How many of you ever wondered how rich your colleagues, neighbours or even your relatives are but dare not ask?

When you see your neighbour upgrade his car to a new BMW 5 series, do you wonder whether he got a big pay raise, strike the toto or if he is really rich? When you see your colleague upgrade to a landed property from a HDB flat, do you wonder if he is really that rich or is he taking on a big loan to live the high life? It is very awkward to ask people what their networth is even if they are your relatives. So a lot of times, we are left to imagine or speculate how wealthy they are.

Well, there are however certain yardsticks we can use to estimate a person's wealth at certain ages of his life. The salaries of civil servants were once publicly available and these can be used as a good benchmark. Some of the stat boards and polytechnics still occasionally publish their staff salary scales. The government has declared that civil servants pay would not lead private sector pay and neither would it lag too much behind. So using civil service pay would be a good reference point to estimate the wealth of a person - or at least how much he would have earned at certain age during his career.

Using the above basis, a degree graduate or anyone emplaced on the graduate payscale would earned a cumulative total amount of $4M by the time he hit 55 yo., $5.25M by 60 yo and $6.5M by 65 yo (including bonuses)

If that person is single, and frugal, saving 50% of salary is not difficult. That would mean his networth at 55 yo would be $2M, at 60 yo would be $2.6M and at 65 yo would be $3.25M

The figures get more interesting if he is married to a working wife. At 55 yo, the couple would have a networth of $6M! At 60 yo, they would have $8M networth and by 65, they would have $10.5M networth (if they work till 65)

So now you should have a sense of how rich your neighbor or relative is - just ask them how old are, and how long they have been working.

Is it too high or too low as compared to the pay in your industry?