Chinese New Year is just round the corner and you’d better have settled your IOUs by then! Here to help are our favourite money-tracking and debt-managing tools.
Chinese New Year is just round the corner and you’d better have settled your IOUs by then! Here to help are our favourite money-tracking and debt-managing tools.
Wally
Total. Control. That’s what this app gives you over your finances. You can categorise your expenses, set savings goals and create alerts for payment dates. There’s even an in-built location services tracker to record where you’re spending your money! Bonus: your personal data won’t be saved on Wally’s server.
Available for iOS and Android.
Kashmi
You’re out with your friends and not everyone has enough cash, so you foot the bill first. Sounds familiar? One-year-old Kashmi is a peer-to-peer money-sending app that’s useful if you need to split payments. You can create different groups for transactions (for instance, one for roommates and another for ladies’ night kakis), and since November last year, it allows payments to be made via iMessenger.
Available for iOS and Android.
Pay2home
Resolve money matters with family and friends abroad before Chinese New Year. Remittance service company Pay2home has physical branches and 24-hour money transfer machines, and reportedly charges less for overseas money transfers compared to local banks – think a $9 charge instead of $40 when transferring up to $5,000 to Malaysia. Its mobile app, launched last year, lets you view exchange rates and check the status of your transactions. Soon, you can make transactions not only online, via the website, but also through the app.
Available for web, iOS and Android.
BUYING OR SELLING PROPERTY THIS YEAR?
Take advice from sisters RACE and RHONDA WONG, who founded property app Ohmyhome last September.
FOR SELLERS: Work harder to lure buyers. “The property market will likely remain soft in early 2017 and we don’t expect a huge spike in activity,” the sisters say. In other words, sellers must work harder to best one another.
TIP: Always aim for a "show flat" environment to entice prospective buyers, they say. Inexpensive hack: Use white bedsheets instead of coloured or patterned ones to make a small house look bigger. If you have the time, apply a fresh coat of paint to rejuvenate the look of a timeworn flat.
FOR BUYERS: Get an in-principle loan approval before house-hunting. An in-principle loan approval is when the bank assesses your finances and decides, before you submit an actual request for a home loan, that it can extend a loan to you. Simply put, it’s guaranteed financing. Securing this is important as it gives you a better sense of your budget. “You don’t want to spend unnecessary time looking at properties beyond what you can afford,” says the duo.
TIP: Decide on a bank based on the home loan rates offered, but remember that the loan is only valid for six months after approval. If you’ve settled on a resale HDB flat, you’ll need to provide the bank with your Option to Purchase form within that time. If you’re still shopping around after six months, you’ll need to reapply for a loan.
Available for iOS and Android, Ohmyhome cuts out the middleman, allowing sellers and landlords to transact directly with buyers and tenants, thereby keeping costs low.
TEXT HOE I YUNE MAIN PHOTO SHOWBIT.COM.
