Posts Tagged With: Citibank

Do you pay yourself first or pay your bills first then save the rest and realised that nothing much is left at the end of the month?

I am like most of the people who spend first then save later in the past and usually left with nothing, really. Things changed after I started reading some financial related books.

It is important to have a system or plan in order to build up your savings.

One of it is that i have setup an instruction to automatically deduct a certain amount from my pay receiving account (Citibank Stepup account) to my pure savings account (Standchart eSaver account) which I do not touch the money at all on the pay day.

This way, I can restrict myself to only spend the rest of the money in my Citibank Stepup account without worrying about how much money to save or when to save, or things like that.

It is always great to have some savings, be it for emergency or for personal use.

It is just a little effort. If you are lazy, then your money will be lazy too!

Most of the people in Singapore have their main saving account with POSB/DBS Bank. That includes me as well, but not until I realized that their interest is only 0.25% p.a which is very low. I looked around for banks that offers better interest rates for savings accounts and came up with 3 banks, Citibank, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank.

1) Citibank Stepup Account

• Base interest - 0.6875% p.a.
• Step-Up to 2% p.a. over 12 months

** Citibank Stepup Account Interest Rate Dropped **

2) Maybank iSAVvy Savings Account

• 1.08/1.28% + 6% IOI — iSAVvy savings (min $5k/$50k)
• Daily balance below S$5,000 (0.25% p.a.)
• Daily balance of S$5,000 to below S$50,000 (1.08% p.a.)
• Daily balance of S$50,000 and above (1.28% p.a.)
• Interest-on-interest every 6 months (6.00%)

3) Standard Chartered Bank e$aver Account

• 0.78/1.08% — e$aver (min $0/$50k)

Currently, I think Citibank stepup Account offers better interest rates in long run as it is a relatively new account and should not have interest rates revision so soon (I hope so). Both Maybank iSAVvy Savings Account and Standard Chartered Bank e$aver Account have already reduced their interest rates recently and I wonder when is their next reduction.

For Citibank Stepup Account to add up, just make make it a point to put in a certain amount of money every month for 12 months without taking out any money so that it can reach the 2% after a year. At 2% p.a. it is very high for a savings account since most of the fixed deposit can’t even match it.

My plans,
1) Keep Posb Savings account, use it as an account to pay misc stuff like bills.
2) Apply for 1 more Stepup Account (if they allow) as I already have one as main salary account but the interest is unable to go up as there is a lot of ins and outs, the new Stepup Account will receive automatically 10% of the salary from my main salary account every month and never touch it for it to step up to 2%.
3) Close my Standard Chartered Bank e$aver Account and move the little funds in them over to the new Stepup Account.

I have been advising my friends to open an savings account with either of the 3 banks as they offer as least 3x the interest rates than Posb Savings Account, but most of them are rather lazy to do so.

If you are lazy, then your money will be lazy too!