How much are you earning per annum?

It is really a strange situation here that (correct me if I am wrong) you are obviously far from being able to attain a $6m networth and laughing at people who can or who already achieved that kind of networth.

It is like a loser laughing at winners.

On the other hand, if it was the $6m networth guy laughing at people who cannot save much, I would have told him to be humble. But in this case, you see a guy telling the world he cannot make it and yet laughing at others who can. Strange.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

A joker said a retired couple needs to have a net worth of $6m in order to retire. What a joke! Hahaha. Like that 99.99% of Singaporeans cannot retire!

I dont really consider my wife and I a power couple, but our annual income exceeds $500k. This amount comes from a comination of our salary and passive income. We have been raking in this kind of income for the last 6 years. Before that, it was around $360k to $450k pa.

Our annual expense is $150k, saving almost $400k each year. Is this a luxurious lifestyle? I will tell you it is not. This is because we pay $30k pa in income taxes and another $36k in loans for our investment property. Meaning we spent only $84k pa on our lifestyle.

As you can see, once we retire, we can continue our lifestyle of $84k pa as we would not have to pay income taxes and no more home loans to pay.

As our passive income can comfortably cover (with a large buffer) our $84k pa expense, we dont have to downgrade our lifestyle in retirement.

Among my colleagues and friends, I am aware that a number of them have higher incomes than we do. And their lifestyles are not much different from ours leading us to believe that they have healthy savings/networth.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yea, but I think it's most people actually are living beyond their means during working days rather than they 'cling' to their lifestyle and refuse to downgrade during retirement.

For e.g. if a couple makes $200k and lives a lifestyle of 60-70% of ~$130k and save the rest they can in theory retire at 65 and still maintain the $130k lifestyle.

The problem with most Sg professional / manager couple is they make $200k and live a lifestyle of $190-200k. Savings too small, lifestyle too high so double whammy cannot retire in peace.

Most are just banking on paying off mortgage and renting out the condo and live on rent. But reality is a typical 1000sqft condo in Sg is only fetching ~$35k gross and ~$30k net rent, not anywhere near to maintain their current lifestyle.

We are both working towards financial independence (FI). Once we reach FI, we have the option to quit our full time jobs and retire. We then have the option to pursue our other interests in life such as voluntary social work in making the lives of the less fortunate better. We feel blessed since we have paid off the mortgage to our home, a three bedroom luxury condominium unit. We are also blessed to be debt free too.

Our expenses are not high as we are not spendthrifts. We value every dollar that we earn. We don't employ a maid as we prefer to do our own chores and enjoy our family privacy. We also think it is waste of money. We currently own a small, inexpensive but reliable car. Upon retirement, we will not need the car as our condominium unit is near an MRT station and shopping amenities.

We estimated that our expenses for the two of us in retirement will be about $40k pa. This will go towards our food, utilities, public transportation, medical, holiday travels, etc. Our passive income today is about $38k pa. We can retire once we hit $50k pa. We hope we can achieve this by age 55. Our target income of $50k pa will be able to sustain us well.

Upon age 65, we will get a boost in our passive income when we receive our CPF Life payout of $3.6k pm or $43k pa. At 65, our passive income will be $93k pa. We will most likely just save our extra monies. We can also travel more often to more expensive places around the globe.

Like many conservative, hardworking and high-savings folks, I used to look at debt as a bad thing, something to avoid or when I have no choice to go into debt, to pay off them as soon as possible.

I had a mind flip on the impression of debt about 8 years ago when countries all over the world started to lower their interest rates to ridiculous levels. My large savings were just not earning meaningful interests.

I then looked at property investment seriously. 8 years ago, along with the subprime crisis in the US, our property prices were also in the doldrums. So I bought a condo at a relatively low price. And instead of paying in full for the condo, I took the full 80% loan. And here it gets interesting, I have $500k in CPF OA, invested $300k in shares:

Loan interest : 1.05%
CPF OA interest : 2.5%
Shares dividend returns : 5% average.
Rental return (based on 20% payment on property) : 7%

In one simple investment, I am suddenly making my money to generate respectable incomes in 3 ways simultaneously. This has gone for 8 years now and while interest rates have inched up a bit, it is still very attractive propsition for me to keep the status quo.

We worked hard for the money, so it is really nice to see my money working hard for me for a change.

In Singapore, if you have these 7 Cs, you're truly successful

1. Condo

80% of Singaporeans live in public housing (HDB flats). 20% lives in private properties. So, if you own a condo, you're living in a private property and that makes you among the TOP 20% of Singapore society. Only the most successful ones can achieve this. A condo in Singapore is the ultimate luxury product and status symbol. If you own 2 condos, you're in the TOP 4% in Singapore. If you own 3 condos, you're in the TOP 0.8% in Singapore.

2. Car

Owning a new car in Singapore is expensive too. It is also a status symbol as only the successful professionals and businessmen can afford a new car in Singapore. The less successful ones may own old cars while others can't afford a car.

3. Cash

The more cash a person has, the richer and more successful he is.

4. CPF

Those who have a high CPF balance are the more successful people. With high CPF balance, they can invest.

5. Children

Raising children in Singapore is a noble duty. If you can raise good and smart children, you're considered highly successful.

6. Charity

A successful person is not selfish. He does not only spend his time accumulating wealth for the benefit of himself and family and doesn't care about the less fortunate in society. A successful person also cares for others and volunteers his precious time to serve in charities for free. He donates not only his wealth but also his time. This is true success.

7. Character

Finally, a strong positive character defines a real man. A truly successful man has positive character attributes such as caring, responsible, loving, charitable, honest, integrity, etc. If a person earns his wealth through cheating, dishonesty and other evil means, he is an absolute failure, no matter how rich he is.

The same siao lang old man posting and replying to himself again. Blessed here blessed there.

Please take your medicine

Gosh. Reading all these posts made me question what I am doing with my life. 27 years old, just started career a year ago with private degree, drawing only 30k pa. Here am I wondering how would I ever catch to everyone else here

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Gosh. Reading all these posts made me question what I am doing with my life. 27 years old, just started career a year ago with private degree, drawing only 30k pa. Here am I wondering how would I ever catch to everyone else here

bro only the high achievers will want to post so you have a selection bias here.

keep working hard, do way more than the bare minimum expected of you, go the extra mile. that is how you will start to pull away from your peers 5 years down the road

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Gosh. Reading all these posts made me question what I am doing with my life. 27 years old, just started career a year ago with private degree, drawing only 30k pa. Here am I wondering how would I ever catch to everyone else here

Life is not about making as much money as you can. That's meaningless. Life is about making a positive difference to the lives of the poor, destitute, orphans and homeless. Count your blessings. You have a home to go to, even though it's your parents' hdb flat. You still have a job. Find the true meaning of life. What's your purpose on this earth?

Most of the posters here are some way into their lives. Some are already in their mid-50s. If by this age and they have not yet amassed some wealth then they will have big problem retiring.

So ask yourself. How are your parents doing in terms of networth? If they are like the posters here who have amassed some wealth, then you have some reference to base your future wealth projection.

For my case, my parents (already in their 80s) were not highly educated and thus they didnt have good incomes when they were working. As such they couldnt save adequately for their retirement. They are depending on us for financial support.

So it was important for us to do better than my parents in order to have a comfortable life, bring up my own family and still able to support my parents. This was what spurred me on.

At 27, you are just starting out, so you still have another 40 years of working to amass your fortune. So you should benchmark against your cohort and not despair unnecessarily. Start investing early also.

I am already 56 and at most have another 6 to 9 years of working life. At least for us, the investment that we have been building up over the years, have started to provide us streams of passive income sufficient to cover our expenses without the need for us to ever draw down our capital.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Gosh. Reading all these posts made me question what I am doing with my life. 27 years old, just started career a year ago with private degree, drawing only 30k pa. Here am I wondering how would I ever catch to everyone else here