Flannery Tay is one of those young people you see around MRT stations, clipboard in hand, stopping commuters in their tracks.
He sells credit-card memberships.
In a good month, working up to 12 hours a day, he pulls in close to $3,000.
In a bad month, it is a third less. It is not an easy life, he says, but it could be much worse.
The 21-year-old polytechnic graduate works six days a week and spends very little time in his three-room flat in Tampines where he lives with his parents and sister.
He is a young man in a hurry. He moves around a lot: offices, bank branches, anywhere he can make a sale.
The travelling salesman is most annoyed by the rising cost of food and transport.
To save money, he is "staying home a lot more" during the rare moments when he is free.
He is the face of recent hikes in food and fuel costs. It is people like him - young adults starting out, those working on commission and older people on a fixed income who are feeling the brunt of price rises.
That is why LifeStyle spoke to scores of people and scoured Singapore for this Cheap & Good special. Where can you get furniture on the cheap? How do you stretch your dining dollar?
This guide provides tips to help you save a few dollars and discover bargains of your own.
Rising global prices of food and fuel saw the consumer price index rise by 6.6 per cent in the first three months of this year.
LifeStyle's street poll of 200 people shows that everyone is feeling the bite of recent price increases. They all cite transport, food, leisure activities, medical costs and utilities as items which have gone up in price the most.
Younger people are more likely to mention increases in the cost of leisure activities, while those 30 and older emphasise increases in medical fees.
For example, Mrs Rosie Chan is a 34-year-old single mother who is struggling to bring up her two boys - one three years old and another nine months old - on $1,600 a month.
She is in the midst of a divorce. Her estranged husband sends her $500 a month and the rest comes from the tenant who has taken over their former marital home, a three-room flat.
Mrs Chan and her boys now live with her mother, a factory operator, and father, a taxi driver, in a four-room flat in Bedok.
"I can't save anything. It all goes," she says. When her three-year-old had a chest infection and needed to be hospitalised in the KK Women's and Children Hospital, what little savings she had were wiped out.
Already very frugal, she has had to economise even more.
Milk powder for the baby will go up by $5, she says, from $51. She hears her father's complaints about the cost of diesel for his taxi. And a trip to the private clinic for children - kids fall sick all the time and it is hard to wait in a polyclinic when you have a sick child, she says - costs $30 to $50 a visit.
For people like Mr Gary Lai, 42, an account director at a marketing agency, the changes have been different.
The family's 1.6-litre Toyota Corolla is a cost hog he is trying to rein in. It is not easy when wife Karen, 32, a communications director, and children Bianca, 11/2, and Bijan, 31/2, and the maid have to be shuttled around, especially on weekends.
"We do the sensible things," he says, when asked about his cost-control strategy. This means accumulating more errands into a single run and simply "going out as little as possible".
The biggest change has been to his commute. He has taken up TransitLink's Park and Ride plan.
Every workday, he drives from his terrace home near Serangoon Gardens and leaves his children with his parents in Ang Mo Kio. He then parks at Junction 8 and takes the train to his office, near Tanjong Pagar MRT station.
Like Mr Lai, most of those surveyed are making changes in almost everything they do. Over 80 per cent say they will shop less and "cut down leisure spending", meaning have fewer fun activities.
Almost eight in 10 say they will eat out less and others, like Mr Lai, use more public transport (see chart below).
When it comes to cutting back, it seems the public-education messages have worked: Most mention switching off lights when not using them, packing lunch to work and exercising at the park.
Project executive Merilyn Mok, 50, suggests: "Cut your hair at HDB salons rather than uptown places with leather seats."
Credit-card salesman Tay is resigned. Because he travels on the MRT and eats out so much, he is feeling the pinch more than others. He is not hopeful of getting a break though.
"I'll just have to walk more," he says.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on Aug 10, 2008.
