Thanks, it is something we might consider. But instead of a 2M condo, maybe a $1.5M condo for own stay & a $800K condo to rent out to help cover the mortgage. Is this plan advisable?

Thanks for the encouragement.

No, I am not married.

I am from non-local uni.


Based on your post, it is pretty impressive, that means that in your 5th year, if you were getting $250K per year, that is roughly about $20K per month in salary for you; even in the 8th year, you are getting more than $8/year!

May I ask what industry and sector are you in and what are you working as?

Industry: Private Education/Training and Development

Department: Course Administration/Sales

Nature of Job: Sales (Non-Commissioned) and Back-room ops

Where am I going to get the money from? I am saving up for my HDB...

before pte uni bashers come in, i must say that $250k was extraordinary due to where i was posted.

not trying to rub it in but i honestly feel underpaid for what i do compared to my peers.

Non-grad, 43, $73k pa. Regretted not working hard enough in school and lazy to upgrade. Wife, grad, 38, $80k pa. We live in a 4 room HDB flat, still paying our mortgage. CPF and cash savings, not much. I hope I will still have a job when I reach 50. May need to retire in JB after selling our flat when we reach 75.

I’ll give you an assessment from my perspective, will have to build in a lot of assumption. I don’t have enough detail to provide any proper insights.

Firstly lets discuss the industry, what salary range do you know of for your industry? For example banking operation ranges between 3K for analyst to 15K and above for management, or engineering 2K to 20K and above for management. From this you can gauge how well paid you are in comparison, if the range is too limited that also goes to show what prospects you have and if it makes sense to move to another industry altogether.

Focusing on your immediate job scope it sounds like your role is more admin based, if your sales are non-commissioned its likely the nature of it is quite structured and the firm has someone calling the shots to bring in the biz. The question is given your day to day how essential are you to the firm, can your role be passed to a younger colleague without too much fuss or impact to the operations. If so then again it limits your chances at a raise as the firm will always look to replace you with cheaper alternatives if the pay gets too high. It’s a fact of business.

If I am to be really honest from this industry (which is alien to me) it seems to me higher pay which you seek will always be limited, think about where you see yourself in 10 years and if you do a similar non commission sales role I doubt you are going to get much higher than what you already have. Ultimately in all business sales get paid the most since they bring in the moolah and operations paid the least. If you are doing backend for an industry where revenues are limited it’s a double whammy, so either you do some real sales (comms based) if you want to stay in the industry or you move to another higher paying industry. However you need to list out in detail what you can offer from an Ops perspective to get some real advise about which industries / department you will have a chance at given your current age.. (I,e Accruals, Accounting, Reconciliation etc)

Ex corporate high flyer. Made small fortune in stocks. Home is a 3 bedroom luxury condo worth $3m. Drives a European car. Both condo and car are paid up. Debt free. Now retired, 47, earning passive income of $100k pa from stocks dividends. Wife, 40, working, earns $120k pa. Family expenses $100k pa. Now devoting time to religious study and charity work. I am a more enlightened and learned person. Also thinking of doing a PhD for my self actualization.