How much are you earning per annum?

Simply put your salary given your age is pretty darn good, your limiting factors are your mortgage. I am assuming you took a 30 year loan with 80% of the property value? Question is do you want to still have a large mortgage when you're in your 60's?

You will need to start tracking how much you spend every month especially the big ticket items. Main things you should consider are

- Car Interest
- Car Depreciation (hidden form of expense)
- Car Maintenance (Parking/Petrol Etc)
- Housing loan interest (shorter tenure = lower interest paid)
- Entertainment expense
- Shopping expense
- Vacations expense
- Kids education etc

Once you know where your money is going the right thing to do is to cut back on your luxuries, review your loan (try to reduce the overall loan tenure) and do some force saving via increase payments.

Would you have the discipline though to do that until your loan is repaid?

I have different for property investment, but no point discussing this until you sort out your primary housing.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Everyone assumes only the middle aged come here to write fantasies. Well, I'm 30 this year, and have worked for 5 years. My income has risen from a base pay of 48k (local u 2nd class hons) at an average rate of 25% a year. My base is now 150k and I come from an industry with bonus payouts of 4-6 months on average. Compounding is scary, you can punch these figures into your calculator to see. So I don't think people are bragging here, after all, no one's identity is exposed and none of the rich posters want to reveal who they are. There is no point and no satisfaction to be derived from such an exercise. I hope everyone can have a civil discussion on pay and financial management. I'm someone in need for good advice because I've frittered all my earnings in the past 5 years and am struggling to scrape enough through for a downpayment for a house of about 1.5m. If you think you deserve better and your current employer isn't paying you enough, jump ship. I'm one of the rare ones of my generation who finished 5 years with my first employer and am now moving on to my second. You're only as good as your company's opportunity cost without you, so work hard and enjoy the advice and data points people have given you. From this thread I've gleaned that I really need to strike the property market once it's fallen by a bit more, and just start funneling money into the asset instead of my crazy spending now. I also aspire to have a fully paid up property, and then a second, and a third, and let it roll. But I never lose sight of what I have to do at work now. Employers are stingy, that's the way of the world. They will get by with paying you as little as possible to keep you. So I'll keep my head down and work hard and smart to get further, and I'm thankful people who've come before me and shared their success stories here for me to learn from.

Tracking expenses is tedious and requires a fair bit of time and effort.

What I do instead, is to track my net worth. This I do only once a month, and in 5 minutes.

Ok, admittedly I have set up the framework long ago, so that's why it takes only 5 minutes for each update.

We know our income - salaries plus passive incomes.

Then we see how much our networth grew in the last month. From there we could deduce our expenses. This is not an accurate way to determine the expenses because the networth growth could also be due to appreciation in our stocks holding for eg. But it is all we need to know.

We have been doing it this way for the last 20 years, and it works for us. We observed our expenses have not changed for the last 5-6 years.

Originally Posted by Unregistered_101

Simply put your salary given your age is pretty darn good, your limiting factors are your mortgage. I am assuming you took a 30 year loan with 80% of the property value? Question is do you want to still have a large mortgage when you're in your 60's?

You will need to start tracking how much you spend every month especially the big ticket items. Main things you should consider are

- Car Interest
- Car Depreciation (hidden form of expense)
- Car Maintenance (Parking/Petrol Etc)
- Housing loan interest (shorter tenure = lower interest paid)
- Entertainment expense
- Shopping expense
- Vacations expense
- Kids education etc

Once you know where your money is going the right thing to do is to cut back on your luxuries, review your loan (try to reduce the overall loan tenure) and do some force saving via increase payments.

Would you have the discipline though to do that until your loan is repaid?

I have different for property investment, but no point discussing this until you sort out your primary housing.

Thank you for sharing this brilliant idea. We have friends and relatives in KL so no problem adjusting socially. I'm sure they will be in awe when I tell them that our retirement passive income is RM200k pa. That's like double their combined household active working income. They will more amazed when I tell them I'm staying in the heart of KLCC, which is a prime upscale area. I'm now less anxious of our retirement and look forward to retire in KL in 5 or 6 years time when our kids move out. Huat Ah !!!!!!!!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hello.

I think you're worrying too much. Many Singaporeans are already retired with a lot lesser than what you have right now. If you plan to retire in Singapore, you can retire at 65. You will get your CPF Life monthly payment of $3600 pm for a couple if you opt for the Enhanced scheme. Your children, like any dutiful children, will give you $1000 pm. So with $4600 pm, you and wife can retire well provided you are not foolish enough to splurge on owning a car or employing a maid as these are unnecessary expenses when you're retired.

If you plan to retire overseas in a cheaper location, then you can actually retire as soon as your children are working and living on their own. This can be in the next 5 or 10 years, depending on how old they are now. How can you do this? You can sell your condo and plus your other cash, you could have $1.5m in total. Buy a portfolio of dividend blue chips which give you 5% dividend yield and you will get $75k pa. If you retire in Malaysia, this will give you RM225k pa of passive income. You can retire like a king anywhere in Malaysia with this income.

If you want to retire in luxury, you can rent a nice big condo in KLCC for RM5k pm and plus your other expenses of RM5k pm, your expenses win total will be RM10k pm or RM120k pa. You can save the rest for you to go for holidays all over the world.

Thanks for this. I have yet to take out a mortgage because I'm still looking at some areas. The thing is I spoke to a friend yesterday, and apparently the bank is only willing to lend approx 60x of monthly salary. This is consistent across all local banks. Aside from canceling the useless credit cards, is there any other way to boost this mortgage sum? Currently with a a 30 yr mortgage for a 1mio home my monthly installment will be around 3k which is way too comfortable. I'm looking to buy 1.5mio but seems like getting a 1.2mio mortgage will be quite impossible. Currently no car loan but will have to take one up as well. I should buy property before I apply for car loan, yes? I'm considering leasing a cheap car for the work home shuttle in the meantime if I need to settle the mortgage first.

Originally Posted by Unregistered_101

Simply put your salary given your age is pretty darn good, your limiting factors are your mortgage. I am assuming you took a 30 year loan with 80% of the property value? Question is do you want to still have a large mortgage when you're in your 60's?

You will need to start tracking how much you spend every month especially the big ticket items. Main things you should consider are

- Car Interest
- Car Depreciation (hidden form of expense)
- Car Maintenance (Parking/Petrol Etc)
- Housing loan interest (shorter tenure = lower interest paid)
- Entertainment expense
- Shopping expense
- Vacations expense
- Kids education etc

Once you know where your money is going the right thing to do is to cut back on your luxuries, review your loan (try to reduce the overall loan tenure) and do some force saving via increase payments.

Would you have the discipline though to do that until your loan is repaid?

I have different for property investment, but no point discussing this until you sort out your primary housing.

It is good that the banks are being prudent. In fact they should be more prudent when it comes to second properties. They should only lend 30% of the cost as there are many middle income people condo owner wannabes who are buying for investment. They are staying in hdb flat. These are people whose jobs are at highest risk and when they lose their jobs and their condo is empty (cannot rent out) due to the massive oversupply of condos, they have to dump their condos at cheap prices and even risk being bankrupt.

Why do you want to buy a $1.5m condo and buy a car? Why are you so confident of your job? Is your job 100% safe? Don't think you earn a lot today means this will be forever. You can lose your job any time. Buy a cheaper, smaller condo next to an MRT station. This means you don't have to pay so much for the condo and don't need a car. Buy with a 50% down payment. So even if your condo price dropped by 40%, you are still not under water.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Thanks for this. I have yet to take out a mortgage because I'm still looking at some areas. The thing is I spoke to a friend yesterday, and apparently the bank is only willing to lend approx 60x of monthly salary. This is consistent across all local banks. Aside from canceling the useless credit cards, is there any other way to boost this mortgage sum? Currently with a a 30 yr mortgage for a 1mio home my monthly installment will be around 3k which is way too comfortable. I'm looking to buy 1.5mio but seems like getting a 1.2mio mortgage will be quite impossible. Currently no car loan but will have to take one up as well. I should buy property before I apply for car loan, yes? I'm considering leasing a cheap car for the work home shuttle in the meantime if I need to settle the mortgage first.

I'm quite confident of my abilities, which is a terrible thing to say, but my current bosses know me from when I first joined their competitor, and I've done pretty well despite a downturn market since I joined. I am vouched for by my previous bosses, I met all my KPIs for the last 5 years, and I have excess capacity in the tank. I've achieved all this without any family connections and background. Mine is for investment as well because I have to stay with family. Car is for silly reasons but my biggest expense in the past was from partying and drinking, not the car. I'm single so as long as I can cut down on entertainment I'm quite safe. My biggest ticket items each month are by order of largest to least: entertainment, allowance for the family (they don't need it but it's the right thing to do), car, daily expenses. I can accept rental 20-30% below market, or any sum at all, because I can afford the installment with or without rental. I am pushing for 1.5mio because it will be my marriage/retirement home, and I want a place I will be happy to move into. I've not drank for the last two months, and am now exercising regularly (the cheapest past time I just realized), which is a good step forward I think. Actually I'd love to pay off the property asap eventually, but that can be accomplished with early repay penalty so I'm not worried.

Good to be confident but bear in mind sometimes there are things beyond your control. There is no guarantee you still have a job no matter how good you are. Best is to be conservative. Just buy a property costing less than $1m with a downpayment of 50%.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm quite confident of my abilities, which is a terrible thing to say, but my current bosses know me from when I first joined their competitor, and I've done pretty well despite a downturn market since I joined. I am vouched for by my previous bosses, I met all my KPIs for the last 5 years, and I have excess capacity in the tank. I've achieved all this without any family connections and background. Mine is for investment as well because I have to stay with family. Car is for silly reasons but my biggest expense in the past was from partying and drinking, not the car. I'm single so as long as I can cut down on entertainment I'm quite safe. My biggest ticket items each month are by order of largest to least: entertainment, allowance for the family (they don't need it but it's the right thing to do), car, daily expenses. I can accept rental 20-30% below market, or any sum at all, because I can afford the installment with or without rental. I am pushing for 1.5mio because it will be my marriage/retirement home, and I want a place I will be happy to move into. I've not drank for the last two months, and am now exercising regularly (the cheapest past time I just realized), which is a good step forward I think. Actually I'd love to pay off the property asap eventually, but that can be accomplished with early repay penalty so I'm not worried.

Thanks for the reminder! Yes you're quite right, the only constant is change. But I don't have half a buck on hand now! ((

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Good to be confident but bear in mind sometimes there are things beyond your control. There is no guarantee you still have a job no matter how good you are. Best is to be conservative. Just buy a property costing less than $1m with a downpayment of 50%.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Latest news released from LTA

Cat A down 1.8% or 30 less quota in every bid.
Cat B down 3% or 32 less quota in every bid.
Cat E flat.


Ho-say-liao.... COE will start to chiong back up..... New car buyers will re-start the panic buying!!! Huat ah!

I know most people are discussing property here. But can advise if it's the right time to buy new car now? I am worried that car prices will shoot up again.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I know most people are discussing property here. But can advise if it's the right time to buy new car now? I am worried that car prices will shoot up again.

If you have the money, just buy. Pay in full. Buy a car which costs less than $100k. There are a few good ones.