SINGAPORE: Ever since personal finance blog The Woke Salaryman put out its first article last year — about the most important things to do to save S$100,000 by the age of 30 — its rise in Singapore’s personal finance landscape has been meteoric.
But when The Woke Salaryman was born, even he and co-founder Goh Wei Choon, both 31, were taken by surprise by the “insane” reaction to their first post, which received 6,000 shares on Facebook within a few days.Today, The Woke Salaryman commands around 171,000 followers on Facebook and 114,000 on Instagram.It was the same with Dawn Cher, who runs SG Budget Babe. She first rose to prominence with her blog entry about saving S$20,000 in her first year of work on a monthly salary of S$2,500.
“A crisis is the best time to ask questions, because the crisis is a stress test to some extent. And this will come through in the survey results,” adds Menon. Similarly, according to MoneySense, the Monetary Authority of Singapore does not shy away from working with financial blogs such as Dollars and Sense, and even lifestyle platforms like The Smart Local.
“It’s also a reflection of demand and supply. When you have endless blogs about finance, it means there’s demand.”With the gamut of personal finance blogs and platforms at one’s fingertips, those that cut through the noise have replaced stuffy branding with illustrations or snazzy stock images, quirky videos, sleek layouts and a conversational tone.
Secondly, maintaining accessibility requires some degree of transparency about one’s personal circumstances, although this leaves others room to pass judgement. Cher, for example, took flak from disbelieving readers when she shared her saving efforts in her first post. Finally, “keeping it real” requires bloggers to understand the layman so they do not write in a void.
The 29-year-old, who runs JeraldinePhneah.com outside her full-time job in technology, has also received COVID-related career questions: Whether it is the right time to switch jobs and how people can future-proof themselves. This could mean exploring a new software that is specific to one’s industry and improves one’s productivity.On any personal finance journey, keeping one’s mental health intact is important, shares He. If a job causes severe distress and you can afford a break, he recommends living off your savings for a while before starting the job search.
They acknowledge that “a portion of Singaporeans won’t find content helpful” because “systemic poverty makes it harder for them to overcome their circumstances”. But the idea of wealth “shouldn’t be monopolised by a few classes”, adds He, who would like to see, say, a graphic designer be financially free one day.
Although Providend mainly handles clients in their 50s who do not turn to personal finance bloggers, more of them have approached him to speak with their millennial children about the importance of “financial resilience” for the road ahead. Likewise, if theatre director Adeeb Fazah is not seeking financial advice from his peers who share similar circumstances, he sieves through information on his own.
Whenever 28-year-old Alexander McColl seeks financial advice, his research process begins with “a billion tabs” open on his web browser because “it’s useful to build up your ‘google-fu’ to know where to find answers”. For example, filmmaker Cheng Chai Hong considers himself “fairly financially illiterate” because he never saw wealth accumulation as a goal. But the most useful financial advice the 30-year-old received was from He of The Woke Salaryman.
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