around $3 per session in transportation costs.
But I usually collect one week worth of fruits and vegetables. It's more than what I would typically buy if I were to spend cash on it. This also causes me to "induce" eat cos, I have to try very hard to finish my vegetables before my next week collection.
So for example I may spend $3 on vegetables (a cabbage and maybe some potatoes) if I buy it for myself.
However, when I go to collect free vegetables, I get maybe 3 beetroots, 4 brinjals, some potatoes, sweet potatoes, a cabbage, some mushrooms, couple of mangoes, etc... which may be worth $20.
So it's hard to say how much I've actually saved, cos IF I had spent money, I would have spent very little and not bought the excess stuff.
Anyway, I'll just say I "earned" $20 per week for this case... so this is $20 x52 weeks, so this activity is worth $1,040 per year.
I suppose the above are my main activities which I use to save money.
This totals up to be $2,400 +$800 +$240 +$240 +$520 +$1,040 = $5,240 per year.
Hey that's quite a lot of money, but it is the result of the sacrifice of quite a bit of convenience.
Think about it.
How many people actively monitor their bank balance regularly and their monthly spending and try to keep it at a certain level?
How many people are willing to give up their nice data plans and live on 500MB-1GB worth of data?
How about searching for vouchers online and making the time and effort to travel there to get the vouchers?
AIA Vitality app? Many people just don't want to put in a bit more activity to get that few bucks.
And getting free random vegetables is a chore...
And here comes the crux of this whole post...
There's always a reason to spend money. Convenience is the greatest reason of all.
It's easy to just brush aside an additional $1 spending for convenience.
Or $5... Or $10...
Like... come on... many people make more than that per hour.
Or even if they make less than $10 per hour, many people simply can't be bothered.
But that's the thing... How much is valuable? Each person values this differently.
It's very easy to take $10 of not worth the trouble or just small money.
It's even easier to say $5 is not worth the effort.
But if someone thinks $10 is small money... then they probably won't think twice about buying that bowl of $18 ramen... to me, ramen is freaking expensive noodles.
And if $18 is a normal meal... then... what is a weekend meal? What is a special treat?
When someone starts to trivialize different levels of money, things can easily get out of hand... remember the hedonic treadmill... and my discussion with my wife part 1 and part 2.
For me, I always remember my baseline. ALMOST every dollar is worthy. Any treat, upgrade, is a once off event. I always try to return to my baseline after that.
Now, of course everyone values that extra dollar differently, someone who's really really busy might think it's not worth it... that's fine. To each his own.
For me, it's just an awareness. Of not trivializing each small extra dollar cos the numbers add up.
To save $1 million dollars, you will have to go through $1, $2 then $10, $11 then $100, $101... Then $5,000... etc. Very few people jump from $1 to $1 million overnight.
And I remember that I reached my current AUM by going through the smaller numbers, and only thru the smaller numbers could I have reached a bigger number...
So
"Why do you bother to do all these. You don't save a lot, you could get so much more if you found a job"
My response to my friend...
"It's the other way around. I am willing to do all these to stay out of a job."
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