How much are you earning per annum?

My wife and I have a combined salary of $267k pa. We spend mostly on paying off our home mortgage, holidays, two cars, giving parents lots of allowance money and of course food, utilities, taxes and children expenses.

Our assets are: 3 room condo, paid up, worth $1.6m., cash and CPF $517k. We will work for another 15 years. By then we should have saved another $1m. When we retire, we will sell our condo and buy a one room condo in the Jurong Lake District area, where the growth is.

I am 39 years old and feel like retiring now in Malaysia as my husband and I can sell our terrace and MM and get S$1.6 million with savings combined and we are awaiting state consent for our JB semid. We can put the money in a fixed deposit giving 4%pa which will give us S$5000+ a month which is more than sufficient for a family of 4 in JB. Our sons can even go to international schools...

Can share which fixed deposit gives 4% interest pa? Have been looking high and low for such rates. Right now my cash hoard only earning measly returns that are too embarrassing to reveal. Can't even keep up with inflation.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I am 39 years old and feel like retiring now in Malaysia as my husband and I can sell our terrace and MM and get S$1.6 million with savings combined and we are awaiting state consent for our JB semid. We can put the money in a fixed deposit giving 4%pa which will give us S$5000+ a month which is more than sufficient for a family of 4 in JB. Our sons can even go to international schools...

The amount $267k reminded me of my very first private property we bought in the 1980s. The price we paid was exactly $267k. Needless to say, the prices of private properties (actually all properties, including HDB) shot up steeply after 1993. We sold it off when the price climbed 3 times it's original value and updraded to a bigger property.

Looking back, we were way too conservative as we bought according to what we could pay monthly with our CPF money. We didn't want to cough up cash. If we had been more daring, we could have stretched our budget to buy a semiD then at $380k! That semiD shot up to $3m, and that's just based on land cost!

Believe it or not, our combined salary then was $4k pm. How times have changed. Now new graduates can command up to $5k or more pm. No wonder property prices and car COE are at their current prices.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

My wife and I have a combined salary of $267k pa. We spend mostly on paying off our home mortgage, holidays, two cars, giving parents lots of allowance money and of course food, utilities, taxes and children expenses.

Our assets are: 3 room condo, paid up, worth $1.6m., cash and CPF $517k. We will work for another 15 years. By then we should have saved another $1m. When we retire, we will sell our condo and buy a one room condo in the Jurong Lake District area, where the growth is.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Can share which fixed deposit gives 4% interest pa? Have been looking high and low for such rates. Right now my cash hoard only earning measly returns that are too embarrassing to reveal. Can't even keep up with inflation.

ANZ and ING term deposits if u want more well known banks and stronger currency than RM. Can easily search. But AUD to SGD movements may be unpredictable.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

The amount $267k reminded me of my very first private property we bought in the 1980s. The price we paid was exactly $267k. Needless to say, the prices of private properties (actually all properties, including HDB) shot up steeply after 1993. We sold it off when the price climbed 3 times it's original value and updraded to a bigger property.

Looking back, we were way too conservative as we bought according to what we could pay monthly with our CPF money. We didn't want to cough up cash. If we had been more daring, we could have stretched our budget to buy a semiD then at $380k! That semiD shot up to $3m, and that's just based on land cost!

Believe it or not, our combined salary then was $4k pm. How times have changed. Now new graduates can command up to $5k or more pm. No wonder property prices and car COE are at their current prices.

Salaries of new graduates have generally stagnated in the last 2 decades. When I was fresh out of school in late nineties, my starting pay was $3k (which was quite common). Now, many fresh graduates actually accept offers of just $2.5k.

(Not talking about high earning jobs like those in IB and MC firms.)

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Salaries of new graduates have generally stagnated in the last 2 decades. When I was fresh out of school in late nineties, my starting pay was $3k (which was quite common). Now, many fresh graduates actually accept offers of just $2.5k.

(Not talking about high earning jobs like those in IB and MC firms.)

Demand and supply.. 20 years ago, it was quite something to be able to get into university. Now? I can hardly believe some of the people in my work place are 'graduates'!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Actually we were off by a few years of our retirement target. My classmates are I are high flyers and we all compete on who can retire the earliest. The best amongst us retired at 45, he was really successful. Even though we retired from our salaried work, we still work but now for the community. We need more highly successful people like us to do social work.

We and the society do not need highly successful people to do social work. We need highly successful people to make more money and donate more money generously to charities who can do greater good and help more people.....

[lazyplane]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Salaries of new graduates have generally stagnated in the last 2 decades. When I was fresh out of school in late nineties, my starting pay was $3k (which was quite common). Now, many fresh graduates actually accept offers of just $2.5k.

(Not talking about high earning jobs like those in IB and MC firms.)

Perspective is always relatively. Personally, i find it best to determine if fresh grads salaries have gone up is to look and see if starting salaries for civil servant have risen.

Alternative is to evaluate by percentile distribution.

Graduate Employment Survey by MOE.
NTU - http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/post...es/ges-ntu.pdf

NUS - http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/post...es/ges-nus.pdf

SMU - http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/post...es/ges-smu.pdf

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I am 39 years old and feel like retiring now in Malaysia as my husband and I can sell our terrace and MM and get S$1.6 million with savings combined and we are awaiting state consent for our JB semid. We can put the money in a fixed deposit giving 4%pa which will give us S$5000+ a month which is more than sufficient for a family of 4 in JB. Our sons can even go to international schools...

Good idea. I did that already. I sold my landed last year and got a net of $1m cash which we then invest. My stocks dividends give me 5% pa or $50k pa or RM130k pa. More than enough for me and wife to retire in JB. We are in our mid 40s.