The past few mornings have been spent researching better ways to save money. My mom helped me put in some amount into fixed deposits a few years ago, and they expired recently, so she took it out as one lump sum.

“I’ve had RM**** in a fixed deposit for 4 years getting 3.7% per annum. I want something more.”

That, I said to a personal financial consultant, and she threw all her financial knowledge at me in technical jargon like I looked like I knew what she meant. Maybe she thought I was cute.

Other banks were judgemental based on my T-shirt, jeans and laptop bag.

So the next big thing was unit trusts. I was pretty impressed with the 6-15% interest, but our family’s Chief Financial Officer (my dad) was not.

“Why do you think they have so many new funds and various service charges? To cover up their losses! They only pick those performing ones to show you in graphs!”

And so, I put the cash back in a fixed deposit. 🙁 A joint account with a senior citizen (my mom) bumped up the interest to 3.8%, but still! What is 3.7%?

Supposing you had RM1000, and you chucked it in a fixed deposit for 12 months at 3.7% per annum. That would give you RM37 in interest a year.

RM37 isn’t much, especially if you have a job. I could save that by skipping 4 frappucinos in a year! Divide that by 12 months for just over RM3 a month. You could save RM3 a month, or 10 sen a day, by just converting from your daily dose of Teh O Ais Limau (RM1.20) to Teh Tarik (RM1.00).

Thus, saving accounts of any kind aren’t about getting extra money to spend. It’s about keeping money out of your itchy, spending hands.