Cheapest Chai-Peng in Queenstown

Is there still food that goes for $2.00 in Singapore?

I happened to venture into the Margaret Drive Hawker Centre and realised they still have stalls selling economical rice (2 veggies and 1 meat) for $2.00. The selection is not fantastic but it feels your stomach for all of SGD 2.00.

This type of deal is hard to find in our Lion City.

Spend less by knowing what you are spending

One of the best ways you can start to spend less and to save money is to first know how much you spend every day, every month and every year. I started to track my daily and monthly expenditure after reading the book "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicky Robin.

I was amazed at how much I was really spending vs how much I thought I was spending after starting to record every single dollar and cent that flows through my life. The three months that I have started tracking has revealed that I spend much more of my income than previously thought because of many shared family expenses that were absorbed from my paycheck.

This woke me up from the illusion that I had about saving 20-30% of my income easily every month. In reality, I ended up only saving closer to 5-10% on months where expenditures were high despite me being relatively frugal and avoiding a high spending lifestyle. When the fuzziness is removed from what we think and clarity is achieved through the hard figures facing us from the spreadsheet, the brutal truth about our own finances is laid out in front of us, naked and exposed. Good or bad, that is for each one of us to assess based on our investment goals and targets. But it really is a good wake up call for you to determine if really you are managing to save (or not!)

If you have not started recording your expenses, you may want to do it for a period of say 3 to 6 months and analyse what you spend on. For me, insurance and car payments take up a significant chunk of my income. For you to better manage your expenses, you may want to consider learning to spend less by learning how much and what you are spending in the first place.

Habits are difficult to change if we don't know what they are!

Be well and prosper.