I am a student, should I rent an apartment or buy a house?

One can us the Citi Quick Cash for big ticket purchases and projects like home renovations while you can basically use the Citi Quick Cash for any type of expenses. On the other hand, you can also apply for a Citi Quick Cash to pay for urgent expenses such as medical bills, business expenses, unexpected repairs and much more. With Citi Quick Cash, the possibilities are in fact endless. You can also convert your unutilised credit limit to cash in your Citi Deposit Account in 60 seconds. A major plus is that you can get the cash on your terms and anytime on your mobile phone and repay with plans up to 60 months. No documents required and no hidden fees.

Maybank does not exactly offer a proper personal loan in itself but its term loan is linked to its personal credit line product. You just need to sign up for CreditAble in order to cash your credit line using the Maybank CreditAble Term Loan but note the terms & conditions and annual fee however. In my personal opinion, the loan amount is small while the interest is high, so it may be best to avoid this one.

To apply for a UOB Personal Loan, you’ll need either a UOB CashPlus account or UOB credit card as UOB draws from your credit card limit. If you’re new to UOB, you can apply for a credit card and personal loan at the same time but note that terms & conditions like the fee schedule of the credit card will also apply to your UOB Personal Loan. UOB bank is one of the few banks that provide instant approval for personal loans for submissions between 7am to 8pm by new UOB customers.

The OCBC ExtraCash Loan is a true personal loan as it allows you to borrow up to 6X your monthly salary. However, I must warn that the interest rate is kinda high. If you don’t require that much money, I recommend that you consider the OCBC Cash-on-Instalments loan which is slightly cheaper. However currently with OCBC personal loan, you can get a MoneySmart exclusive rate of 3.5% (7.27% p.a.) for new loan customers with only 1% processing fee. For existing loan customers, you pay an interest of 4.7% p.a. (EIR 9.46% p.a.).

If you need to borrow a large amount but cannot afford a big monthly repayment, then you should give consideration to the HSBC Personal Loan. This HSBC personal loan offers the longest loan tenure of 7 years in Singapore which means you’ll be paying 7 years’ worth of interest. HSBC is also great for those who need cash urgently as you can get approval-in-principle within one minute and receive the money the next working day. Isn’t that just wonderful?

The CIMB CashLite personal loan is based on your available credit card credit limit therefore you have to be a CIMB cardholder to apply for it. One other good thing CIMB credit cards have is that there are no annual fees but CIMB doesn’t publish their interest rates online. The actual interest rate is personalised based on your risk profile and credit history so you might very well end up with a higher interest rate than advertised.