SG struggles with inflation on necessities and retirement plans

Featured on Singapore Business Review, MSN, The Fintech Times, Mothership.

With inflation soaring over recent months, Seedly and Milieu Insight have partnered up to publish the ‘Seedly x Milieu Insight: The Impact of Inflation on Singaporeans’ report. This report is based on an online survey conducted by Southeast Asia consumer research company, Milieu Insight, which aimed to find out how Singaporeans have been impacted by the inflation and rising home prices, and their opinions of government measures to tackle these pressing issues.

Based on the report, 71% of Singaporeans see spending on necessities as the top area inflation had an impact on.

This is followed by retirement plans and investments at 34% and 26%, respectively.

Around 25% have cited spending on luxuries such as cars and leisure travel had been affected by inflation, and 17% said it had an impact on insurance.

Other insights from the report:

• 8 in 10 Singaporeans said that their personal financial situations have been affected somewhat or to a large extent in the past 1 year due to inflation.
• Singaporeans are taking more precaution with their investments, with 65% investing less actively and investing in lower risk investments (65%) compared to a year ago.
• 31% of Singaporeans are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat satisfied’ with the Singapore government’s measures to help Singaporeans cope with inflation. Meanwhile, 24% are dissatisfied and 46% are neutral.
• 9 in 10 Singaporeans are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat concerned’ about rising home prices.
• Those aged 35-44 years old who intend to buy a house in the 5 years tend to be looking at private housing (34%) compared to other age groups. They also skew lower for intention to buy a BTO flat (32% versus 44% national average)
• Only 19% are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ satisfied with the Singapore government’s measures to keep housing affordable. Meanwhile 41% are dissatisfied and 41% are neutral
• In light of rising COE prices, 54% of car owners are very or somewhat likely to renew their COE once their current one expires, while 27% are unlikely to do so and 20% are unsure

Get in touch with us to access the full report.

Methodology

The survey was conducted with N=1,000 Singaporeans aged 16 years old and above from 30 November 2022 to 5 December 2022. The results are broadly representative of the national population by age and gender (interlocking quotas), ethnicity and household income (non-interlocking quotas), and the margin of error is +/-3% at 95% confidence level.

‍