How Much Savings Should a 30-Year-Old S’porean Have? Here’s a Guide

Last Updated on 2020-12-18 , 5:06 pm

If you’re thirty this year or are reaching thirty, how much savings do you have? Or maybe you don’t even have any savings?

In Singapore, it is not easy to have large savings due to our high cost of living.

According to Financial Samurai, the years of saving starts from 20, and continue from there, but in your 30s, your savings might take a dip because you might be starting a family or going for a postgraduate course.

However, they would suggest having one year’s worth of living expenses. But think about it: in our 20s, we’re still paying off our study loans, that means saving could only start from 30.

In addition, for the guys, they have two years of NS, in which only allowances of less than $1,000 is provided monthly.

Does that mean the advice, which is catered for everyone in the world, isn’t workable?

The thing is, it’s relatively difficult to provide a figure since numbers are very subjective: a CEO might think that having savings of one million dollars isn’t a lot while a low-income worker might think that having savings of over five thousand dollars is a lot.

Therefore, it’s hard to just look at it from a number’s point of view. Well, if you’re still confused, here’s the easy way: just always make sure that you’ve at least six months worth of expenses when you’re thirty.

If your monthly expense is $2,000, ensure that you’ll always have $12,000 worth of savings with you. If you lose your job, you’ll still have a few months to find a new job, and start saving again.

This “tactic”, if you would like to call it, is also used by some profit-driven companies: they would often have six months worth of operating expenses so that they can continue to pay their workers even if their revenue is low for a few months.

Of course, the usual advice is to have as much savings as possible.

Then again, we all know the usual advice for being healthy is to exercise as much as possible, but some of us just lack the discipline, right?

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