How much are you earning per annum?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

In any crisis, there will be those who are hit badly and those who can still bail out the others. Make sure you are in the right group. To be in the right group, it takes discipline and is a long journey. It is not a one year effort but maybe 10 to 20 years or more of disciplined and prudent living, saving up and investing well.

Many people I know are in this group where they have been saving consistently, spending well within their means -- some saved as much as 75% of their income annually. They can easily afford continental cars, but they chose to buy the mass market jap car. They can afford to buy condos and landed properties, but they chose to stay in HDB waiting for opportunity to buy the condos and landed properties at greatly discounted prices in a crisis. Who do you think are buying the distressed properties in a crisis?

More importantly, these group of people could also retire early, but they chose to continue working.

Do you have any plans to buy a GCB when the property market crash next year? If a GCB drop from $20m to $10m, you should buy and keep for your grand children. $10m GCB in a prime location is very cheap. You should buy. Downpayment only $2m cash and you can take a $8m mortgage which you can pay off over the next 30 years.

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.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Do you have any plans to buy a GCB when the property market crash next year? If a GCB drop from $20m to $10m, you should buy and keep for your grand children. $10m GCB in a prime location is very cheap. You should buy. Downpayment only $2m cash and you can take a $8m mortgage which you can pay off over the next 30 years.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

We will soon reach 55 years old. We are ready to retire at 55 because we have paid off our flat's mortgage and our children are grown up. We are debt free too.

We have been saving and investing for more than 30 years and now enjoy a healthy passive income from our investments that would be enough for the two of us in retirement. Our passive income is $4000 pm while our expected expenses is $2500 pm. We can save $1500 pm to take care of future inflation.

Our monthly expenses for the two of us would include food & restaurants ($800), utilities ($100), public transport ($100), medical fees & insurance ($600), donations to charities ($100), entertainment ($200), overseas holidays ($400), and miscellaneous items ($200).

We plan to do active charity work when our retirement starts. We strongly believe that those who are better off and more successful in life must help the less fortunate ones. This way our society will be a more compassionate society.

We also look forward to travel to other countries during non peak seasons as it is cheaper.

How can $2500 pm be enough for 2? I think you have seriously underestimated the expenses. What about household maintenance, property tax, groceries, town council or condo management fees? Utilities of $100 and miscellaneous $200 you have allocated does not seem to be enough

I think your $4000 passive income pm is just nice to cover all expenses. You might need more to cover inflation though

Originally Posted by Unregistered

How can $2500 pm be enough for 2? I think you have seriously underestimated the expenses. What about household maintenance, property tax, groceries, town council or condo management fees? Utilities of $100 and miscellaneous $200 you have allocated does not seem to be enough

I think your $4000 passive income pm is just nice to cover all expenses. You might need more to cover inflation though

LoL.. If really want to drill down until so detailed...u forgot:-

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..

Originally Posted by Unregistered

How can $2500 pm be enough for 2? I think you have seriously underestimated the expenses. What about household maintenance, property tax, groceries, town council or condo management fees? Utilities of $100 and miscellaneous $200 you have allocated does not seem to be enough

I think your $4000 passive income pm is just nice to cover all expenses. You might need more to cover inflation though

$2500 pm is enough for a retired 55 yo couple, provided:

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.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

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.

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!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

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!

Similar story here. Out net worth was $300K at 29, now it's $3.6M after 10 years thanks to some timely property and stock investments made in 2003 and 2009, plus 4x salary increase after promotions

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!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

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