In tandem with the progress of our nation, we have also prospered. We used to live in small flats but today we live in a nice and well renovated, upper class condo. Our hard work have paid off. Life here is good. We are thankful. We also look forward to retiring at 56. We have enough to retire as we are now a millionaire couple.

You must be grateful for such youngsters, in other countries youngsters take drugs and murder people. Don't always complain. Yeah the view is nice here.

Out of a HH income of $160kpa, we manage to save $30k pa. Our home is just a simply furnished 3-bedder unit in a condominium project. It's valued at $1.1m and we have an outstanding loan of $200k on it. We should finish paying the loan in 10 years time when we reach 55. Our retirement plan is to sell our condo unit at 55 and buy a studio condo unit. We would buy a unit in a condo project located next to an MRT station for convenience of travel. This provides a good reason for us not to own a car during our retirement years.

Poor retirement plan.

Why do you want to downgrade yourself at the age of 55? By this time, you would be very comfortable living in your current home. If you move to a new locality, everything will be different. The people you meet, the shopkeepers everyone will be different and you will be treated differently.

Instead, stay where you are. After you have paid off the outstanding loan then invest in a studio apartment next to MRT (if possible, buy from the market) and rent it out immediately. The rent will take care of the monthly repayments and by the time you are at the retirement age, you can use all your CPF to pay off the remaining money.

Excellent retirement plan. Look forward to your retirement at 55.

Many people downgrade or right size when they retire. Those who live in 5 room HDB flats will downgrade to a 2 room HDB flat. Those who live in 3 bedroom, 4 bedroom or penthouse condo will downgrade to a studio or one bedroom condo unit when they retire.

Smaller condos are easier to maintain and you pay lower condo fees. You also don't need to employ a maid as there is not much house work to do. I think only unwise or egoistic people remain staying in their penthouse condo, employ a maid and own a car when they retire.

Buy a condo next to an MRT station. It is worth it.

55, stay home unemployed dad with 2 sons. Wife working part time. Home is a humble FH semi-d at Lentor, worth 3.5mil.

My income:
2 shophouses at little india, each valued at 3mil, rented out for a total of 40k per month.
One 2 bedders condo in Woodgrove, valued 1.3mil, rented out for 4k.
One studio apartment in Novena, valued at 1.2mil, rented out for 3k.

So my annual income is approx $560k thereabout based on my property portfolio with a net value of $8.5mil. My total net worth based on property is $12mil with maybe $3mil in cash, so total is maybe $15mil?

My greatest achievement is staying debt free. I've always believed that real estate is the key to wealth. Just look at the list of richest people. I don't dabble in stocks, I don't see myself in front of the monitor staring at numbers.

Got my big break buying the shophouses in late 90s for 500k each. At that time 800k can buy a condo and I remember very clearly a friend who bought a 4-story house at Bukit Timah for 1.8mil, so sinking my life savings then was a really big life-changing decision. Can't get those prices anymore now, glad things worked in my favour.

Used those shophouses as collateral to get bank loans to purchase my other property. Loans all fully paid. My monthly rental are all cash and banked in as savings.

Now I'm just accumulating more capital and wait for the property market to crash so I can go on another shopping spree. Hope to hit net worth $25mil by the time I'm 65, which is a realistic target in current economic climate.

becaufe anseex
 

Wow, respect! I'll be happy to take 1/10 of yours by the time I retire!

So are you officially in retirement?

bro mind sharing whats your job? banking or financial sector?

Thanks for sharing, for the lucky few there are those life changing decisions we make that really define the rest of your life.

What made you decide to buy not one but two shophouses anyway? That's quite a risk for a initial investment?

Like you I also play the property market to make my money, stocks are not my forte. Unfortunately with so much excess cash flooding the system I'm not sure if this market will crash like what we see in 97.

Paralysis through analysis.

We are also into property investment. When we started with our first investment property (not our primary home), our immediate goal was to pay off the loans as early as possible.

But in 2008, we changed our mental model when the housing loan was drastically reduced to 1% thereabout. It stayed this low till now - a good 6+ years!

So for our 2 investment properties, we paid down about 30% each and for the rest of the money that we could have used to pay up for the properties, we left some of it in our CPF, invested in blue chips and bought some bonds.

This is what our returns are like:

CPF OA: 2.5%
Bonds : 4 - 5%
Shares dividends : 4.5% (average)
Rental income(net) : 8.5% (based on paid up amount)

Cost of housing loan: about 1.5% currently

Had we fully paid up the 2 investment properties, we would be just earning a net income of 3% pa.

The 2 investment properties were valued at $1.4m when we bought them. Now they're worth about $2.2m (down slightly from its peak)

Housing loans has the lowest interest rate in the market, because the property is the collateral the banks staked their claim on, so makes use of it to generate more money!

The caveats here are:
1. Ensure you can handle the loan payment during periods when you cannot find tenants
2. You are able to generate more returns with the money which you could have used to fully pay up for your property. With current low housing loan rate, this is very easy.
3. You must already have the money. That is, don't over extend yourself