Borrow $100,000 to buy a car in Singapore?

Hi AK, 

When I get back to Sg next year, i'm planning on getting a car (depreciating asset boohoo!)

Now, on my previous car purchase, I felt i made a mistake of buying too early and had to take a full car loan. It ate up a lot of my monthly pay. So this time round, I wanted to do my sums right before diving in. 

I do have enough to pay upfront for a car (eg 100k). But could you talk to yourself if paying upfront for a car is a good idea? 

My alternative could be taking this 100k and throwing it into the Sg savings bonds/safer type of bonds, and earning the interest. As long as this "bond interest" is more than the "car loan interest", this would make it worthwhile? Am I missing a blind spot here? 

Can I just compare a 2% car loan interest vs a 3% interest earned from bonds and conclude that I will earn 1% interest? 

Could you talk to yourself on this issue? I will be eavesdropping!

thank you!!!

Hi,

You have to understand that when they say your car loan interest rate is X.X%, it is really more than that:

http://singaporeanstocksinvestor.blogspot.sg/2014/04/a-car-loan-is-different-from-home-loan.html

I don't like the idea of borrowing money to fund consumption and if we have to borrow money to buy a car, keep the loan quantum as small as possible:

http://singaporeanstocksinvestor.blogspot.sg/2016/05/what-new-mas-rules-for-car-loans-mean.html

Welcome back to the land of expensive cars!

Best wishes,
AK

Free money from the government is good.

Reader:

I don't know if this is the correct avenue to ask you a question. I'm hoping that you can give your insights if you're faced with this situation.

I bought a HDB flat and took a bank loan plus used a bit of my OA to pay for it. I have about $240k of bank loan left and now I 'owe' my OA $85k.

Since the market is kinda 'overvalued' now, so nothing to invest in. What would you do if you have some spare cash. Would you pay off the Bank loan or CPF loan?

Actually, I have enough money in my OA to fully pay off the Bank loan, but I decided that 'free money' from the government is good. Besides, the interest of 2.5% in OA is higher than 2% Bank loan.

Or I can use the money to invest if Mr Market gets very depressed.

What would you do?

Best regards,

AK:
I am not allowed to give advice. I am only talking to myself in my blog.

From your email, I get the impression that you have been reading my blog. So, you know about the accrued interest we owe when we use our OA money to pay for our home.





I am not saying anything new when I say that we should avoid using OA money to pay for our home unless we don't have a choice. CPF money is primarily for retirement funding purpose and not to fund consumption.

Since you already decided that 'free money' from the government is good, act on that belief. ;)





I say frequently enough that I treat my CPF savings as the investment grade bond component of my portfolio, generating relatively good returns. That is good enough for me.

We can never have our cake and eat it too.




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