How to Be Recession Gurus

Singapore is a major financial center in the world. It is also one of the richest countries in Asia. Unfortunately, it is not immune to the economic aftershocks caused by the Wall Street crash and the global financial crisis. Singapore’s economy is down today, the first asian country to be hit by a recession.
In order to survive through this recession, we all need to learn some tricks to increase the real amount of money in our pockets. Or rather, block up the gapping hole in our pockets to save more.

Tips for consumers
Saving and spending only on the absolute necessities might just be the key of survival. Its true that we spent at least 1/12 of our waking moments eating, and there's where a big amount of our income will be spent. Rather than going into a high-end resturant for a set lunch and dinner, spending around s$25~ s$30 for each person, a better way for saving money would be going to your closest hawker centre and have a hearty meal, possibly saving s$20 for each person and around s$ 80 if its a family of four. It might be a small amount of money if you are the type of person who would spend at least s$100 on food a day, but if you can keep it up for amount, you would have saved at least a thousand dollars! Hate the discomfort and the overwelming heat in the hawker centre? Then food courts would be your next best option.

Tips for produces
Maybe its time you lay off a few workers to reduce the cost, its everyman for himself. Slack a few and maybe that will give the workers the reason to work harder. Of course, this is not the best way to reduce the cost and increase the the productivity. Increasing the price of your product may also be a good way to increase the total revenue, however that depends on how inelastic the demand is for your product, for example, the prata store at the Newton Hawker Centre, has increased the price of his roti prata from $1.4 to $1.8 over the past two years. When i asked the store owner if the increase in price of his prata has affected the sales of the popular indian delicacy, he said no. Apparently, the store owner has been improving his pratas to make it more inelastic.

If we can watch our spending habits and cut down on unneccesary goods, prehaps it will be alot easier for us to live through this economic recession.

Yim Si Ze 5Z