The effective interest rate for May 2021 Singapore Savings Bonds (SBMAY21 GX21050V) is 1.56% if you held it for 10 years. As you can see from the chart above, this is almost like a dead cat pounce as the interest rates for Singapore Savings Bonds jumps from previous month of 1.15% to current month 1.56%.
The minimum amount you can purchase is S$500. If you decide to hold and sell the current issue (SBMAY21 GX21050V) after 1 year, the effective interest rate is 0.37%.
I wouldn’t put my money into the Singapore Savings Bonds as the interest rate is simply too low. What are the alternatives? You can check my previous post on What can you invest with 500 Dollars?
Singapore Savings Bonds Alternatives
You can consider Dash EasyEarn or Dash PET which offers you a return of 2.0% and 1.5% respectively.
Is Singapore Savings Bonds still Useful?
Most of the financial products out there require you to invest using cold hard cash. This is where the Singapore Savings Bonds outshine them. You can purchase the Singapore Savings Bonds using your Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) funds.
The interest rate for Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) fund is only 0.05% per annum. You can top up your SRS account to offset your annual taxes and then use the funds from your SRS account to purchase Singapore Savings Bonds to earn a higher interest rate.
Tracking Singapore Savings Bonds via Stocks Café
My favourite website, Stocks Café has allows adding of Singapore Savings Bonds into your portfolio. If you didn’t know, I signed up as a Friend of Stocks Café as my most favourite feature of Stocks Café is the automated tracking of dividends payout.
This is the third year that I continue to use Stocks Café to track my dividends.
Tracking Singapore Savings Bonds via My Savings Bonds Portal
MAS has launched My Savings Bonds Portal where you can track your Singapore Savings Bonds purchases separately from your stock purchases. I have done up a simple guide here. (Read more: Guide to My Savings Bonds Portal)
