This post was written in collaboration with SNACK by Income. While we are financially compensated by them, we nonetheless strive to maintain our editorial integrity and review products with the same objective lens. We are committed to providing the best information in order for you to make personal financial decisions with confidence. You can view our Editorial Guidelines here.
If you haven’t started investing yet, one reason why you’re putting it off is that you’re waiting until you have enough money to do so.
But what if I told you that you could start investing in bite-sized amounts?
Thanks to SNACK by Income, you can now invest from as low as $1 to $100 a week, setting up a weekly limit if you wish, and building up your investment portfolio at your own pace. You decide how much or how little you want to invest. Even if you can only spare a few dollars a week, it’s totally fine — you’re still doing something to grow your money versus someone who isn’t investing at all.
SNACK Investment lets you embed investing with your daily activities; for example, buying groceries, grabbing lunch, taking an MRT ride or going for a jog. After you linked your cards, the mobile app receives signals of you performing these activities and makes a small investment automatically whenever that happens.
If you invest with SNACK over a period of time, you’ll be benefitting from a dollar-cost averaging investment approach, which basically means investing fixed sums on a regular basis regardless of market conditions. Thanks to the regularity of your investments, you won’t have to worry so much about market volatility — just hold on to those investments for the long term.
The important thing is that with bite-sized investments, you can embark on your investment journey earlier and at any time. This gives your investments more time to accumulate, and also gives the market more time to appreciate. Oh, the power of compounding!
Why is investing so important, no matter how small you start? Well, I don’t know about you, but I sure want to get as much bang for my buck as I can. Growing your money lets you beat inflation, reach your financial goals faster and spend less time over your lifetime working to earn it!
You can start investing, no matter how small your budget
I’ve been dreaming about retirement even before I started working, so trust me when I say that if you want to have a glimmer of hope for an early retirement, you’ll need to start investing as soon as you can — even if you don’t have a lot of capital to start with. Luckily, SNACK Investment makes it that easy to do.
SNACK Investment’s minimum amount is so low that even fresh grads on modest starting salaries can begin to invest small amounts through SNACK Investment without feeling the pinch. SNACK Investment is also useful for older or more experienced investors who want to diversify their existing portfolio.
You see, SNACK Investment’s barrier to entry is so low — it’s even possible to invest from $1! That’s a really accessible barrier to entry… I mean, kids these days probably get more allowance than that per day.
With a low barrier to entry, more people can start their investment journey ASAP instead of slowly building up a lump sum to invest. This helps society take one step towards equality, bridging the gap between those who are normally unable to invest big sums and those who are already swimming in investment income.
And lest you start feeling anxious about having as much passive income as those humblebrags on social media, investing isn’t a race, so don’t compare yourself with others. It’s a long-term process that’s meant to help you grow money for the future.
So long as you start investing early, you can always slowly build up your investment nest egg over time at your own pace, and over time you will reach your financial goals.
Automate the process so it’s less of a chore
I think we can all agree that administrative tasks are soul-killing and need to be kept to a minimum. No wonder so many people view investing as a chore or a stressful endeavour, which discourages them from even starting.
The thought of having to do extensive research, constantly log into a trading account to anxiously check how your investments are doing and painstakingly pick financial products to buy can be quite the motivation killer.
With SNACK Investment, even the completely clueless can start investing straight away, as all funds are selected and handpicked by professional fund managers. SNACK Investment users’ money goes towards the Asian Income Fund, which invests primarily in Asian equities, including Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Asian fixed income securities. In the future, there will be more funds to choose from.
SNACK Investment also removes the need to make decisions about when or how much to invest. Instead, you simply link your investments to your daily activities. Each time you perform one of the specified activities, SNACK Investment will automatically make an investment for you. And if you want to add an extra layer of automation, you can also turn on auto-invest, so the app invests a certain sum of money for you every week.
All of this can be pre-programmed on the app to run automatically. It’s like having a plant in a self-watering pot — you can forget it’s there, but it continues to grow in the background. One less task to check off your mental load!
Even if life gets so busy that you forget SNACK Investment exists, when you finally remember to check the app, you’d get a pleasant surprise when you see how much investment you’ve amassed.
Investing is a long term game that can stretch out over decades, so automating the process can really save you from a lot of administrative hassle over the years and make the journey fly by faster. Just imagine, 5 minutes a day of admin, multiplied by 365 days a year…that’s like over 30 hours!
A little goes a long way
Here at MoneySmart, we’re always repeating the old adage about how investing a little can go a long way. In case there was any doubt, that isn’t some marketing slogan or platitude to make our readers feel better. It really is true, so long as you start early enough and continue to invest regularly.
For example, let’s say you regularly invest $100 a month at a growth rate of 3% per annum.
Thanks to compounding interest (i.e. earning interest not just on your principal amount but on any interest earned thus far), you will have $6,370.96 in five years. In 25 years, that amount will balloon to $43,751.12.
The total amount of money you would have paid up to that point would actually be only $30,000. Thanks to compounding interest, you’d technically be getting $13,751.12 for “free”.
(This calculation is no indication or guarantee of the fund or SNACK Investment. It’s just an illustration to demonstrate the glories of compounding interest.)
As you can see, starting small and early can offer great growth potential, and is a much faster way to achieve your financial goals than simply saving up cash in that biscuit tin under your bed.
Start to invest in 1, 2, 3…
We’ve been talking so much about SNACK Investment, but what exactly is it?
SNACK Investment is a product newly added to the SNACK by Income app, NTUC Income’s award-winning solution for consumers who wish to manage their insurance and investments in small, bite-sized pieces.
Each time you pay premiums through SNACK Investment, your money goes towards buying insurance protection as well as towards investing. So, you get the dual benefits of protection and investment at the same time — all while going about your daily life, minding your own business and most importantly not having to waste time and energy managing your portfolio.
With SNACK Investment, you can build up your portfolio through bite-sized premium contributions of $1/$2/$3 or up to $10, with each premium contribution being made every time you participate in certain lifestyle activities like buying groceries or taking the MRT.
The accumulated premium amounts on the SNACK app will be used to purchase units in the selected fund (currently the Asian Income Fund, more options akan datang). At the same time, you will receive insurance protection for accidental death, with the coverage amount being 105% of your net premiums paid.
The best thing about SNACK Investment is how seamless and easy to use it is. Because your investing schedule is tagged to daily activities and you can even auto-invest a certain amount every week, once you input your preferences into the app and link your credit or debit card, you basically don’t have to do anything else. The app just works in the background, quietly investing for you.
Getting started with SNACK Investment is as easy as downloading the app from the App Store or Google Play and setting up an account on your phone with the help of MyInfo. Before you know it, you, too, will be investing on the go.
SNACK Investment’s XMAS 1-for-1 promotion
Invest with SNACK and get up to $110 Investment credits:
– Sign up for SNACK Investment and receive complimentary $30 worth of investment credits
– Get 1-for-1 for every dollar you invest (up to $80 credits) from now till 26 December 2021
Terms and conditions apply.
Ready to start investing with SNACK Investment? Find out more and download the app to begin.
SNACK, it’s the only snack you will need for your financial future.