How much are you earning per annum?

Your spending must really be OTT to blow thru that kind of cash and not pay any asset down, you mentioned you are correcting this and that's a good step but consider my advise on tracking you expenditure and cutting down any more excess luxuries.

If your base currently is 150K and your bonus say 4 months? That's roughly 200k a year (correct me if mistaken). To be honest I don't see any reason why the banks will not loan you 1M taking that into consideration, if you're really keen don't ask friends, just go down and speak to a loan officer to get a better understanding.

To boost rating you can cancel your cards but you need to cancel for an entire bank (i.e UOB/HSBC etc) cards, even 1 card with a bank can impact your rating. Alternative is to invest in a property that's already tenanted then you can use the rental income on top of your earning to qualify.

Although these are methods to get around the loan restriction I question your property investment decisions, the market is gonna get worse and I suspect you are looking at new properties which is something property investors generally don't go for especially in a overpriced market that we see now. It also sounds like you are stretching a little, that's also not a good sign cause on a down market if can spell a lot of trouble.

You mention you are willing to slash 40% off pricing to get rental income, many people who invest long time back can slash much lower and still cover their cost. My properties are centrally located and if I slash 50% I can still cover, boiling down to location and size if the rental market worsens its not that easy to slash and get tenants fyi.

Think wisely, one bad call can ruin you.

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.

It is no doubt but still a good exercise, I've been tracking for 10 plus years now so it's become a habit. I've got accountancy background so I like attention to detail. I suggested expense tracking for the previous guy since he admittedly has spending issues.

I see net-worth tracking and expense tracking interrelated, you need to list down your bank accounts, credit card accounts, loans, assets, rental income, stocks etc to get an accurate picture of your network. Money moving in and out just becomes part of that picture.

We're all driven by circumstance, if your method works for you and your expenses don't change much then I wouldn't see the need to go to close detail.

To be honest my in goings and outgoings are fairly complicated,without my income/expense tracking I'll likely be at a loss lol

Originally Posted by Unregistered

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.

170k per annum. Female 33.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

170k per annum. Female 33.

I am 35 single male. Can I date you?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

170k per annum. Female 33.

37, single handsome charming guy, $250k pa.

Hello. How are you?

My wife and I are a low income grad couple. We have two children in secondary schools. We are both 49 years old and only earning $160k pa in total. Our paid up condo is in the OCR and is valued at only $900k. We drive a small non continental car. Life is not so easy. We worry about our finances. We need to think which place to eat out or where to buy food from as we are very cost conscious. We cannot afford to employ a maid. We can only afford holidays in the Asian region such as HK, Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia. Only once a year. We can't afford holidays to Europe or America.

Our net worth (including our condo and car) is only $1.5m in total. This is very low when we compare with our friends and relatives.

Are there any grad couples here earning as low as us? How do you survive with the demands and expectations from family and society? How are you preparing for your retirement?

Do we have to work till we are in our 70s? What can we do to prepare for retirement? Please help advise. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

My wife and I are a low income grad couple. We have two children in secondary schools. We are both 49 years old and only earning $160k pa in total. Our paid up condo is in the OCR and is valued at only $900k. We drive a small non continental car. Life is not so easy. We worry about our finances. We need to think which place to eat out or where to buy food from as we are very cost conscious. We cannot afford to employ a maid. We can only afford holidays in the Asian region such as HK, Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia. Only once a year. We can't afford holidays to Europe or America.

Our net worth (including our condo and car) is only $1.5m in total. This is very low when we compare with our friends and relatives.

Are there any grad couples here earning as low as us? How do you survive with the demands and expectations from family and society? How are you preparing for your retirement?

Do we have to work till we are in our 70s? What can we do to prepare for retirement? Please help advise. Thanks.

I feel sad to hear about your situation. Sorry to say that you might have to slog till 70s. You can opt to work in MacDonald. It's very common today in Singapore.

As a 49 yo grad couple, you're are underpaid. However, your income is considered higher than national average. In terms of assets, you're in the top 20% nationally since 80% of Singaporeans live in public housing flats.

You can retire by 60 if you don't mind retiring in places like KL, JB, Penang.

You have two big Cs for retirement. Condo and CPF Life.

When you are 60 and your kids are married, you can rent out your whole condo unit. You will get $3000 pm. Convert to RM, you will get RM9000 pm. Definitely more than enough for a retired couple.

Here's your expenses in KL

3 bedroom condo rental RM1500 pm
Food, dining out and utilities RM1500 pm
Car expenses RM500 pm
Entertainment and holidays RM1000 pm
Medical and misc RM500 pm
Total RM5000 pm
Savings RM4000 pm

When you reach 65, your CPF Life will give you $3600 pm for a retired couple who choose the Enhanced scheme. This gives you an extra RM10,800 pm of income. You can then opt to upgrade to a better home by renting a bungalow with swimming pool at a rent of RM6000 pm.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

My wife and I are a low income grad couple. We have two children in secondary schools. We are both 49 years old and only earning $160k pa in total. Our paid up condo is in the OCR and is valued at only $900k. We drive a small non continental car. Life is not so easy. We worry about our finances. We need to think which place to eat out or where to buy food from as we are very cost conscious. We cannot afford to employ a maid. We can only afford holidays in the Asian region such as HK, Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia. Only once a year. We can't afford holidays to Europe or America.

Our net worth (including our condo and car) is only $1.5m in total. This is very low when we compare with our friends and relatives.

Are there any grad couples here earning as low as us? How do you survive with the demands and expectations from family and society? How are you preparing for your retirement?

Do we have to work till we are in our 70s? What can we do to prepare for retirement? Please help advise. Thanks.

Thank you for the sound advice. I'm trying to pump up my cash position before buying property, and I'm not looking at all the new ones which are overpriced imo. While I don't need the rental income critically, it's a nice to have but as rental market is soft now I'm still holding off until it falls a bit further. I'll definitely be looking at old units and then sprucing it up myself. Things are fluid at the moment because the market is still dipping, but for sure I will try to rein in expenses and go on a crazy savings run to pad up my possible down payment. Possibly in 2Q16 after CNY.

Originally Posted by Unregistered_101

Your spending must really be OTT to blow thru that kind of cash and not pay any asset down, you mentioned you are correcting this and that's a good step but consider my advise on tracking you expenditure and cutting down any more excess luxuries.

If your base currently is 150K and your bonus say 4 months? That's roughly 200k a year (correct me if mistaken). To be honest I don't see any reason why the banks will not loan you 1M taking that into consideration, if you're really keen don't ask friends, just go down and speak to a loan officer to get a better understanding.

To boost rating you can cancel your cards but you need to cancel for an entire bank (i.e UOB/HSBC etc) cards, even 1 card with a bank can impact your rating. Alternative is to invest in a property that's already tenanted then you can use the rental income on top of your earning to qualify.

Although these are methods to get around the loan restriction I question your property investment decisions, the market is gonna get worse and I suspect you are looking at new properties which is something property investors generally don't go for especially in a overpriced market that we see now. It also sounds like you are stretching a little, that's also not a good sign cause on a down market if can spell a lot of trouble.

You mention you are willing to slash 40% off pricing to get rental income, many people who invest long time back can slash much lower and still cover their cost. My properties are centrally located and if I slash 50% I can still cover, boiling down to location and size if the rental market worsens its not that easy to slash and get tenants fyi.

Think wisely, one bad call can ruin you.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

My wife and I are a low income grad couple. We have two children in secondary schools. We are both 49 years old and only earning $160k pa in total. Our paid up condo is in the OCR and is valued at only $900k. We drive a small non continental car. Life is not so easy. We worry about our finances. We need to think which place to eat out or where to buy food from as we are very cost conscious. We cannot afford to employ a maid. We can only afford holidays in the Asian region such as HK, Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia. Only once a year. We can't afford holidays to Europe or America.

Our net worth (including our condo and car) is only $1.5m in total. This is very low when we compare with our friends and relatives.

Are there any grad couples here earning as low as us? How do you survive with the demands and expectations from family and society? How are you preparing for your retirement?

Do we have to work till we are in our 70s? What can we do to prepare for retirement? Please help advise. Thanks.

Explore ways to get passive income?

It's pretty low for a couple grad but definitely not a low-income group. I am currently 27 and both me and my gf is drawing about $150k in total.