HSBC: Financial Management Greatly Stresses Singapore Millennials

Photos: Facebook/millennialsofsingapore

YOLO. You only live once. This is the great line of the millennials and the overused hashtag in Twitter. Oxford Dictionary defines YOLO as expressing the view that one should make the most of the present moment without worrying about the future, and often used as a rationale for impulsive or reckless behavior.

Two years ago, one bank even launched YOLO, a credit card for the millennials. This is just to show how this mentality represents this age group.

Screengrab from Youtube

The website www.manpowergroup.com.sg declares that by 2020 Millennials will make up over a third of the global workforce.

For the Singapore millennials, they worry about how to manage their finances. They just do not have enough time to carry out financial tasks. And if they do, they consume a lot of time completing it.

This was one of the findings of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) recent study last September 2018 with 6,000 respondents, aged 18 to 34 years old from five different countries—Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Australia and the UK—on how time affect people’s ability to manage their own finances.

Singapore millennials got the highest percentage of 86% among the group to have little or no free time. This is 8% higher than the global comparison of 78%. Next to SG is Hong Kong with 79% and UK with 78%. China landed the last, with 69%.

The research also reveals that the Singapore millenials’ financial management “struggle” affects them mentally. They are greatly stressed, agitated, and overwhelmed.

Study statistics expose that Singaporeans “time-pressed” situation is brought by a hyper-busy connected-technologically lifestyle, and with some very time-consuming daily routines like commuting, lining up, waiting for friends.

Despite the “little time” claim by the millennials, they tend to use whatever their remaining time to check on social media rather than checking and managing their finances.

According to Synthesio’s Social Media Intelligence Suite, a social media measurement platform, Singapore Millennials account for 1.2 million people.  This is  22% of the total population in Singapore. Social media plays a vital role in the daily lives of Singaporean millennials, with an average of 3.4 hours on their phones daily.