Day to day costs of living in Singapore

[pstanley]

I think you could make a fairly good living here if you are both working, I don't really know what the pay scales are like as I am here on a dependents pass , and my husband is here on a three year contract. I am considering trying to get a work permit as I can see the next few years as being pretty dull without something to do.

It is a very different lifestyle here and things range from unbelievable cheap to holy crap expensive. Which has been a bit of a shocker, Rents have gone up exponentially over the last year, we have a friend who moved here 1.5 years ago and got a flat for 1800, and now you are looking at over 2,500.

Do you think you would want to stay permanently? They seem to be in the we want to attract foreign talent at the moment in a big way.

Different lifestyle, good! thats what I want

I kinda expect the rent to go up a lot in a small place such as Singapore, but the properties (condos etc.) seem way better than what you get in London - so swings and roundabouts.

Permanently, I don't know I haven't lived there yet Singapore does have a strong reputation for people coming in to live for 2-3 years and then moving on to somewhere else. Last figure I read was that Singapore's population is a quarter immigrants (counting all countries).

[lost_canuck]

well we have 1300 sq ft for 2300 p.m., so I think you can get much better than london but all the furniture you have to buy to fill it is hard work *lol*

I have also heard about a lot of people who have come for 3 years and just stayed because the lifestyle, so I say why not give it a try. be prepared to pay heaps for your pint at the local tho. Best of luck with your decision

[Plavt]

To add to the above (these are my costs living in Local Authority or council housing, in my case a flat - cheaper than private).

Area North London;

Rent £300.34 per month
Council Tax: £81.00 (payable over 10 months)
Gas £34.00 (monthly budget account)
Electricity £28.00 (monthly budget account)
Internet
Broadband £25.00
Telephone
Line Rental £12.99

TV License per year is now £131.00
Household Insurance around £300.00


Please remember these figures can vary wildly from individual to individual, house to house, are to area and with whom you choose to buy your gas or electricity from. Water rates are incorporated into council housing rents with the TV license fee being applicable to everyone with the exception of certain disabled persons and some pensioners.

Those with mortgages can expect to pay anwhere from £500 per month (if lucky) to £1000 or more again dependent on where they live.

[huggybear]

what's the difference of being hired as a "local" or an "expatriate?"

[sundaymorningstaple]

Salary range, Housing, Schooling, Car allowance, Home leave airfares, moving expenses, etc., etc. just to name a few perks versus being hired for a salary only and the rest is up to you.

Some of the above, all of the above, depending on the company.

sms

[huggybear]

Salary range, Housing, Schooling, Car allowance, Home leave airfares, moving expenses, etc., etc. just to name a few perks versus being hired for a salary only and the rest is up to you.

sms

ahhhh ok makes sense. i think the "expat" package is getting harder and harder to achieve and the "perks" depend on your personal circumstances. I had two offers one expat package for hong kong and one local package for singapore. the difference in pay between expat and local package wasn't that big. the expat package was for more money but it was with an american investment bank and i ended up joining a commercial bank (i-banks usually pay more then commercial banks). anyways, the expat package didn't provide a car. both provided for housing allowances and moving expenses...that was about it.

[ksl]

To add to the above (these are my costs living in Local Authority or council housing, in my case a flat - cheaper than private).

Area North London;

Rent £300.34 per month
Council Tax: £81.00 (payable over 10 months)
Gas £34.00 (monthly budget account)
Electricity £28.00 (monthly budget account)
Internet
Broadband £25.00
Telephone
Line Rental £12.99

TV License per year is now £131.00
Household Insurance around £300.00


Please remember these figures can vary wildly from individual to individual, house to house, are to area and with whom you choose to buy your gas or electricity from. Water rates are incorporated into council housing rents with the TV license fee being applicable to everyone with the exception of certain disabled persons and some pensioners.

Those with mortgages can expect to pay anwhere from £500 per month (if lucky) to £1000 or more again dependent on where they live.

Hi Plavt, not a great deal of difference between your area and the north west actually.

I was renting a two bedroomed at 280 a month from the Housing Association, when I returned from DK and poll tax was around 65 a month, what city are you in, if you don't mind me asking?

The north west, is pretty awful on income. Although I have always worked for myself. The other utilities are comparable too!

I prefer the lake district, Country side myself, but miss the lights occassionally.

[tangerine]

that was a lot helpful.

[seasider]

Hiya pstanley, I'm a Brit living here with my Brit husband who is on a local package, i.e., gets a salary and pays his own bills. I think the finances have been pretty much covered so I'll add to the other aspects of life in Singapore.

We'll shortly be clocking up five years and have no immediate plans to move on. We'll stay whilst we're happy here and can afford to live here; we're PR. I spend a lot of time on forums like this one (maybe even more than sms!) so I'll share my observations with you.

IMHO there are two main types - those that come on a contract (perhaps not their choice), do their time, bank their bonuses, and return "home" after the contract is up, or maybe get moved elsewhere. Then there are those that come out here under their own steam, with or without a marvellous "expat package", are more relaxed about what life throws at them, including Singapore's little idiosyncrasies, and may even start to call this little red dot "home".

We're definitely in the second camp, as our most of our expat friends here. I guess they're our friends because they think like us. We live in a non-expatty area although we like the best of both worlds - we're as likely to eat at a S$300 a meal place as a hawker centre. The great thing about Singapore is that you have that choice. You can also spend S$1500pm on an apartment, or - the most I saw advertised - S$45000pm on a house

You sound like you're pretty relaxed about the whole thing, and the missus being Malay will give you a head start in understanding Asia's quirks. Good Luck with your move.

PS Should mention you also get the likes of sms - lived here forever, married local, now getting a bit intolerant in his old age of some of those little idiosyncrasies! Maybe it comes to us all, eventually.

[sundaymorningstaple]

[Leone and John]

...jumping in on 'part of the conversation' here, we have only been here just over a month. Still settling in so to speak!

At the moment we are using phone cards to call OS. They are working out just fine until we can organise something better.

Calls to Australia on the card I use gives me 384 minutes for $9.00.

Probably costs (on the average) one dollar for about 15 minutes. Can't complain about that!!

hope that helps too.

[psyflyer]

Wikipedia? Basically correct.

Here's the poop from the horses mouth as it were, plus a host of other information.

Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore - Individual Income Tax

OMG!!! Cant wait to get out there!!!

Should an individual have an annual chargeable income of S$400,000, for example, his gross tax payable will be S$[(20,000 X 0%) + (10,000 X 3.5%) + (10,000 X 5.5%) + (40,000 X 8.5%) + (80,000 X 14%) + (160,000 X 17%) + (80,000 X 20%)] = S$58,700 (Average tax rate = 14.7%).

The maximum tax payable went down from 22% in YA2005 to 21% in YA2006, and 20% in YA2007, with the rest of the scale rate adjusted accordingly. This is in line with the Singapore Government's gradual reduction of nominal individual tax rates since the 1980s, a trend similarly observed in other countries. Tax rates ranged from 3.5-33% in 1987, and dropped to a range of 2-28% in 1997. In 2002, it ranged from 0-26%, before dropping further since 2003.

[HunBunny80]

...jumping in on 'part of the conversation' here, we have only been here just over a month. Still settling in so to speak!

At the moment we are using phone cards to call OS. They are working out just fine until we can organise something better.

Calls to Australia on the card I use gives me 384 minutes for $9.00.

Probably costs (on the average) one dollar for about 15 minutes. Can't complain about that!!

hope that helps too.

I often use Skype to call overseas and it is cheaper. I also subscribed a SkypeOut/In which entitles me to have a UK landline number and answerphone message. Hence your family and friends could get in touch without paying extras.

[Leone and John]

You are right, just depends on what is convenient at the time!

Calling from Singapore to Australia costs .027 cents per minute using Skype to landline. Obviously S to S (Skype to Skype) is free!!

So any of you out there that are not aware of the benefits of Skype, you had better find out., I won't put up the URL as the moderator 'may' consider this an advert.

[sundaymorningstaple]

Please post with my blessings!

Our position is clearly documented in the sticky at the top of the General Forum.