WhatisWhat

In my last article, I shared about banking with UOB One Savings account here . I’ll share how I managed to get about 6.12% of interest by switching over. So if you are looking out for a bank to store idle cash next year, you might want to consider this strategy. The Base Rate To get the base Interest rate of 5%, we need to fulfil the following requirements. Basic requirements: Spend $500 on eligible spend – credit/debit card expenditure on UOB ONE card Credit your salary of a minimum $1,600   Maintain the daily average balance of 100k As mentioned, I don’t have 100k cash lying around so I’m sharing my account with my parents and giving them interest.  Sign–on bonus This is normally called an “Online Account Opening promotion” and is only for the first 200 customers. The main thing that caught my eye is that there are various payouts for different customer tiers, i.e. new customers or existing customers but opening a new type of account. In my case, I chanced upon a 3-day flash...

  Previously, there was a flash sale on Ryde Vouchers that I have posted here . I explained how we can get about 37-39% discount by having Flash discounts / Bundle Discount + Shop Discount + Platform Discount However, in the last CEE sale on 25 May, I’ve noticed a slight change in their strategy and I managed to get around 49% discount in total. The next sale is 6 Jun 23 so let’s keep our eyes open. Base item Discount During a sale, the base price of the vouchers will drop 25-26%, and the one with the best marginal discount is normally the $30 Voucher. At times there might be a bundle discount at the $100 - $120 vouchers so you need to compare first. Shop Discount There are only 2 kinds of discount, either the shopee coin cashback or direct $$ discount. The shopee coin discount will normally be better as it gives about 10% at a certain cap of about 2K coins or 3K coins This is more generous as it encourages more transactions for shopee   While dir...

What’s with all the bank runs and bank failures hitting the news these days? Why are all these banks in trouble? Are we by extension in trouble too? How should I protect my money? I've decided to join the bandwagon. More importantly, relate this to our situation in Singapore. Banking logic When we place deposits with banks, they “reward” us with interest. With our deposits, Banks are allowed to loan out a significant % of the deposit for profit. This % can range from 80-90%. This has always generally been fine as it's extremely unlikely for us to withdraw all our money at once. To provide some form of confidence, the deposits are insured up to a certain amount. The liquidity situation in the US With the painful effect of inflation, people are literally seeing their savings eroding away. FED has tried to battle this by raising interest rates, which makes it costlier to borrow and incentivises saving. Clients would compare their options and gravitate towards better rates. Eventua...