i guess the poorer ones who do not have any savings or maybe just a few K, would not be posting in this forum.

They would just be glancing through and either
1) cursing and swearing at life
2) in a state of denial that other people have so much money
3) switch off the computer and never come to this website again

Then when foreigners enter this website, they would comment:
"Oh! Singaporeans so rich ah! All the posts I see so rich one!"

Btw, i am aged 34, no car, one 4 rm HDB flat and 170k in cash...

Honest truth!

Combined with my wife:-(I am 37 and wife 33)

Cash - $595k
Car - Current value $14k (fully paid)
Flat - Current value $420k (fully paid)
CPF - OA: $5k

Wow. Very disproportionately cash rich. Waiting for recession before buying stocks?

What are your annual incomes if I may ask?

how much?
 

At least he is smart...and the time to buy stocks is NOW.......So how much is yr annual income?

27yo, single male
cash + stocks ~98k (i trade actively but not full-time)
no car
no house yet

eat cheap hawker centre food and wear cheap clothes, avoid unecessary expenses. i don't care what others say, building wealth is my main priority now. hopefully, one day can sack my boss and trade full time.

You did not share yours, somehow I don't feel oblige to answer your questions. :P

why is everybody so rich but i'm dead poor... with no assets, savings but still trying to pay off my study loan...

Don't be discouraged. When I left university, I was $20K in debt. I worked like a dog, saved as much as I could, bought one property, sold it, bought another and today I have $8M and a lot of it is from the property gains. So I started with less than nothing and made a comfortable life. You can too. Just defer consumption and invest.....

28 male.
80k in cash/stocks.
1.5m apartment with wife (60% paid).
90k car with wife (50% paid).

advice from u all
 

guys i am newly married, having 5k sal , only 50k saving do u thing i can buy a house with 1.26% loan bank is offering on 80% amount of a HDB or condo. or do i wait till i have 100k or more..please need advice the rent is killing me which is 2k per month.. i learnt that instalments are lower than this ..or more or less the same. down payment should be an issue ..need advice

30 yo F, Married with 1 child

co own current home with hubby, condo worth 1.1m
Personal savings - 50k
shared savings approx 300k
my own car 60k, 50% paid up
Annual income, last check at 73k p/a take home after CPF.
Combined income take home at 14k annual

control my spending, but love eating out and shopping. Not too much branded stuff.. though.

Also, 2 to 3 short holidays a yr.. or 1 major holiday a yr.

$5 Cash
$10 Fixed-deposit

Condo full paid up? If so, you are doing very well. For annual income, do you mean 140k?

Apparently the money is always there. I chance upon this forum, when searching for reviews on degrees and masters...

As Singaporean, we should always support each other. I make my first pot of gold through property. Bought a HDB property @ 200k 5 years ago, and was servicing an outstanding loan of about 90k. Until i sold my flat for 500k on the market.

With the 200k plus cash, (need to put back CPF + Interest), my wife an i invested in another HDB flat. Also we paid the down payment for another private property. We are currently staying in a condo 45% paid up, and renting out the HDB to some FTs...

I'm just saying that getting a little well to do is not impossible, you just have to make use of the loopholes in the Singapore. I bought my flat with the help of my Dad. According to HDB, you can purchase a HDB with your parents if they do not own a flat yet. If they do, try to change ownership, so that one of them is not the owner, then you buy together with him/her. It the way of getting around.

In a competitive environment like Singapore, we need to look out for one another, as we are Singaporeans, we serve the army together, went to the same neighborhood school. I holding on to a nice Job, where my boss who is a Singaporean is pro Singaporean when hiring. I do consider myself lucky.

There are no amount of protest you can make to make the government to give up the FTs.. We just have to suck it up, and be better than them.

Thanks for sharing. You probably bought the HDB during the dotcom crash and SARS period, when property was in its pits. And you probably sold when property was on its way up.

Your success is replicable, but only when conditions are right. I'm of the opinion that the timing must be right - the market must be in recovery mode to make money. If it's on its way down, its almost impossible to make money (unless you short property counters, but that's a different story).

No one knows for sure if the current property market is on its way up or down (I think it will crash, but who knows).

hi i just found this web accidently and read some of it. ok let me join just this time to write mine.

i'm 73 ,my wife is housewife and never work.

net asset including all ( cash, CD, house, hdb, apartment, lands, golds, etc ) = worth +/- US$ 13 - 14 millions.

i'm still working now controlling my own business here (not in sg).

and i don't have stocks or unit trust or something similar to that because i don't understand those things. and less spending when i'm getting older. don't know what i want to buy.

and we don't have retirement or insurance investment here because our country don't create it for us.

may be thats all. that i can share and tell.

34 y.o. guy with 32 y.o wife

cash and other liquid assets S$1.1M
landed property S$2M (S$900K loan outstanding)

household income close to S$200K (wife not working)

How did you manage to accumulate so much with just 200k income? Appreciate your sharing.

nothing special actually, just being diligent in saving $$ and also made additional $$ from buying property when prices had come down in 2003 and 2009

We've also been doing the same thing with slightly bigger income (albeit it grew by lot only in recent years), but our liquid assets and house net of loan is just over $1m. So your "nothing special" is definitely something special!

34 yr old
 

34 yr old wife & me (2 kids 4 & 1 year old)

Singapore stocks: 20k
US$: 10k
S$: -24k in a personal loan

HDB worth 500K 250+K remaining

common man
 

I, 50+ yr old unassuming uncle you see regularly in the coffee shops or NTUC stores. Still working but think can retire. Wife also 50+ and working.

Combined CPF : 1M+ (700K OA, 300K SA, 79K MA)
Cars: 1 MPV and 1 Saloon (fully paid up)
Condo: 1.4M (4 bdrms, fully paid)
Condo: 1M (2 bdrms, fully paid and rented out)
Cash: 500K (cash, FD, Endowment, Single premiums)
Stocks: 300K (mainly bluechips)

Someone said older people have fewer needs. True. Can save 75% of monthly income

Uncle, if you are truly unassuming, please share tips on how you accumulated so much wealth. Are you and your wife high earners making 200k to 300k a year? Did you make a lot of good investments in stocks and properties?

I'm asking because my parents also worked hard and saved hard and even invested rather well, but they don't even have half of what you have.

Wow uncle, you are in the position I dream to be when I'm older. Do help us youngsters out a bit and share some of your strategies, please! How you would build wealth given the conditions we are experiencing today (inflation, rising house and car prices, etc). What advice would you give to young people?

if that is true, congrats. u should learn to let go and enjoy your fruits. no point work n work till health drop n cant enjoy watever you have. there is no end to the amount you xan earn, but there is an end to one's healthy life time.

this is bogus..... MA acc has a limit of 39.5K. Anything more spill over to SA. SA also limit at 135K (I think).

He said combined. Read carefully.

common man
 

Ok, share some more. Me and wife combined annual income about 350K (not as fantastic as others who posted). No loans, just daily normal expenses and kids studies to fund, so annual spending is about 85K or less. Lucky to have bought condo units earlier. Also constant savings is important.

One guy questioned how can SA be more than limit. The SA limit currently is 131K. This limit prevents people from transferring more than 131K to the SA. However CPF continues to take portion of your salary to add to SA every month and every once a year, the interest earned in SA is left in SA whether you hit the limit or not. So if you have topped up your SA to the limit in earlier years, it will now grow to more than the current limit.

I think common man shows that you don't have to have an extraordinary job like an investment banker to be rich.

Say he and his wife get 6 months bonus, so this implies that his combined base is about $260K and each have base salary of about $11K/m. At 50 years old after working for 20-30 years, $11K/m isn't that hard to reach if you are a graduate.

Saving and doing some mild investment in property and stocks, he has accumulated net worth of about $4m and a lot of it is in CPF. That is mighty impressive and shows that if you don't blow all your money on toys, clubbing and expensive vacations, you can have an extremely comfortable retirement.

common man, its time for you to enjoy some of your savings. you never know how long you are going to live and spending $85K per year in Singapore means that you are very frugal. Go buy that Mercedes S350 with all the trimmings and enjoy. You deserve it.

if you have children, you may want to save up $300k for each of them, so you can send them to better overseas universities and out of this pressure-cooker society where foreigners come first.

Actually a lot of middle, upper middle and rich people are extremely happy with this "pressure-cooker society where foreigners come first". Just look at the election results.

Its the poor and the sandwiches that have a lot of anger due to our FT policy.

My guess is that 20 of those 60% are working in government-related companies and don't dare to vote against the PAP. My parents for example don't believe that the vote is secret - how stupid, but they are my parents, so.

Maybe you are one of those who are "extremely happy" with the "pressure-cooker society where foreigners come first", but you definitely aren't the majority. The reason is simple: if the majority is happy, PM Lee wouldn't have apologized and ministerial salaries wouldn't be reviewed.

Or maybe not... cos many policies still suck big time and they are already raising transport fares!

I better get out of this "pressure-cooker society where foreigners come first".

Can someone start a thread to discuss emigration strategies?

Emigration! That's a joke. With unemployment at 10% in western countries, where would you go? That's why everyone is trying to come here.

The poor are quite happy with the Government handouts and the rich are happy of course with all the new restaurants, facilities etc which have opened up.

The only unhappy lot are the netizens who are generally middle class sandwich types and they are clearly the minority. That's why online comments and polls are complete nonsense. Having said that, the post 2-child policy group is about to become middle class so the Government is starting to address their needs. However, the current vocal netizens are going to now become "old" and will continue to be ignored.

I don't think $11k/m "isn't that hard to reach" even if you are a graduate. But agree that you don't have to have an extraordinary job like investment banker to be rich.

Why is 11k/mth hard to reach?

It's just anecdoctal observation. Let's look at teachers, for instance. Most of them are graduates and most of them will not be earning $11k/m at the apex of their career, unless they rise to leadership positions. Of course, this is not to say that they are not comfortably paid.

common man
 

A little clarification is in order here. The 350K annual income is not entirely from wages. Here are the contributors: Rental (Gross) -- 36K, CPF interest --30K, Dividends -- 15K, Wages -- 270K.

And no, I have no desire to get that S350 benz. Driving conditions in Singapore does not merit such a car. Our main pre-occupation now is how to preserve the nest egg in the light of uncertainties in the world economy and the ever increasing inflation.

You are already much much better off than most people. Inflation affects everyone, especially the poorer ones, so you'll be fine relatively.

That said, I'm keeping cash, as Singdollar is pretty strong. Those who harp on cash getting devalued are not thinking with their brains - it's the USD and Euro that are getting devalued. Keeping cash in strong currencies like Singdollar is perfectly fine. But I am mortal, so I may be wrong. You mileage may vary.

My Age 36
Wife Age 36
total income 600K

Property value 4.2M
Outstanding Loan 2.9M

Cash 1.1M
COF 0.5M (inclusive Medisave and special account)

Net worth ??

Aim to be debt free ( Cash > Debt ) in 3 years time

Rat, you're earning a lot of money, but your financial planning is suspect. You should be trying to build some passive income. Just by staying in your $4.2m house, you are effectively spending $10-12K/month, which is the rental income lost. Meanwhile your $1.1m in cash is earning almost no interest.

My suggestion. Don't aim to be debt free. Use the cash to buy an investment property and take up more debt. Housing loans are under 1% now...