my brain is genuinely short-circuiting after a conversation with my senior colleague today.
So, increment season just wrapped up and I finally hit the $6,000 mark. Late 20s, got a postgrad degree, worked my absolute ass off, thought I’d feel some sort of achievement. Spoiler alert: I don’t. I was casually complaining to my colleague (she’s mid-40s, also drawing exactly $6k) that $6k nowadays feels like the new $3.5k. You look at the cost of living, GST, transport, and groceries, and it’s just barely enough to live comfortably if you want to save for the future.
Then she dropped a bomb on me. She laughed and said she’s perfectly fine with her $6k. Why? Because her 4-room HDB and her car are completely paid off. Her two sons are going to NS soon, so she doesn’t even need to give them allowance anymore. Plan is just to fund their local uni tuition, and then she can practically cruise into retirement liao.
I asked her if she struck TOTO, got a fat inheritance, or if she’s some undercover r/singaporefi crypto god. She said no. Her husband earns even less than her (he doesn’t have a degree). They don’t even invest! Every single month, their salary just sits in a regular savings account or gets thrown into a standard Fixed Deposit.
I came back to my desk and I’m just completely perplexed. My husband and I combined definitely make way more than her household, but looking at the current trajectory? I don’t think we can ever afford a car, let alone raising two kids in this lifetime. Even clearing our BTO mortgage is going to chain us down for at least 20 to 25 years.
It’s just so depressing. Sometimes I look at my life and think: what was the point of studying so hard? Why did I stress over exams, climb the corporate ladder, and scrimp and save every single month, when our biggest financial disadvantage was literally just not being born 15 years earlier?
Back then, asset prices weren’t completely decoupled from reality. COE wasn’t a six-figure luxury joke, and a 4-room flat didn’t require a lifetime of debt. It feels like no matter how hard our generation runs, the goalposts aren’t just moving—they’ve been shifted to a whole different stadium. Anyone else feels like they won the academic race but completely lost the timing lottery?