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No need to ask him. He is not rich. Only the rich can afford to own and live in a GCB. I think he stays in a cheap condo, costing only less than $2m. Just a typical average person.
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I think your $4000 passive income pm is just nice to cover all expenses. You might need more to cover inflation though |
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Phone bills Internet / cable TV subscription Yearly medical checkup Dental Gifts/ang pows for wedding/funerals Clothes / shoes / toiletries supplements you will probably need in old age Haircut He has grown-up children so can collect allowance from them anyway..:) |
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1. No car - you need to spend $2000 pm. 2. Don't employ maid - you need to spend $1000 pm 3. No smoking - you need to spend thousands of dollars to buy and to go hospital 4. No drinking - you need to spend hundreds of thousands to buy and to go hospital 5. No partying - you need to spend hundreds of thousands to buy and to go hospital x 2 6. Healthy lifestyle 7. No spending on wasteful luxury goods - you need to spend hundreds of thousands to buy 8. No debt 9. HDB flat fully paid If you lead a normal retiree life, $2500 pm for a couple is more than you need. Don't own a car, employ a maid, smoke, drink, party, etc. The choice is yours. |
Very correct. I said so myself that I am one of the masses.
I have written before how we should classify "rich". In Singapore, we can roughly group the population into the following classes: The uber rich -- Networth of $1Bn and above The ultra rich -- networth of $500m to $1bn The super rich -- networth of $100m to $500m The rich -- networth $10m to $50m The general masses -- below $10m If you want, you can further "split hairs" among the below $10m group, but to the rich, everyone with networth below $10m is the same. So, dont fight among ourselves (those in the general masses). It is a joke. Quote:
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Life is a journey - enjoy it
This forum has gone eerily quiet yet again. What's up guys?
Thought I start the ball rolling with this piece - "Life is a journey" We have heard this refrain "Life is a journey" many times. It has it's ups and down, much like like a real journey, especially long ones. Many times one will find obstacles along the way and take detours, or in the worst case, go backwards. As a 56 yo, I have already "travelled" some way in my life's journey. I have taken detours, go backwards a little bit, fallen down, reached high points and cruise at times. Looking back, life is interesting that way. That's where fond memories are created, strength in character and patience are moulded. Everyone will have his own journey. Already, I see that my children's journeys are way different from mine. Not necessarily easier but different. I grew up in the pre-independent Singapore days, where my whole village was poor. My children only know condo living. I walked 15 minutes each way, everyday to school while my children were driven to school when young, and took MRT when older. But today, I wanted to talk about a different kind of journey, the journey to financial freedom. I started paying attention to my finances only in my early 40s. Before that, i didn't/couldn't bother because many major events were happening- settling into a job, fighting for promotion, getting married, buying our first home and car, children coming along, getting them into schools etc.. That was a hectic phase of my life's journey. There was another reason why I started to pay attention to my finances in my 40s. At that point, I was going through mid-life crisis. Deciding whether to jump ship to another job or stay put or take a break from working. I saw good friends and colleagues leaving and this affected me. At the end, I stayed put and soldiered on. I have now worked 31 years with the same company. At the start, looking at my financial situation was quite discouraging. We have a big housing loan (about $460k loan, a private property) and only about $10k in our cpf and maybe $50k in cash and FDs. Maybe this was the reason I decided to stay put and not take the risk in a new job. My wife and I resolved to dig in, trimmed our housing loan, trimmed our expenses to accelerate our savings. In 5 years, in our late 40s, we brought the loan down to below $200k, and at the same time built up meaningful savings - enough for us to put as down payment for a condo. The condo that we now stay. With a stroke of luck, our old property went enbloc, and with the money, we paid up our current condo and put the rest into the stock market to earn passive incomes. As we are still working, and don't need the passive income, we reinvested them and are seeing the compounding effect! And seeing that property investment has rewarded us, we bought into another property in our early 50s for investment. The financial journey, like life journey, is on going, and we are at the cruising stage right now. We are now enjoying both. Don't be discouraged by its ups and downs. Remember, when things are down, they can only go up! |
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We are both commoners, an average middle class couple in our late 40s. We don't make much, just $160k pa in total and save only $30k pa. We lead simple lives, given our modest income. We own a cheap car that gives us the convenience to travel to work and attend to our other needs. We go for overseas holidays once a year.
We live in a humble three bedder condominium, not the luxury type but just a cheap mass market condominium, which we have fortunately paid up. We have been working for many years. We feel tired working for so long. We are determined to retire as soon as we can so that we can spend more time to rest and pursue our other interests in life. Due to a personal health scare recently, we suddenly realise time on this earth is limited and we could die any time. We want to spend more time pursuing the more meaningful things in life, less stuff but more priceless experiences such as caring for the less fortunate in our society. We don't want to be like people who spend their whole life amassing a huge fortune but didn't lift a finger to care for the homeless, destitute and orphans. They may just donate money to feel less guilty but they didn't really care in their hard hearts. People who really care are those who will personally serve the less fortunate ones in the homes for the aged, shelters and orphanages. We want to be like these beautiful souls. We will retire at 58. We will ensure that by 58, our cash savings plus our passive income is enough to cover our expenses from age 58 to 65. From age 65 onwards, we will get funding from our CPF Life plus our passive income. Here is the plan. Age 58 to 65: Average spending per month $4000 pm or $48k pa. Retire in place in condo. Passive income $2k pm or $24k pa Balance $24k pa (i.e. $48k - $24k) will be from our cash savings. So we will spend $168k from our cash savings over 7 years. Age 66 to death: Average spending per month $5,000 pm or $60k pa Passive income $2k pm or $24k pa CPF Life $3.8k pm or $45.6k pa Total income $69.6k pa Savings $9.6k pa |
I think if we are able to do good, help the less fortunate and humanity in general, we should be thankful. There's no need to be judgemental of others. Being judgemental of others reduces our own credit. Besides, we don't really have the full picture of what and how others are doing their part for society and humanity in general.
I always feel that the best way to help the poor is to give them jobs. Jobs give people dignity, pride and hope. On the other hand, cash handouts reduces their drive to improve their lot perpetuating their poverty. And quitting your job to help the poor is also not best approach. The poor and disadvantaged in society needs professional help, be it in skills upgrading, tuition for children and whatnot. So these specialized help should be rendered by professionals, people who are trained for them. These people should thus be paid for these services. And payment for these services can come from donations. And you cannot donate if you are not working. So it is important that there are people who can donate money, especially big amount, we let them continue to work and earn, so that they can donate generously. The second point is about dying. Don't think anyone knows how long one can live. But to quit work early and to wait for death is not a smart move. Life should be lived, if not to the fullest, at least meaningfully. You can live a meaningful life while being gainfully employed at the same time. A lot of things that we want to do in retirement, can be done while we are still working. For eg., yearly overseas travelling, taking up a hobby, reading, running, swimming, etc.... The last point is that we are responsible for ourselves. We owe ourselves not to shortchange our financial future. To avoid that, we must not quit our working life prematurely thinking that we are not going to live long. It is a much better position to have that extra money that we don't need than to run out of money in our advanced age! Quote:
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