Whats your net worth

Cant find one which is comparable to where we are now. Swimming pool is jus downstairs, supermkts/coffee shops/shopping mall/hawker center/mrt/bus interchange/expressway all within 500m . Not to mention the great on top floor of the flat.....

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You are a millionaire couple. Why not upgrade to a condo and enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle as well as enjoy the prestige, privacy and safety? You can always downgrade to a hdb flat when you retire. Why live in a flat all your life? You have to reward yourself by moving into a condo. You will get a boost in your social status. You can use your cash and assets to pay for a condo in full. Get a $1.2m condo will do.

There are ten of thousands millionaires in sg, not hard to believe

Originally Posted by Unregistered

hard to believe so many rich people are clueless about retirement. guess some guys spend their time imagining their fantasy life where they live in condo, drive cars and buy investment properties.

Husband, 45, Wife, 43, son, 16, daughter, 12.
Combined household income $168k pa. Saves $40k pa.

Home is a 3 bedroom condo, bought in 2004, now worth $1m. Paid up.
Car is a one year old car, paid up.

Total cash and CPF $500k.

Total net worth $1.5m.

We feel blessed that we are debt free and we get to enjoy living in a condo.

Single income family, both age 42 with 2 young kids.
5 rm hdb s$800k, mortage s$140k
Cash s$200k
shares s$350k
cpf s$400k
investment fund s$700k
9yr old car, fully paid up
Ready to retire anytime, no fun facing stress in corp world

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Single income family, both age 42 with 2 young kids.
5 rm hdb s$800k, mortage s$140k
Cash s$200k
shares s$350k
cpf s$400k
investment fund s$700k
9yr old car, fully paid up
Ready to retire anytime, no fun facing stress in corp world

When do you plan to retire? What's your retirement plan?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Single income family, both age 42 with 2 young kids.
5 rm hdb s$800k, mortage s$140k
Cash s$200k
shares s$350k
cpf s$400k
investment fund s$700k
9yr old car, fully paid up
Ready to retire anytime, no fun facing stress in corp world

with 2 young kids? its not enough for you to retire in this 2nd most expensive city in the world.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Single income family, both age 42 with 2 young kids.
5 rm hdb s$800k, mortage s$140k
Cash s$200k
shares s$350k
cpf s$400k
investment fund s$700k
9yr old car, fully paid up
Ready to retire anytime, no fun facing stress in corp world

://.salary.sg/2010/1million-to-raise-2-kids/

your savings are all gone, that was year 2010.....

Work till you die or live frugally. Sad to say, Singapore is no longer a place for ppl to slow down pace.

Originally Posted by lazyplane

Can you explain how you have so much money in OA CPF ?

Generally, most people OA CPF will be wiped upon purchase of HDB and from there , while you can build it up, it will be hard for one to raise OA CPF to 330k as your post as CPF contributions are relatively capped.

Did you do some massive OA investment that reaped big rewards eg stock trading ?

It's $330k combined, i have ~$150k, my wife ~$180k. And i have been working 17 years and my wife 14 years. We bought a resale flat so we only needed to use cpf to pay for 15% of the downpayment, the remaining 5% was using cash. If you refer to my post, i still have an outstanding mortgage of $420k on my flat.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

You are a millionaire couple. Why not upgrade to a condo and enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle as well as enjoy the prestige, privacy and safety? You can always downgrade to a hdb flat when you retire. Why live in a flat all your life? You have to reward yourself by moving into a condo. You will get a boost in your social status. You can use your cash and assets to pay for a condo in full. Get a $1.2m condo will do.

Reasons why not to upgrade to condo now :

1) Upgrading to condo would lock up a significant portion of my capital which i can't put to better use elsewhere. Notice i still have an outstanding mortgage on my flat even though i can pay it off, however, if interest rate continues to rise i may opt to clear my mortgage.

2) I have always invested in something that i understand and am comfortable with the risk level. Even though property prices have come down somewhat recently but I'm not comfortable with the risk level. I don't see a lot of upside potential and the rental yield of ~3% doesn't provide a lot of downside protection.

3) You're playing a dangerous game using your home as an investment. If you happen to make money when you move house, then it's a bonus. But once you try to use it in a strategic sense financially and the plan fails then things could get ugly.

4) Now let's do some math, I need about 1300sqft of space to live comfortably. Assuming if i were to use the whole chunk of $1.4M to buy a condo, that would work out to be about $1100psf. At that $ psf, i can't buy anything in CCR and maybe some old development in RCR. So I'm left with OCR only, again I'm not comfortable with the risk level here, a lot of the price increases in OCR developments are hyped up. If i really really really had to put money in property, i would pick only CCR, but i can't afford it so that's why i only have my humble HDB.

5) I have never felt unsafe in my hdb estate so safety is not relevant to me. As for privacy, have you seen the plot ratios of newer developments especially in OCR, developers are squeezing as many units as possible into a small plot of land to maximize profit. But i agree, moving to a condo may gain me some prestige but then again prestige can't pay the bills.

6) I didn't say i was planning to live in a flat all my life. When i have accumulated enough passive income of $?? per month and my 2 kids are self sufficient. I will seriously consider moving to a slightly nicer place. To me, retirement shouldn't be about downgrading of lifestyle.

Anyway, just my $0.02. What works for me may not work for another person. But i have to say retirement planning is very very tough in the beginning. You procrastinate, complain that money no enough etc etc. It's a huge undertaking that requires a lot of focus and discipline, i would say even more difficult than my day job. But once you get the ball rolling and you see results, it's very satisfying, 2nd only to my kids.

If you will ONLY upgrade if you can afford a 1300 sqft CCR condo, then you can wait long, long. These condos will cost you at least $2m, which is not within your budget for sure.

Buying and living in a condo is not about investments, it is about enjoying the good life and prestige that a condo environment provides. Your kids can enjoy the swimming pool at your door steps (pls don't compare with public pools, they are obviously different).

There are many older 3 bedroom condos which are now selling at very low prices of $800k. You just have to search for them.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Reasons why not to upgrade to condo now :

1) Upgrading to condo would lock up a significant portion of my capital which i can't put to better use elsewhere. Notice i still have an outstanding mortgage on my flat even though i can pay it off, however, if interest rate continues to rise i may opt to clear my mortgage.

2) I have always invested in something that i understand and am comfortable with the risk level. Even though property prices have come down somewhat recently but I'm not comfortable with the risk level. I don't see a lot of upside potential and the rental yield of ~3% doesn't provide a lot of downside protection.

3) You're playing a dangerous game using your home as an investment. If you happen to make money when you move house, then it's a bonus. But once you try to use it in a strategic sense financially and the plan fails then things could get ugly.

4) Now let's do some math, I need about 1300sqft of space to live comfortably. Assuming if i were to use the whole chunk of $1.4M to buy a condo, that would work out to be about $1100psf. At that $ psf, i can't buy anything in CCR and maybe some old development in RCR. So I'm left with OCR only, again I'm not comfortable with the risk level here, a lot of the price increases in OCR developments are hyped up. If i really really really had to put money in property, i would pick only CCR, but i can't afford it so that's why i only have my humble HDB.

5) I have never felt unsafe in my hdb estate so safety is not relevant to me. As for privacy, have you seen the plot ratios of newer developments especially in OCR, developers are squeezing as many units as possible into a small plot of land to maximize profit. But i agree, moving to a condo may gain me some prestige but then again prestige can't pay the bills.

6) I didn't say i was planning to live in a flat all my life. When i have accumulated enough passive income of $?? per month and my 2 kids are self sufficient. I will seriously consider moving to a slightly nicer place. To me, retirement shouldn't be about downgrading of lifestyle.

Anyway, just my $0.02. What works for me may not work for another person. But i have to say retirement planning is very very tough in the beginning. You procrastinate, complain that money no enough etc etc. It's a huge undertaking that requires a lot of focus and discipline, i would say even more difficult than my day job. But once you get the ball rolling and you see results, it's very satisfying, 2nd only to my kids.