“Your Financial GPS” – Your Personalised Digital Financial Advisor Planner at Your Fingertips

Many of us know the importance of personal financial planning, but do not know how or where to get started. Some of us are hesitant to approach a financial consultant for advice, in fear of being pressurized to commit to a financial product. Some of us may seek out advice or recommendations from our friends, family members, and colleagues, but the advice may not always be suited to our personal needs. Many of us are put off, or even intimidated, by hearing all the unfamiliar financial jargon.

These are just a few of the many difficulties that we encounter in personal financial planning. What if we could remove these challenges and get free, easy to understand, and personalised financial advisory at our fingertips?

Introducing Your Financial GPS

Here’s introducing NAV -Your Financial GPS, a digital financial advisor that helps people like you and me navigate through personal financial planning effortlessly. Your Financial GPS makes the principles of personal finance easy to understand using the acronym ‘SAIL’, which stands for Saving, Assurance, Invest and Life Goals. Starting with Life Goals as the destination for our journey, the other ‘SAIL’ components act as the mainsail, lifebuoy and hull of the boat to help us move towards our destination. For the boat to weather through storms and successfully reach its destination, all ‘SAIL’ components must be looked after, and well-balanced. Thus, this helps to simplify the process of financial planning for many.

Your Financial GPS At A Glance

Your Financial GPS is available to all DBS and POSB customers through the DBS/POSB iBanking and digibank app. When you log into your DBS/POSB iBanking or digibank app, you will see a tab for Financial GPS, which provides a personalized snapshot of your financial health. Your Financial GPS allows you to check your monthly spending across different categories, set budgets, and provides personalized insights based on your saving and spending information.

As a digital financial advisor, Your Financial GPS also provides a snapshot of your current SAIL status. It provides insights on the areas in which you can work on, and suggestions on how to work on these areas to achieve your life goals.

For me, personalizing Your Financial GPS for myself was a breeze. Most of my spending was linked to my DBS Live Fresh card, which was automatically categorized into different categories under spending. For spending that I have incurred using cash or on other banks’ credit cards, I could easily add in the amount as expenses so that Your Financial GPS has a comprehensive picture of my total finances.

I also set up my first Life Goal, which was to pay off my home down-payment of $300,000 by age 40. Your Financial GPS immediately calculated the amount of money which I would need to set aside monthly to achieve this goal. This helped me realise how unrealistic my goal was, which was similar to key insights of how many do not know how much they need for their goals. This was one of the insights that DBS had learnt from its intense and rigorous research to understand customers’ financial planning needs. Besides that, Your Financial GPS also came up with a list of suggestions tailored to my life goals, one of which was very relevant advice on how to avoid common mistakes as a first-time home buyer.  

DBS NAV Hub: Free Personalized Financial Consultations 

Want to do even more for your personal finance? Book an appointment with the dedicated NAV Crew at the DBS NAV Hub for a free personalized financial consultation. During the private one-on-one session, the crew will help you to assess your financial health and answer any money-related questions you might have. You will receive a free report on your financial health, with absolutely no product or sales pitches involved.  

Ready to Sail?  

Here are three ways how: 

Your Financial GPS
DBS Nav Hub
DBS Nav Website
Available on DBS/POSB iBanking
and Digibank

Click to download the DBS
Digibank SG app on iTunes or on Google Play

Free personalized financial consultation

45 Tras Street
Singapore 078984

Click here to book an appointment

  • Resources on personal financial planning
  • Get updated on NAV classes

Click here to visit the NAV website

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Key Tips on What to Consider When Taking Out Car Insurance

Whatever your reason may be for buying yourself a car, you should take out car insurance immediately afterward. After all, you wouldn’t want to face legal repercussions for driving without any car insurance. But if it’s your first time to purchase car insurance, it’s easy to do it wrong, especially with so many insurance companies out there offering protection for both your car and your finances. To make taking out car insurance easier for you, here are some key tips to consider:

1. The state where you’re residing would require you to purchase third party cover as a bare minimum

There’s no telling at all when your car might accidentally hit a person or a piece of property no matter how defensive you are with your driving. The person your car hit might get injured or even die. The piece of property that your car had crashed into might become unusable or beyond repair.

Worse, the entire balance of your savings account might not be enough to cover the medical or funeral costs of the person that your car had hit. It might also not be enough to cover the repair or replacement costs of the property that your car has damaged. As a result, most states would require you to buy third party cover as part of the car insurance that you’ll be taking out from your chosen provider.

Unfortunately, third party cover won’t be able to shoulder any damages that your car had sustained as it only covers costs associated with a person or piece of property that your car had hit.

While not a state requirement, you might want to purchase comprehensive cover as well.

On the other hand, if you want any damages that your car had sustained shouldered by your chosen insurance provider, you should buy comprehensive cover instead. This will help with any repair costs associated with your damaged car.

Your car insurance’s comprehensive cover can also act as a third-party cover since the former allows for a wider coverage compared to the latter as evident in its name. The said type of cover can also shoulder you financially in case your car is consumed by fire, stolen, or hijacked.

You might want to include some extra features on top of the car insurance that you’re planning to take out.

Having a third party or comprehensive cover might not be enough once you take out car insurance as it might not sufficiently cover any highly specific damages that your car may sustain at any given time. Thus, you might want to have some extra car insurance features so that you can still get protected no matter what unfortunate situation might happen to your car. Some of those additional features that you can consider including in your car insurance are as follows:

  • Windscreen cover – useful for when your car’s windshield, side windows, or rear window gets broken or cracked, and you want to recover the cost of having any of them either repaired or fully replaced
  • Fire and theft cover – as the name implies, useful in case your car either gets burnt to a crisp by fire, stolen by burglars, or hijacked and you haven’t taken out comprehensive cover as part of your car insurance policy
  • Zero depreciation cover – aims to add value to your car insurance’s comprehensive cover by excluding costs associated with your car’s depreciation in value due to age, wear and tear, etc.

You might want to consider looking into other types of car insurance coverage as well.

As both third party and comprehensive cover of your car insurance might not be enough to help you financially, you might want to consider including the following additional types of car insurance coverage in your car insurance:

  • Collision coverage – covers repair costs associated with your car after you’ve gotten involved in an accident with another driver regardless if the said incident was your fault or theirs, though you’ll want to add this one only if you’ve bought your car new and not used
  • Uninsured and underinsured motorist protection – useful if an uninsured or underinsured driver had hit your car since they’re unable to pay any repair costs associated with it but you wouldn’t want to pay those costs out of your pocket at the same time
  • Personal injury protection – Pays for all medical expenses and lost wages that you or any passengers that you’ve brought along with you in your car would incur after you’ve gotten involved in an accident

The amount of your car insurance premiums depends on the amount of risk that you’re posing to your chosen insurance provider.

Your car insurance premium is the amount of money that you’ll have to pay for the car insurance that you’ll be taking out from your chosen provider. How much your car insurance premium will amount to is proportional to the degree of risk that you’re carrying with you as a driver.

Your chosen car insurance provider would gather information about you including but not limited to your age, criminal record, and residence’s location to determine the degree of risk that you’re posing to them. The higher the risk that you’re posing to your chosen provider, the more expensive your car insurance premium would get.

Thus, if you want to pay an affordable car insurance premium amount, you’ll have to lessen your degree of risk.

Ask your chosen provider if the car insurance would cover you in certain situations other than driving your car or not.

There might be some situations where your car had gotten involved in an accident, but you weren’t the one behind the wheel at the time when the incident had occurred. Or you might have been driving somebody else’s car or a rental vehicle when you’ve gotten involved in an accident.

In cases such as this make sure the provider covers this prior to taking out the insurance to make sure you’re fully covered.

  1. Pay your car insurance premium either as a lump sum or in installments depending on how much money you’re willing to give to your chosen provider.

As already mentioned earlier, the money that you’ll pay is known as a premium. You can pay your car insurance premium in one go covering an entire year and even get a discount from your chosen provider while at it. But if that’s too heavy of a financial burden to you, you can pay your car insurance premium in two, four, or 12 installments instead. However, you should take note that the higher the number of installments, the higher the additional fees that you’ll have to pay as well aside from your car insurance premium amount.

  1. When the policy period expires, they’ll automatically renew it unless it isn’t eligible for renewal anymore.

Right now, there’s no such thing as multi-year car insurance. In fact, the longest car insurance policy period is only a year followed by six months and one month. However, car insurance with a policy period of only one month is usually reserved by providers only for those drivers that they’ve assessed as high-risk. Thus, the car insurance that you’ll be taking out from your chosen provider may have a policy period of either six months or one year.

Once your car insurance’s policy period comes to an end, your provider would automatically renew it, especially as your car insurance is most likely to have an auto-renewal clause included in it. But if your provider didn’t automatically renew your car insurance’s policy period either because you’ve become a high-risk driver or you’ve moved to a different state, you’ll have to take out car insurance from another provider instead.

Conclusion

All 50 states in the U.S. require every car driver passing by the nation’s roads to carry car insurance. Thus, unless you want to break federal and state laws, you should look into car insurance after successfully purchasing a car. However, as you may be clueless about buying car insurance, the above-listed key tips to consider should make taking one out an effortless process for you. After all, better safe than sorry.

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Travelling To Bali? Don’t Forget Your Travel Insurance

Bali is known as the Island of The Gods. It exudes a unique cultural appeal, excites holiday-goers with its natural beaches and tantalizes foodies with its wide-range of culinary cuisines. It is little wonder that Bali is an extremely popular beach destination in South-East Asia. It would not be surprising if some of you have already booked a trip there for the upcoming summer holidays. Before departing for your holidays, don’t forget to purchase your travel insurance policy. Do ensure that your travel insurance policy contains “must-have” features such as medical expenses, emergency repatriation, trip cancellation/curtailment, baggage cover etc.

Travel insurance is important because it offers financial compensation during events such as travel disruptions. For instance, Moung Agung’s eruption in 2017 led to the closure of the airport for several days. As a result, additional hotel accommodation needs to be booked, flights rescheduled and some tourists even sought alternative modes of transportation. All these would add additional costs to your holiday budget. While travel inconveniences are entirely unpredictable, a travel insurance policy purchased in advance could partially offset some of these unforeseen expenses.

Many adventurous tourists visit Bali to try activities such as hand-gliding, para-gliding, diving etc.  With its picturesque scenery, Bali boasts many adrenaline-filled activities for the sports junkies. You might want to consider getting travel insurance coverage before attempting these leisure activities. For instance, AXA’s SmartTraveller provides coverage for leisure activities such as parachuting, sky diving, bungee jumping etc. Having a travel insurance policy before attempting these leisure activities could provide an additional level of assurance.

Before embarking on your long-awaited getaway to Bali, it is therefore critical to be well-informed of the best travel insurance policies available in the market. You can compare travel insurance policies on SingSaver and directly purchase one that best suits your holiday needs. Comparing on SingSaver is not only convenient; it also helps you save money on your travel insurance policies!

Update: SingSaver is having a flash sale on 19 – 20 May 2018 on selected insurance products, including AXA, where the first 10 successful applicants in each hour (10am, 4pm, 10pm) get their travel insurance for free! For more details, click here.

 

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Where Did All Your Money Go?

“Where did all my money go?”, a friend of mine shouted in an open space.

Let us face it! People usually do not realize how much they are spending. You may not have a lavish lifestyle but, you seem to run out of money. Why is this so?

If you want to uncover the answer, tracking your spending comes in handy! Reach clarity by understanding how you manage your money. This step will help you to fully take control of your finances.

DETERMINE YOUR SPENDING HABITS

With the complexities of finances, where do you begin? Consider starting with identifying your spending habits. Do you pay to get your hair professionally dyed or do you dye it at home? Do you buy coffee from Starbucks or take advantage of the free-flowing coffee? Shed a light to your daily expenses and match these with your financial goals.

When you have identified a mismatch between your spending habits and financial goals, you can immediately plan the necessary alterations. Tracking your spending is essential to making better financial choices.

CATEGORIZE YOUR EXPENSES

Looking at your spending habits under a microscope entails that you have the ability to categorize each one. Complete your task by writing your expenses on a notebook or a ledger. Much like us, these expenses exist in a variety of ways. Some expenses are exclusively for students, while others are exclusively for working adults.

Image Credits: pixabay.com

Begin tracking your expenses by dividing a piece of paper into several columns. Assign an expense category on top of each column and highlight the allotted amount for it. For instance, the “entertainment” expense category can only consume S$100 of your monthly income.

TAKE SMALL STEPS

It goes without saying that you cannot force things. Forcing someone to love you reeks of desperation and displays no self-respect. Attraction comes naturally. Same with your finances. Taking control of your finances must not be a forceful act. Forcing success may lead to shutting down opportunities that you could have had. Try taking small steps first.

After categorizing each expense, commit yourself to recording your daily spending. Awareness of your daily spending helps you to keep track of how much you have left on each category. Simply deduct the amount that you spent today from the category’s “allotted budget”. A savvy shopper equips himself or herself with these information.

DOWNLOAD AN APP

Embrace modern technology by downloading an app or a software to keep track of your expenses. I, for one, use the free Spendee app. This user-friendly finance app allows me to categorize my expenses and to illustrate the entirety through graphs or charts. Entering a budget is as simple as pie!

Image Credits: pixabay.com

Some apps or programs allow you to sync your device to the computer. This way, your partner can examine your spending habits too. As a team, you may prevent overspending and stay within your bounds.

Source: The Balance

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Essential Tips On Finding The Right Loan For Your Needs

You have a stable job right now, but since you’re thinking of embarking on a new business soon, you’ll need to acquire a loan. You need the money to purchase your supplies, to hire people and to market your business’ existence. And while you’re certain that you need a loan for this endeavour, you still don’t know how to actually to find the right loan for your needs. In your mind, you think this decision is crucial because the success of your business relies on it – and you’re right. To help you out with your dilemma, consider the essential tips below to find the right loan for you:

  1. How much do you really need?

Just because a lender offers you a loan worth thousands of dollars, doesn’t mean you should take it immediately. Keep in mind that the bigger amount you borrow, the bigger your payments will be – and this can become an issue if your business isn’t as successful as you’d like it to be. On the other side of the coin, if your loan is too small, it might not help you in any way, and you’ll end up paying for high-interest rates. To avoid being placed in this kind of situation, carefully think how much you need for your business and look for a lender which can give you that amount.

  1. What is the interest rates?

Aside from the loan amount itself, you should also consider the interest rates associated with it. Is the lender offering you the amount you need but has very high-interest rates? Are there any lenders in the market who can give you a lesser interest rate? Think about these things first before choosing a loan. It’s also essential to ask the lender if there are any other fees or penalties to be paid after you received the loan. All of the processes involved in the loan should be transparent to you to avoid problems in the future.

  1. What’s the term?

Different loans have different terms. Some loans can be paid for six months while others, in ten years. Since you’re still starting a business, it might be best to settle for a loan which will require you to repay within an extended period of time. This will allow you to save up for the interest rates and the loan, without putting your business’ operations at risk.

Aside from the things you’ve read from this article, it’ll also help if you can actually work with experts when it comes to finding the right loan for your needs. Places like oinkmoney.com may be a good starting point.

Be A Responsible Borrower

Finding the right loan for your needs is never easy. There are several things to think about to come up with the best possible decision. You also have to keep in mind that your responsibility as a borrower doesn’t end the moment you receive the money – you should pour in your time and effort in order to pay all of these in time. If not, your life may be affected negatively. Remember all the things presented in this article, and for sure, you’ll come up with a decision on which loan to get without compromising your financial health in the long run.

Sarah Porter

Sarah Porter is a money-savvy writer and mum of two based in Manchester, UK. She is the Brand and Marketing Manager at the UK loan website Oink Money (oinkmoney.com), as well as the founder of a well known money-saving website. Sarah is originally from Edinburgh where she studied Business and later worked in finance for a FTSE 100 company. She left her career in finance to pursue her passion for writing, a move which allowed her to travel the world with her laptop while running her blog.

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