Both a sinking fund and an emergency fund involve setting money aside, but for different purposes.

An emergency fund is for the unexpected: job loss, a medical bill, a burst pipe that needs fixing right away. You don’t know when you’ll need it or how much, so it sits untouched until a real emergency happens.

A sinking fund is for the expected. You know roughly when the expense is coming and how much it will cost, so you save towards that target and spend it in full once the date arrives.

If you keep both in one pot, it becomes easy to dip into your emergency money for a planned expense. That leaves you exposed if a real emergency comes along.

Ask around for how to beat inflation with investments and most people will point you to the stock market: buy an index fund, hold it for years, let compounding do the work. That advice makes sense for money you can leave untouched through a downturn, but it does not suit everyone, and treating it as the only way to protect your savings leaves out a fairly large group of savers.

Equity markets move up and down, and if you need to sell during a market downturn, you could risk making a loss. If you cannot afford to lose the money, think carefully before putting it in the stock market. This applies especially to:

• Conservative savers who would rather protect their capital than chase higher returns.
• Retirees drawing down their savings, who cannot wait years for the market to recover.
• Anyone saving for a near-term goal, such as a home downpayment, a wedding, or a renovation, where the money is needed by a set date.
• Emergency fund holders, because an emergency fund that has lost value in a downturn cannot do its job.

For these savers, the priority is not maximising returns. It is protecting what they already have while still keeping pace with rising prices, and that calls for safe, low risk investments rather than exposure to the market.

A finance company is a deposit-taking financial institution regulated by MAS under the Finance Companies Act. SingFinance is one of only three licensed finance companies operating in Singapore. Finance company regulations sit alongside those of banks, covering capital adequacy, liquidity and conduct of business under the same supervising authority.

What a finance company in Singapore offers:

• Eligible Singapore dollar deposits insured by the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation (SDIC) up to S$100,000 in aggregate per depositor per Scheme member, the same statutory protection that applies to bank deposits.
• Fixed deposits, savings accounts and current accounts.
• Commercial property, land and construction, equipment and machinery and motor dealership financing.
• Housing and car loans for individuals.

What we do not offer is equally defining:

• No foreign exchange dealing.
• No uncollateralised credit cards.
• No speculative investment products.

The narrower licence concentrates the business on deposits and secured lending, which is what allows the work to be done through people: assessment on the merits of the case, structuring around the borrower’s cash flow, and turnaround measured against the pace of the deal.

Yes. Deposits placed with MAS-licensed finance companies are covered under the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Deposit Insurance scheme. This is the same scheme that insures bank deposits, up to S$100,000 per depositor per institution.

Here is what that protection actually means:

• If the Institution Fails: Your insured deposits are protected and reimbursed up to the S$100,000 cap.
• Bank or Finance Company: The scheme does not distinguish between the two once an institution is a member, so the safety net works identically either way.

Not every unit sells within the first few weeks. Continental models, EVs, and anything with a narrow buyer pool can sit for months, and every day on the floor is a day that capital is doing nothing.

A poorly structured arrangement charges the same regardless of how long the vehicle has been there. Where financing is billed by the calendar month, a car that sells on day 18 still costs a full month, and a car that sells on day 95 costs four. The fast movers end up subsidising the slow ones, and the margin erosion shows up on the units that were supposed to be profitable.

Interest calculated daily on actual floor time removes that distortion.

Here is the difference on a $150,000 unit, using an illustrative financing cost of 0.8% per month. The rate is an assumption for the purposes of the comparison, not a quoted figure.

Across a floor of twenty or thirty vehicles turning over through the year, that gap stops being a rounding error. Financing cost tracks inventory performance instead of running ahead of it.

SingFinance has a specialised land and construction team that works exclusively with construction loans, so the requirements around milestones, disbursements and project timelines are second nature. That depth of familiarity lets us assess and process applications more efficiently, with fewer rounds of back-and-forth along the way.

Before comparing offers, it helps to understand the parameters that affect every commercial property loan in Singapore.

• Loan-to-Value (LTV): The percentage of the property’s valuation or purchase price (whichever is lower) that the lender will finance. For commercial property in Singapore, LTV is typically up to 80% of valuation/purchase price, whichever is lower. The remaining 20% comes from the borrower as a cash down payment. On a $2 million property, that’s a $400,000 commitment from your side before financing kicks in.
• Loan Tenure: The length of time over which the loan is repaid. For commercial property, tenure of up to 25 years is generally available, subject to the borrower’s profile and the property type. A longer tenure reduces the monthly instalment but increases total interest paid over the life of the commercial property loan. A shorter tenure does the opposite.
• Lock-in Period: The window during which early repayment, refinancing, or partial prepayment may incur a penalty, typically 1.5% of the prepaid amount or the outstanding loan. Lock-ins of 1 to 3 years are common. If you expect to refinance or sell within that window, the lock-in terms matter as much as the headline interest rate on the loan.

How you manage money in your 20s comes down to a workable framework rather than a definite number.

• Start With 50/30/20: Aim for roughly 50% of take-home pay toward needs, 30% toward wants, and 20% toward savings. If 20% feels out of reach at first, even saving 10% consistently is a meaningful start.
• Watch Out for Lifestyle Inflation: Every pay increment tends to get absorbed into upgraded spending rather than increased savings, so automate a transfer on payday before the rest of your salary is available to spend.
• Separate CPF From Savings: CPF serves long-term purposes like housing and retirement, so treat it as separate from your net worth.

Before dividing anything, work out what you are actually starting with:

• The total lump sum you have available to place.
• How much liquidity you are realistically likely to need over the next one to two years, since this shapes how many rungs your ladder needs and how far apart they should sit.

Once that is settled, building the ladder itself comes down to two steps:

1. Divide your total sum across fixed deposits with staggered tenors, typically anywhere from one month up to 24 months.
2. As each FD matures, reinvest the amount, principal plus interest, into a fresh tenor so the ladder renews itself.

Here is a fixed deposit laddering example. Let’s assume we have $40,000 split into $10,000 placements in 3, 6, 9 and 12 month tenures.

From here, the ladder starts to roll. As each rung matures, you reinvest it, principal plus interest, into a fresh 12-month placement. Once each rung is rolling, you will receive returns on your fixed deposits every three months

Once fixed deposit laddering starts, the saver will be able to collect the interest on their principle roughly every three months. The additional benefit of this is that it gives the saver the flexibility to adjust their strategy based on the current fixed deposit interest rate environment

A few things should shape how wide or tight you build the ladder:

• How Often You Need Access: a rung maturing every three months suits savers who might need to access part of their money often.
• Maximising Yield: spacing rungs further apart tends to earn more, since rates usually increase the longer you commit, at least up to a point.
• Rate Direction: When rates are trending downward more broadly, shorter tenors can sometimes carry similar or even higher rates than longer ones too. It is worth checking the full rate table each time you place or reinvest a rung, rather than assuming the longest tenor automatically wins.

Cash flow gaps are among the most common pain points for growing SMEs, and one of the most counterintuitive. The business is growing. The sales pipeline is healthy. But cash is persistently tight because customers are paying on 30 to 90-day credit terms while supplier invoices, salaries, and operating costs arrive without the same grace period.

Two financing instruments address this, and they work differently.

• Invoice factoring traditionally involves selling outstanding invoices to a financing provider at a discount in exchange for immediate cash. The financing provider then collects payment directly from the SME’s customers once invoices fall due. This arrangement suits businesses that prioritise speed of funding and are comfortable with the provider managing collections on their behalf. With evolving customer needs, factoring can now also be arranged on a “non-notification” basis, where debtors or SME’s customers are not aware of the financing arrangement. In such cases, the SME continues to handle collections directly while the financing provider advances funds against the invoices.
• Accounts receivable financing takes a different approach. The SME uses its outstanding invoices or book debts as collateral to draw down a credit facility, retaining full control of its customer relationships and handling collections directly. Repayment is made as customers settle their invoices. In addition, businesses often choose accounts receivable financing over factoring when they manage a large volume of invoices, as it allows them to pool receivables into a single facility rather than negotiating individual invoice sales. This reduces administrative complexity, provides more predictable funding, and ensures that customer interactions remain entirely within the SME’s control.

Both instruments convert outstanding receivables into working capital without waiting for payment cycles to close. The right choice depends on the volume of the invoices or whether the business wants to transfer collection responsibility or keep it in-house.

These solutions are particularly relevant for SMEs in B2B industries where long payment cycles are the norm: construction, manufacturing, trading, logistics, and professional services. For businesses exploring SME financing options that address cash flow without adding conventional term debt, receivables-based products are often worth considering alongside a standard working capital facility.