How much are you earning per annum?

49, $55k pa. Wife, 45, $100k pa. Lives in a condo and drives a Japanese car. Total household spending $120k pa. Wife pays for the groceries, maid and car loan. I pay for the utilities, car petrol, road tax and car insurance. We share the condo mortgage using our CPF (we bought our condo in 2006 for $500k after selling our flat). In total, my wife pays a higher portion of our total household spending. Our children are in primary school. I teach them to save on tuition cost. We live a decent life.

I'm fortunate to marry a high income wife and this allows us to enjoy living in a condo and own a car. Many of my colleagues' wives don't earn so much, so they live in a 3 or 4 room HDB flat and take the bus to work.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

49, $55k pa. Wife, 45, $100k pa. Lives in a condo and drives a Japanese car. Total household spending $120k pa. Wife pays for the groceries, maid and car loan. I pay for the utilities, car petrol, road tax and car insurance. We share the condo mortgage using our CPF (we bought our condo in 2006 for $500k after selling our flat). In total, my wife pays a higher portion of our total household spending. Our children are in primary school. I teach them to save on tuition cost. We live a decent life.

I'm fortunate to marry a high income wife and this allows us to enjoy living in a condo and own a car. Many of my colleagues' wives don't earn so much, so they live in a 3 or 4 room HDB flat and take the bus to work.

same "don't womanise" guy , repeated posting , ignore.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

49, $55k pa. Wife, 45, $100k pa. Lives in a condo and drives a Japanese car. Total household spending $120k pa. Wife pays for the groceries, maid and car loan. I pay for the utilities, car petrol, road tax and car insurance. We share the condo mortgage using our CPF (we bought our condo in 2006 for $500k after selling our flat). In total, my wife pays a higher portion of our total household spending. Our children are in primary school. I teach them to save on tuition cost. We live a decent life.

I'm fortunate to marry a high income wife and this allows us to enjoy living in a condo and own a car. Many of my colleagues' wives don't earn so much, so they live in a 3 or 4 room HDB flat and take the bus to work.

You are lucky indeed. My income is $115k pa but I am the sole bread winner. I have paid off the loan of my hdb 5 room but don't dare to upgrade to a condo and take up more loan. I just take the mrt to work to shenton way. Prefers to be debt free. At my age of 42, I don't know how secure my job is.

Prudent move. If you are in your 40s, it is best you do not have debts. In your case, as the only person working, all the more you need to be conservative in your finances. Owning a fully paid 5 room HDB unit is a major achievement. You should just save as much as possible, don't bother to invest in high risk investments such as stocks and investment property. Most people lose money in stocks while investing in property today is not worth the risk because prices are expected to crash and there are many empty condo units with no tenants. If you buy an investment property, hoping for tenant to rent and pay for your mortgage (some stupid people say "other people's money"), but you have no tenant (nowadays FTs are not many and every landlord chasing after them to rent their empty condos), then you have to use your own salary to service the loan, pay the maintenance fees and property tax. With your single income, you most probably cannot afford. Worse, if interest rates rise, you have to pay more. And if you are thinking to sell, there're no buyers due to the property oversupply and you have to sell cheap and lose thousands of dollars. Already, many owners are selling at big losses. Don't follow the crowd blindly, the crowd is usually stupid.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You are lucky indeed. My income is $115k pa but I am the sole bread winner. I have paid off the loan of my hdb 5 room but don't dare to upgrade to a condo and take up more loan. I just take the mrt to work to shenton way. Prefers to be debt free. At my age of 42, I don't know how secure my job is.

I think this particular forum is one of the most popular. I believe it's because people naturally wants to compare where they stand with others in terms of income and net worth - this is what this forum is about.

So how did simple sharing about one's income and net worth degenerate into insults and threats? I think jealousy and insecurities got in the way.

On one side, you have this poster claiming he has made his bundle ($$) young and retired and now doing charitable work. A fellow poster (could be the same guy) claiming to aspire to be like him and working hard with the aim of retiring early (by 50).

On the other side we have a poster who claimed to have done reasonably well (net worth estimated at $5m), advising people to save, invest and work as long as they can.

As the sarcasm and insults came from the camp that advocated early retirement, I can only infer that this was caused by jealousy and insecurity. Jealousy, because once you retired, your income stopped. You have to cut back on your lifestyle. No car, no maid, etc... While there is nothing wrong to live simply, it is painful when you are still young to be living in austerity.

Insecurity, because you are never sure if your savings can outlast your retirement. The irony in retirement planning is that the younger you retire, the more savings you need because of the many more years in retirement, but you saved less because you stopped working earlier. The later (older) you retire, the less savings you need, but you ended up saving more because of the longer working years!

And to make matters worse, you have third parties coming in to add fuel to the fire by contributing inflammatory and totally up constructive remarks.

So unless posters stopped letting jealousy and insecurity get in the way, it is difficult to have free flowing sharing of ideas. It is a real pity.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Prudent move. If you are in your 40s, it is best you do not have debts. In your case, as the only person working, all the more you need to be conservative in your finances. Owning a fully paid 5 room HDB unit is a major achievement. You should just save as much as possible, don't bother to invest in high risk investments such as stocks and investment property. Most people lose money in stocks while investing in property today is not worth the risk because prices are expected to crash and there are many empty condo units with no tenants. If you buy an investment property, hoping for tenant to rent and pay for your mortgage (some stupid people say "other people's money"), but you have no tenant (nowadays FTs are not many and every landlord chasing after them to rent their empty condos), then you have to use your own salary to service the loan, pay the maintenance fees and property tax. With your single income, you most probably cannot afford. Worse, if interest rates rise, you have to pay more. And if you are thinking to sell, there're no buyers due to the property oversupply and you have to sell cheap and lose thousands of dollars. Already, many owners are selling at big losses. Don't follow the crowd blindly, the crowd is usually stupid.

Thanks for the advice. I don't intend to invest as I can't take high risks. I need to save in cash to build up my emergency fund, to prepare for the worst case scenario of losing my job. There are just too many cases of people losing their life savings when they dump them in stocks and property at the wrong time.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Low middle income earner, 46, $75k pa.
Spouse, 40, $80k pa.
4 room HDB, worth $400k. Still servicing loan.
Owns a motorbike, ride to office.
Can we qualify for an EC?
Should we upgrade to an EC?
Any comments from those staying in EC?
Thank you.

Why aim for EC ? Think big, dream for bungalow. I am not staying in a bungalow, but at least I am staying in a 2500 sqft 2s terrace house !

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Why aim for EC ? Think big, dream for bungalow. I am not staying in a bungalow, but at least I am staying in a 2500 sqft 2s terrace house !

In bukit indah, johor?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

In bukit indah, johor?

No. In my father's house.

When it was reported that Singapore's average household income was $10,503, quite a few people protested in the social media questioning if it was realistic. It seems they could not believe that households could have such incomes.

What the report should have included was the median household income. That would give a better perspective of how each household does in terms of whether they are in the upper half or lower half. Averages do not give one a sense of how well the "average" household really does. For eg. 9 in ten families could be earning $5k per month, but the last family could be earning $20k per month, and you will see the average household income for the 10 families as $6.5K per month.

But the important point to note is that the household income is rising every year. Currently our household income is comfortably above the average, but if either my wife or I were to stop work, our income will be lower than the average. We can really feel the pressure to build up our passive income to be able to replace one of our salaries as we approach retirement. Rising income levels usually leads to higher cost of living!