Go to the profile of Eileen Kang
Eileen Kang
Co-Founder at Escapade (www.glyphescapade.com). Caters to your short attention span at @iameileenkang.

One Rule To Live By 2016

Things have changed a lot in 2016. I am now officially unemployed, I’ve switched gears from agency life to entrepreneurship, I’m engaged and we’ve gotten our place (Telok Blangah Crescent homies, please shout). Yes, we are fast. I know. In fact, I foresee us getting 4 pets and a baby by the end of 2016.

I kid.

About the baby, yes. Our baby will come in the form of our pets — I’ve waited so incredibly long for the day when I can sing Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty to an actual cat that belongs to me, and not to a stray or to a virtual YouTube cat.

Digressions aside, the main point is, things really have changed a lot. Specifically, I:

  • now do not have a fixed monthly salary
  • work from home daily (home aka S’s place)
  • owe the government money in the form of our housing loan
  • need to set aside money for the home renovation
  • need to set aside money for furniture and appliances
  • need to set aside money for the wedding (photoshoot, gown, dinner etc)
  • need to set aside money for pet adoption

Yea, a lot of it is about money. As with most things in Life.

I don’t draw a salary from Escapade (check out our FB Page and if you haven’t liked it yet, please do!) because both myself and S want to put the seed money to better use (for development, for marketing etc). I do however, do some freelance writing on the side that makes me about $1.5k a month. But as you can see above, there’ve been so many advancements in my Life that require money. How did I cope? How do I cope?

Fun fact: Elon Musk tried living on a dollar a day as a teenager and him successfully doing so convinced him he could be an entrepreneur.

There is one new rule (or rather, a funnel of rules) that I now live by.

Every thing I want to get, or even places I want to eat at, or activities I want to spend time on, I run them through the funnel of rules below:

  1. Is it a need or a want?
  2. Can my lifestyle afford it?
  3. Is it sustainable / long-term?

Take for example, my Fitness First gym membership. Let’s run it through the funnel.

Fitness First Gym Membership

  1. Is it a need or a want? Let’s just say it’s a need, because I need to be motivated to work out in order to keep fit and healthy.
  2. Can my lifestyle afford it? A membership at Fitness First costs $160 monthly. That’s 10% of my current take-home. :/
  3. Is it sustainable / long-term? Our new place is at Telok Blangah Crescent, which has a SAFRA club right next to it. Which means I can go to the SAFRA gym for just $30 a month (there’s a $200+ one-time activation fee). Or, I can just head to one of the ActiveSG gyms (per entry’s SGD2.50), because let’s face it, getting fit is a matter of mind over matter; i.e, you don’t need the fancy gym environment.

So I cancelled my gym membership.

LinkedIn Premium Account

  1. Is it a need or a want? Well, this is clearly a want. And when things are a want, you pretty much don’t have to run them through #2 and #3 because wants can be eliminated from your life with strong willpower (or so they say, lol). But okay, let’s just play along; let’s say it’s a need, because maybe I need to reach out to influencers via InMail. Or stalk people’s profiles without them realising …
  2. Can my lifestyle afford it? A LinkedIn Premium membership rings in at about SGD30 a month. SGD30 can buy me an ASOS dress that’s on sale (which is also a want, btw). SGD30 can also cover my meals (if i eat at a hawker centre) for almost 4 days.
  3. Is it sustainable / long-term? Well, I can always activate my Premium account again when I have more spare cash to play around with in future. In the meantime, I’ll just have to watch who I stalk.

So I cancelled my LinkedIn Premium Account.

Our New Home

  1. Is it a need or a want? A new home is a need for any new couple — for us to spend quality private time together, to keep pets that our animals-averse mums would otherwise disapprove of. The type of home that you want though, veers between the thin line of need / want. Just like any other Singaporean couple, our first choice was a BTO. But you’d have to wait 3–4 years for a BTO flat, and unfortunately, me and S didn’t meet 4 years ago, which rules out waiting that long. I didn’t want to keep staying over at his place, and his nose didn’t allow him to keep staying over at mine’s (he sneezes vehemently every time he sleeps over at my place). Condos / ECs were possible, but we didn’t want to stretch ourselves with the crazy amount of repayment we had to make if we took a loan to finance those. So we had to look at a resale unit. I wanted a 4-room at first, but S convinced me to go with a 3. The difference between a 3 and 4-room flat in an area like TBC can be in the SGD200k range. We bought our 3-room for ~SGD300k, the latest transacted price for a 4–room was SGD525k.
  2. Can my lifestyle afford it? As it is with the 3-room flat, we have to take a loan from HDB (that we intend to pay off in 10 years time). We also have between SGD50–70k worth of grants we’re eligible for. Not to mention CPF deductions etc. We however, do not have a lot of CPF because we are young’uns. If we’d taken a 4–room / EC / condo, I shudder to imagine how much debt we’d be under. Would you rather live in a bigger, posher place but struggle to make ends meet every month? Consider wisely. In addition, since it’s just the both of us, a 3-room makes for a perfectly comfy abode. Not to mention, I don’t have to clean that huge a house.
  3. Is it sustainable / long-term? We’d have to stay a minimum of 5 years in our flat. After 5 years, we can either choose to continue staying here, rent it out and / or upgrade to a bigger unit / private property. For a place that we’re only staying 5 years in, there’s no point in spending a huge ton of money first acquiring it, then renovating it. Hence the 3-room, hence the decision to go with minimal (but necessary) renovations.

Housewarming in Sept, anyone?

A Car

  1. Is it a need or a want? In our instance, a car’s a want. Our new place is extremely close to Tiong Bahru Plaza, VivoCity and Great World City, which are places where we pretty much hang out all the time. It’s also mere bus stops away from Commonwealth MRT and Bukit Merah Bus Interchange.
  2. Can my lifestyle afford it? We’d have to take a loan if it’s a brand new car. And remember, debt encourages stress. Stress encourages arguments. Arguments encourage marriage breakdowns. Marriage breakdowns encourage divorce settlements. Divorce settlements are not cheap, hence debt. Vicious cycle.
  3. Is it sustainable / long-term? Considering cars in SG need to be scrapped after the 10-year COE is up, cars are not a good investment. In fact, cars are depreciating assets. If we do really need a car (say S needs to go to Changi everyday for some reason), we’d rather get a second-hand car. And we’re not talking posh brands, a simple Japanese car would do.

We’re not getting a car at this stage though. Heck, I even think twice when it comes to taking cabs these days.

Engagement Ring

  1. Is it a need or a want? Tricky question. I’ve got to be honest here, although I did tell S that I’m willing to marry him even if he gave me a cherry knot ring, I’ve also many a times chimed the statement “diamonds are a girl’s best friend” (cough). To be fair to myself though, I have expressed to him that because my fingers are small, a 1-carat would look too big on them.
  2. Can my lifestyle afford it? His lifestyle, you mean. Thank God S is a prudent man with great foresight, so yes.
  3. Is it sustainable / long-term? When S proposed with the ring, I was surprised. He’d spoken to me about how silly and capitalistic the practice of females clamouring for 1-carat engagement rings is. Or how it isn’t prudent to want a ring from brands such as Tiffany’s / Cartier because you pay an unnecessary premium for the branding. So when he did propose, I asked why he bought the ring that he did. His answer: “Because if I don’t and I buy you a fake / small ring, in future should you mix around with women who have the real / big thing, you’ll feel envious and come back to me and demand I buy you another ring. So I might as well save myself the trouble and pain and get you what all women want, now.” Long-term thinking indeed. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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Point is, I’ve come to realise that with a regular, stable salary, I tend to splurge on unnecessary things, because the notion that “money’s going to come in next month anyway!” is stuck in my head.

Now that I don’t have a regular, stable salary, I have to consider my spending extra carefully. And the above funnel helps. (Buying me dinner does too.)

Even if you’re drawing a stable salary now, it’s useful to run by the funnel and spend wisely. We all want to retire young, right?

When it comes to spending business-wise, there should also be a funnel of thinking, namely:

  1. What does [said thing that requires $X] achieve?
  2. What’s the ROI?
  3. Can the company’s funds afford it?
  4. Is there a way we can achieve similar objectives, but with less spend?
  5. Is it long-term / sustainable?

Those are the rules I’m going to live by, for 2016. What’s yours?