Hi and welcome to the forum!Minerva wrote: Hi all, We're moving to Singapore this year on what I thought was a good package but am really alarmed after reading responses to others on this forum. We did online research, spoke to some expats over there so weren't totally ill-informed.
I’m not sure where you see the squeeze as being. You will easily find a nice condo from $5k+ a month (3-4 bedroom). Be careful of not falling into the ‘We must live in D9/10/11’ mindset, simply because you are perhaps not very familiar with the country. The equivalent for a person moving to London would be ... ‘I must live in Knightsbridge, and/or off Sloane Street’ [no offence intended at all, just trying to make a parallel].Minerva wrote: Can I get your brutally honest thoughts on a package of SG$210K for a family of four? We have two kids 6 and 4 and my spouse won't be working. The company does not pay for any extras except health coverage or all of us.
I’m not an expert on local schools/fees/options thereof so I’ll leave that to others. But my impression is that even for a say c14-16 year old expat in a decent private school, $25k would be very high-end. But your children are infants. Put another way, if you were SGn and posted to the UK, would you require your children to attend Eton or Harrow when there are plenty of other perfectly good but slightly less rarified alternatives available? Indeed, do your children currently attend Eton or Harrow.... I expect not, QED.Minerva wrote: We figured nursery for our youngest for next couple of years and International School for our eldest. Ideally we'd like a 3-br condo and live-in home help and a cheap car. Is this doable or delusional?
Tanjong Rhu is in district 15. We live quite near the end of the road; it wouldn't suit someone who wants to stroll to the nightlife every evening, but we like it as it's a quiet area - lots of open space for kids to run around, etc. More relevant discussion in this thread. I expect an OFS school bus would serve that area - our girls went to a school in the West (Commonwealth / One North area) and their school bus journey wasn't too bad.Minerva wrote:Mi Amigo - where is Tanjong Rhu, in terms of district? And can you recommend other areas, relative to OFS? Thanks
Except - these days - local schools are not so friendly to foreigners. We tried to get in and got a big fat cannot-lah. So don't count on it. It's not the kind of place where you can just move here and enroll at the neighbourhood school.sundaymorningstaple wrote:Minerva, aside from schooling costs, Singapore is as expensive or as cheap as you want to make it. As long as you remember that your most expensive items here will be transport (if you insist on a car), housing if you insist on districts 9 & 10, and schooling which will cost you, at the most, probably less than 50K/annum and the least control over. once you subtract those figures, see what you have left. The least you will get by with for a car will be in the neighbourhood of 2K/month counting all incidentals to the vehicle. So, the way I see it, 4k/mo for schooling & 5K/mo (Max - should be around 3.5K) for housing. 11K/mo. That leaves around 78K for everything else, which if you have searched our forum for average monthly costs, probably would fit inside of 2K/month. That leave around 50K in the bank. The only other sizeable expense to come out of that would be income taxes of approximately 22K. So that leaves something like 25~28K in the bank. Now, ditch the car and you add 20K to your savings. Ditch districts 9 or 10 and you can add another 18K OR MORE to your savings. You can reach the Central Business District from any point on the island in 45 minutes or less. If next door to an MRT station, you can reach the CBD in 35 minutes or less.
I don't regret ditching my car all those years ago at all, and I ditched them when my youngest was only around 3 years old. You adapt real fast and when you don't have to get frustrated riding around in circles trying to find a parking place every time you go shopping, you actually start to enjoy it. Or at least I did.
Good luck. You package has the ability to save a good 30% or more. You could even cut down the schooling if you went the local route (I put mine through the local system and they've never stopped thanking me for allowing them to learn Mandarin. It sure gave them a leg up.
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