You will produce a one-page map of your cash and near-cash holdings with the protection each one has.
Ask most people how much cash they have and they will open one banking app, read one number, and give you that. Then they remember the fixed deposit, the US dollar account from an exchange semester, the e-wallet with a few hundred dollars from splitting dinners, and the "cash" balance in an investing app. Their money is in six places, and nobody has ever seen all six on one page.
That page is what you build in this exercise. It takes about twenty minutes, and you will reuse it in Module 4, when you work out the real return on each account.
Open each banking and payment app on your phone and write down every account or balance you find. Include savings and current accounts, fixed deposits, digital wallets such as the ones you use for transport or food delivery, cash held in a brokerage or robo-adviser account, and any account overseas. If you are not sure whether something counts, list it. Leaving it off is how money gets forgotten.
Set up a table in a spreadsheet or on paper, one row per account, with these columns:
Institution: the bank or company that owes you the money, as named on the statement Currency: SGD, USD and so on Balance: today's figure Rate: the rate you actually earn, from the product page or your last statement, not the advertised maximum Withdrawal speed: same day, a few working days, or locked until a date, with any penalty for leaving early SDIC status: insured, partly insured or not insured, using what you learned in lesson 1.3
For the rate, use what lesson 1.2 showed you. If a bonus applies only to part of the balance or only when you meet a condition, write the rate you really earn this month.
First, add up the Singapore dollar deposits you hold at each SDIC member. Check the current insured limit on sdic.org.sg. If the total at any one member is above it, mark that member. The amount above the limit has no deposit insurance.
Second, mark any line you had thought of as a deposit that turns out to be something else. The usual surprises are an e-wallet balance, a cash management account that is really a fund, and a structured deposit sold in the same branch as your savings account.
Here is a filled-in map for Jun Hao, 31, with figures made up for the example.
His savings account at Bank A holds S$38,000, earns 0.05%, can be withdrawn the same day and is insured. His fixed deposit, also at Bank A, holds S$70,000 at 2.8% until March, and he would lose the interest if he broke it early. It is insured. A bonus account at Bank B holds S$22,000 and earns 1.6% in months when his salary goes in. Insured. A US dollar account at Bank A holds US$6,000 at 1%. Same-day access, but it is foreign currency, so it is not insured.
Then the less obvious lines. His e-wallet holds S$600 at no interest. It is not a bank deposit, so it is not insured. A robo-adviser "cash" account holds S$9,000. Its product page says the money is invested in a money market fund and takes a few working days to withdraw, so it is not insured either. His brokerage account shows S$2,500 of uninvested cash, and he writes "check terms" because he cannot tell from the app how it is held.
Now the flags. His Singapore dollar deposits at Bank A total S$38,000 plus S$70,000, which is S$108,000. He checks the current limit on the SDIC website and compares it with S$108,000. If the limit is lower, the excess is uninsured, and he marks Bank A partly insured. The robo-adviser line gets the second flag, because he had always thought of it as savings.
A finished map fits on one page and has no blank cells, or a note saying what you will check. Each row shows who owes you the money, how fast you can get it, what it earns and whether insurance covers it. Every member over the limit is marked, and so is every balance that turned out not to be a deposit.
Jun Hao's map showed him two things he had not seen before: more than half his cash sat with one bank, and the account he called his emergency fund was an investment. Your map will show you something too. When yours is filled in, look at it as a whole page before you decide what, if anything, to move.
Fill in the money map template for all your accounts and write one change you would make after seeing it on one page.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).