Here are my monthly financials for March 2021.
It is good to keep track and review your monthly financials so you can be in control of your finances.
Having a fixed income and knowing my expenses will not exceed my budget allowed me to not track my expenses before I left my job. I did not feel a need to track my finances strictly as I know I can control my spending. I only tracked my investments diligently.
Since I will not have a fixed source of income soon, I decided to start tracking my financials starting from January 2021. Money will be tight so I need to be extra prudent. This also helps generate content for my website.
Top 3 Income Sources
Allowance – S$1,200
This is from my monthly SGUS allowance. I will stop receiving this when my course ends in May 2021.
Other – S$313.70
S$262.48 is my previous medical claims from my insurance policy. I noticed that the dressing supplies from the polyclinic pharmacy cannot be claimed. If possible, I will try to get the nurse to prescribe the dressing supplies instead of buying them from the pharmacy directly.
I also sold some old Lego for $8.
S$43.22 is for the IPT training allowance. We get a token sum to cover our transport for attending Army IPT training. This amount is for two sessions.
Now there is a new FIT scheme that will take over the IPT Scheme, all old IPT sessions will be ported over to the new FIT system. There will also be similar allowances for attending the FIT sessions.
I don’t think I can complete my 10 sessions due to medical reasons and my window closing soon. From NS.sg, there will be no default this window and we just have to clear 10 sessions next window.
Dividends – S$234.97
This is from my dividends from AIMS APAC REIT and IREIT.
Top 3 Expense Sources
Investment – S$500
This is my monthly investment in STI ETF using POSB Invest-saver. I decided to lower this to S$200 next month for several reasons. The most important reason is that my monthly allowance is ending and I want my cash to last longer. I might increase it next time when my income is more stable. Also, the price of the STI is getting more expensive.
I do not recommend fluctuating the DCA amount if you can afford to do so as it defeats the purpose of DCA-ing in the first place.
Taxes – S$42.40
This is payment for my personal taxes from FY 2019.
Telephone – S$39
There is this pop-up promotion from GIGA that gives 50GB for S$18. This is much more worth it than my current GOMO plan that gives 20GB for S$20. I decided that I would like to make the change. Even though there will be an overlap of 1 month for both plans, the savings of S$2 a month will break even after 10 months.
I was researching if GOMO is a postpaid plan. Only postpaid numbers can be ported into GIGA. For GOMO, I pay for my phone plan in advance but it is considered a postpaid plan. This is confirmed by a Singtel representative on HardwareZone.
Source: HardwareZone
The first email I tried signing up for an account with GIGA didn’t work and I had to use another email. I went through all the verification and paid for the GIGA promo pop-up plan.
However, I forgot that my number was registered under my father’s name although I have been paying for my own phone bill. This created a couple of problems.
- I am unable to port over my number from GOMO to GIGA
- I am unable to change SIM card ownership to myself
Currently, GOMO and GIGA do not support SIM card ownership transfer.
I am also unable to re-verify my identity on the GIGA app as I wanted to change it to my father’s name and the customer service response time of GIGA is really bad. The live agent takes ages to attend to you and their chatbot isn’t very useful. I decided to forgo the S$19 (S$18 for the mobile sim-only plan and S$1 for the sim card delivery) as the amount of stress it is causing me is not worth it.
I have asked my friends and they all had a good experience with GIGA. If you want to enjoy GIGA’s attractive plans, you got to make sure everything is correct the first time and do not expect the customer service to help you with anything.
Switching Telco Providers In The Future
If I want to switch to a new provider next time, I got to either start using a new number or transfer my line to a provider like Circles.Life that allows for a transfer of SIM card ownership before switching to another provider.
I approached Circles.Life to ask if a transfer is possible even if the registered owner is dead and they replied almost immediately on their live chat. We will just need the death cert and some other details.
Source: Circles.Life Live Chat
I will just stick to GOMO for now and revisit this.
Money Manager App
I am using an app called Money Manager to track my income and expenses. It is a free tool available on mobile available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
As far as I know, the data collected from the app is for tracking the ads you view and interact with on the app.
Please check out their privacy policy on what information they collect and what is it used for.
Personally, the value this app brings to me outweighs the value of the information I provide to them.
Comment and let me know what you think about tracking your finances.