There's quite a lot of savings this week on Grab! Lai share with all of you so we can all save $$ together.
GrabCar
‘8CAR‘: $8 off second GrabCar rides from 11 – 18 Mar (9am – 12 midnight)
‘FLYMARCH‘: $8 off on all Grab rides to/from Changi Airport from 10 – 19 March
GrabShare
‘TAKESHARE‘: $3 off GrabShare rides from 13 – 17 Mar (9am – 9pm)
‘FLYMARCH‘: $8 off on all Grab rides to/from Changi Airport from 10 – 19 March
'NTUGRAB': $3 off rides from NTU till 17 March
GrabTaxi
'1010‘: $7 off GrabTaxi rides from 13 – 17 Mar (10am – 10pm)
‘ALLNIGHT‘: $8 off GrabTaxi rides from 9 – 31 Mar (11pm – 6am)
‘FLYMARCH‘: $8 off on all Grab rides to/from Changi Airport from 10 – 19 March
GrabHitch
For those of you who havent tried GrabHitch before, here's a promo code for you to get a free ride! 'FREEHITCH' no expiry stated on my app.
Back in the days, I didn't really cab much. Today, that has changed.
Taxi rides weren't a common affair for me when I was growing up.
During my toddler years, my dad had an old family car that did its job in ferrying our family of 4 around Singapore. He would always let me ride in front with him, while mom and mei sat in the back. But I always got car sick, so I didn't particularly enjoy the rides.
When I entered secondary school, he decided to sell the car. "Go green", he told me. "Don't you know how cars cause global warming?"
What my dad's car looked like. I still remember the car plate number: 9171
It came out in 4D about two or three times over the years where we won, but they were all small. Lol.
As a result, I was really into the whole "go green" movement when I was young. We even had a cupboard shelf specially for recycled papers – mom and dad would put their unwanted letters after reading them, because they were always printed on one side and the other side was empty. Such a shame to just throw them away right? There were also all the school letters to parents announcing some new strategy, event or what-not. Those went into the stack too after we showed them to mom and dad.
I used the other empty side to do my homework and revision. Especially for math! All my math working steps were always written in pencil on those recycled pieces of papers we put aside as a family.
Why pencil, you may ask. Pens were a luxury to me then because they were more expensive, and ran out faster. I did almost everything in pencil except for homework and tests. "Must save money for daddy and mommy", my younger self used to think.
😂 looking back, that was really silly. It wasn't as though they were THAT much expensive, haha. But as a child who only got $10 a week, I really didn't want to spend $1+ replacing a pen when pencil lead refill boxes cost me only 50 or 70 cents at most.
Somewhat like this! Except that I mostly used a purple mechanical pencil so that I could just top up the refills. I remember I wrote with that purple pencil all the way from sec 2 till I graduated from university! Elaine had a green one in the same design. We were pencil sisters throughout our six years as classmates LOL. No idea where my pencils went to after that as I hardly use them anymore.
Considering how much paper is used in education and in the workplace today, it was really naive of me to care so much about recycling each piece of paper.
I genuinely believed I was saving the Earth, but as I grew older I realised the papers I saved by giving them a second life before they were dumped into the rubbish bin didn't matter in the grand scheme of papers used by everyone else.
My mom used to always joke that she had a car too, and its car plate number was 11. That stood for her own legs LOL. (She was a poor driver due to a lack of practice).
Even after we sold our family car, I didn't take cabs much. The only time we did was during CNY, but even then, we tried to take public transport to most of the houses. When I was in university, I took the 2 hour MRT and bus commute every day (back then, the circle line hadn't been built yet).
The only time I took cabs was when I had to move in / out of hall, with all my barang barang. I liked calling for a Trans Cab cos they had big and spacious boots where I could stuff my luggage and all my stuff to move back home / into hall.
My hall room, which I shared with my JC classmate, never looked this dressed up lol. My rationale was, since I'm only staying for five months, why bother decorating it when I've to take it down shortly after?
I kept my side of the room mininalistic and the only effort I spent on decorating went into putting up photos on my wall table. Even then, there was already a whole bunch of stuff to always pack / move, so only then I would take a cab.
Are apps like Grab / Uber making us spend more money unknowingly?
With the entrance of Grab and Uber on the scene, all previous annoyances of having to stand by the roadside in the hot sun / heavy rain to flag a cab has pretty much become a thing of the past. At first it was only the youngsters and executives using the apps, but now even the older generation uses it.
It has become so convenient and easy that…we don't really think about NOT cabbing anymore?
🙎"Huh must walk to the train station ah but I'm wearing heels…lemme just Grab instead".
👲"I'm in a work shirt and if I walk under the hot sun I will sweat! Never mind let me just Uber".
👵 "Aiya all my groceries so many bags..not heavy but very mafan to carry. I call Ah Girl to call cab for me instead".
I still remember that in my 2014 post about saving tips I adopted which helped me save $20,000 in a year on a fresh grad paycheck (the one which later went viral), one of the tips I shared was that I don't really take taxis.
Fast forward to 2017 and I'm Grabbing almost every other day, especially on weekends when my schedule is packed so tight that a 1 hour public transport commute is just impossible vs a 25 min car ride.
My taxi spend last year was slightly over $1000 which nearly gave me a heart attack when I tabulated them in December (actually I didn't tabulate la, I simply pulled out from my expense tracker app lol).
And with all these promo codes, I'm spending even more and more.
How many of us take a Grab or Uber now even for short distances?
🙆: "Aiya $3 only! About the same if I take MRT. $5 only! $7 only! Not a lot of money la".
🙇: "Got promo code, very worth it leh!"
We may not feel it each time, but what I've realised is that all these discretionary spending actually adds up to quite a bit. I don't think I've ever spent $1000 in a single year on taxis throughout my entire life until last year. At first I thought there was a mistake, so I pulled up the individual expenses tab, and they mostly ranged from $5 to $20+. A couple of trips cost me $30+ (usually to NUS, NTU or SIM for talks) but they were rarer.
Doesn't seem like much right?
But when I added all of them up, there was no mistake: $1000+. Seriously?!?
The cost of convenience
I think at the end of the day, what many of us do not realise is that the price we pay for convenience sometimes may be…a little too high once everything adds up.
Yes, taking a cab buys you time, and you get to do your work while letting someone else focus on the driving, but how much more time can we buy?
My fiance takes a cab to his workplace but the journey takes 25 min whereas the same journey by train is only 15. The cost, however, is 4 X more than just public transport alone.
For folks who are cash-rich but time-poor, then yes, this makes sense. They're using their money to buy time, and that's perfectly fine.
But for most of us, it may be that we don't reallllllllly need to buy that extra time. Yes, maybe you get to sleep in a little longer, but is it really worth doing that so often?
Might we be paying too much for convenience?
