Cost of Living - Malaysia vs Singapore

-
To date, Malaysia’s average monthly disposable salary is RM3,505 (US$869.10) while Singapore’s is S$4,152 (US$3,028.38). The bad news is, Malaysians do not only earn less than their neighbours across the causeway, the weaker Ringgit currency compared to the US dollar (with an exchange rate of roughly 3.9 versus the Singapore dollar’s 1.36 at this point in writing) also means that imported goods that are sold in Malaysia often cost more in the Ringgit quantum. via iMoney.my
There’s a really nice Infographics posted in iMoney on the monthly expenses incur by working professionals in both Malaysia and Singapore. The Infographics gives a nice pictorial and will be useful for Malaysians thinking of moving to Singapore.
The Infographics ended by saying that:
You need S$8218 to maintain the same standard of living as RM9,500 in Kuala Lumpur, assuming both are renting.
I believe that this conclusion is very key to many Malaysians. If we chose to go to Singapore, naturally, we will be renting a place to stay. And by renting, it doesn’t sound like Singapore is going to be cheap for you. This is especially true if you already at the tail end of settling your mortgage loan, which means you will have a house you don’t need to bear the burden of monthly instalment in Malaysia. By going to Singapore, you will have that rental amount to pay for. The Infographic listed a S$2,000 monthly rental for a 1 bedroom apartment outside the city centre. OMG!
Recently, I have a few colleagues who found a job (in the same company) in Singapore and they moved their family there. One big question that is always on my mind is how much do they pay an experienced worker? Both my colleagues told me that it is roughly 70% of what you get in Malaysia. That means, if you earned RM10,000 today, moving to a similar position in Singapore will get you S$7,000. Which sounds pretty good because that’s RM21,000 after currency conversion! (S$1 is RM2.90 now). But don’t forget, he’s gonna rent an apartment for his family of 2 kids and a wife. And rental is around S$3,000 or more. That left S$4,000. He said that he’s currently not a PR, and that PR is a bit challenged now because of the control and so his children’s education in Singapore is very expensive - going to be like an expat. Probably that takes another S$1,000 cut for 2 kids education. That is why his wife has to look for a job as well, otherwise, it’s unsustainable.
While it’s not a bed of roses, there are still many who wanted to start a life in Singapore. The main reason is that Malaysia has degenerated into a shit hole of slump in the past 5 years, which such a corrupted administrations, super high cost of living and a host of safety concerns. Going to Singapore may be tough at first, but you do get a peace of mind and soul.
What are your thoughts?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GoDaddy Discontinued Catch-All Email Forwarding

-
I had a few domains with GoDaddy. I started with GoDaddy and I stayed with them for a long time. Recently, I moved most of my domains to Cloudflare. Main reason was cost. Cloudflare hosting is very cheap -  I think they are not making any margin out of these domains. They are just transferring the cost the authorities charges direct to their customer without any markup. But I had one domain which I still maintained with GoDaddy because I love the one feature they have, which is mail forwarding and, more importantly, a catch-all email forwarding.  What is email forwarding? It means that any emails that were sent to the domain will be forwarded to another email. For example, if you send an email to [email protected], it will be forwarded to a secret iCloud email. That way, my real email address is hidden. What is catch-all email forwarding? Say you accidentally send an email to [email protected]. I still forward that to another email, for example, a throw away Gmail account. Whe...
Read more

One million daimoku

-
Image
In April 2008, Anne and I started our resolution to chant 1 million daimoku in one year. It's already Jan - and I am only one-third of the way. I really need to WORK HARDER - coz I made another 1 million resolution from Jan - Dec 2009. The chart you see on the right of this post is a chart that we put beside our butsudan. It tracked our chanting progress. Every 20 minute, we coloured one box. Mine is the one on top, Anne's at the bottom - you can see that she made much better progress than me! Hmmm.. come to think of it, I am not even at one third!! --- Edit 22 March 2009: Thanks to Google, a couple of friends in faith found this post and they want to know how many hours of chanting is required to achieve one million diamoku. Here it is. Based on our publication in Malaysia, 20 minutes of chanting is equivalent to 1,000 daimoku. So, one hour is 3,000 daimoku. 1 million would take about 333 hours. --- Edit 8 April 2018: Checking my blogger stats, this post is pretty hig...
Read more

Amazon Alexa in Malaysia - does it work well? A review...

-
Image
Feels like Christmas in September. Thanks to Doktor Cinta, my friend who live in Australia. Back in July, Amazon Australia had a Prime Day. I joined the trial using my usual Amazon account and ordered an Echo Dot, Echo Plus (the taller one with a built-in hub) and a Kindle Paperwhite, shipping them to a dear friend in Australia. My friend visited Malaysia and brought the Echos with him two weeks ago. You can imagine my thrill to get my hands on Alexa and start using it... in Malaysia. As a side story, sometimes, you can't believe how events are aligned properly to prepare my place to be a connected home - I bought a superb new mesh network router, eero (by the way, I'd say it's one of my best electronic purchases after an iPhone! It is that good), which acts as a strong WiFi backbone as it blanket my double storey house with a reliable and fast WiFi. Then, maxis launched Fibernation program which let me to upgrade my internet from 6 Mbps (pathetic) to 100 Mbps wit...
Read more