If you tend to get your makeup from drugstores like Guardian or Watsons, buying them from JB can save you up to 50 per cent of the cost in Singapore.

Given that the range of drugstore makeup brands and offerings in JB are similar to Singapore’s, you never have to worry about overspending on your holy-grail beauty products.

You might want to consider joining the Watsons VIP Card Program in Malaysia. You can earn up to five Watsons points for every 1 RM spent, and you can then pay for subsequent purchases with such accumulated points, with 200 points equating to 1RM cash.

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If you’d like to cut down on your monthly expenses as a new parent, you’d do well by getting your baby supplies from JB instead. Given that a baby uses at least six diapers per day, you can save S$23.40 monthly if you buy Tesco’s house brand diapers, instead of NTUC’s.

If you’re willing to stock up, your savings can truly multiply. Even better, choosing to buy infant milk formula powder in JB can potentially save you over 50 per cent of the cost in Singapore. For hygiene and nutrition purposes, milk formulas can only be kept for a month once opened.

Even so, buying six cans of Enfagrow A+ to stock up the next time you’re in JB will save SGD$259.86–which is more than enough to cover the cost price of three cans of milk formula back in Singapore, if you can’t make frequent trips across the causeway.

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According to the latest Household Expenditure Survey (HES) 2017/18 conducted by the Singaporean government, a typical household spends about S$400 to S$500 a month on groceries. Given that the median household spends S$4,906 per month in total for all living expenses, you’re likely to spend nearly 10 per cent of your monthly budget on groceries.

While 28 per cent and 34 per cent of Singaporeans choose to eat out for dinner and lunch, respectively, only 15 per cent do for breakfast. If you’re like most people, then, you’re likely to allocate quite a bit of your grocery budget on breakfast foods.

Luckily, breakfast foods like cereal and biscuits are quite a bit less expensive in JB, even in big supermarkets like Tesco. So, even though you may not shop in JB year-round, stocking up on your next trip can help you save in the following months.

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It can be easy to get carried away with shopping when your dollar stretches further in JB, but it’s essential to keep track of the total value of your goods brought back to Singapore. In fact, since 19 February 2019, travellers who spend less than 48 hours outside Singapore will only get GST import relief on the first S$100 of the value brought in from overseas. Anything that’s above S$100 will be taxed at seven per cent.

Don’t let that put you off from making the trip to JB, though. Assuming that you’ve spent S$200 on baby formula, you’d only need to pay S$207 after taxes. That’s a far cry from ~S$400 you’d have spent in Singapore, assuming a the price in JB is 50 per cent of price in Singapore.

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