Singaporeans' top concern: high cost of living

With concern over the outlook for 2010, Singaporeans listed their top 3 financial concerns: cost of living expenses, job security and changes in salary.

According to a recent Visa survey, 20 percent of Singaporean respondents said they were more confident about their personal financial situation compared with six months ago. This was lower than the survey average of 27 percent taken across 10 other countries across the Asia Pacific.

61% responded that the top concern was cost of living expenses, 58% job security and 57% change in salary.

This was mostly consistent with the results retrieved from the other 10 source markets surveyed:Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand and Taiwan. 48 percent of respondents said they were very or extremely concerned about living expense, 44 per cent listed increasing savings and another 44 percent brought up job security as top concern. percent) and job security (44 percent).

Singaporean respondents were less concerned about the interest rates for mortgages/loans (36 percent of respondents were very or extremely concerned), payment card debt (35 percent) and fluctuating exchange rates (24 percent).

Meranda Chan, Visa’s Country Manager in Singapore said: “What we can see from these findings is that Singaporeans are being very pragmatic when it comes to looking ahead to 2010 and are focused on the financial concerns they can manage.

“Across the region and in Singapore, consumers are looking at their expenses, their savings and their job security to see how they can manage these rather than focusing on longer-term or more macro-economic conditions such as exchange rates, interest rates or investment portfolios,” said Chan.

One way in which consumers are driving more value out of their money is to find the most economical way to spend it. According to the Visa eCommerce Consumer Monitor2, 84 percent of Singapore respondents said they had shopped online in the last 12 months. The top reasons for using the internet to make purchases were because the could shop anytime (79 percent), compare prices and save money (78 percent), find and compare products easily (77 percent) and search for bargains (77 percent).

“Making purchases online is one way that consumers can really get the most out of their spending power. Another way consumers can get more value out of every dollar they spend is to use a payment card, where every dollar spent can be used to build up rewards points which in turn can be redeemed for other items,” Chan said.