Seedly Personal Finance Community

I was recently introduced to this community on Facebook called Seedly Personal Finance Community (SG). As its name suggests, it is a community of people interested in learning and sharing about personal finance in Singapore. I actually came to know about the community through an article on the high interest savings account that I wrote about in an earlier post, and I find it very interesting and useful.

I’m not certain how long the community has been around since I haven’t been following Singapore news much the last 8 years, but with close to 8,000 members now, almost every question I have about my personal finance has been asked by somebody and replied by others. Sure, not everyone on the platform is a finance expert, but it’s always good reference to get ground opinion. I find it interesting to learn how many self-employed people are voluntarily contributing to their CPF accounts; what insurance is a better choice; how many percent of our savings are people investing, etc. And it’s also interesting that many members are financial bloggers themselves and openly share their savings amounts and portfolios on the web. Yes, I can literally match the face to the savings amount since there doesn’t seem to be much attempt at hiding their financial statuses.

What I enjoy most are the replies to questions asked by others. The reason I enjoy the responses is because, they are usually well thought out and well-framed replies instead of answering for the sake of disagreeing or showing off. When someone asks, for example, “How many percent of my savings should I invest,” or “should I buy term insurance,” the first responses are usually questions back at the original poster. These questions go along the lines of, “What are your financial goals,” “What are you investment goals,” and “What kind of coverage are you looking for,” etc. To me, these are the best answers because they are catered to the person asking the question instead of just a generic reply that doesn’t necessarily apply to the thread starter.

Some may think, since I live in Japan, what use is there in me participating in the Singapore community. However, I think it’s because I live in Japan, my savings in Singapore are just sitting there doing nothing. So, might as well learn some ways to grow them right? Besides, it also helps me in understanding annoyingly difficult-to-understand insurance policies and get an idea of whether my investment style is considered aggressive, normal, or conservative. Through the platform, I’ve also learned about some robo-advisors like StashAway and Autowealth, although I haven’t actually thought about using them and thus haven’t researched in depth.

So if you’re living away from Singapore and have your savings back home sitting there doing nothing, you might be interested to join this community to learn how to make your money work for you. Now I just need someone to advise me on insurance policies in Japan.