So yesterday, a group of us were having dinner at a cafe in Tanjong Pagar. Somehow the topic of dating apps came up, and my friend (32F) drops this absolute bombshell. She casually sips her $9 iced latte and says, “Honestly, if a guy is already 30 and still doesn’t own a car in Singapore, it’s a massive red flag. It shows he has no drive, no ambition, and probably cannot provide.”
I nearly choked on my truffle fries. The sheer, unadulterated brain rot required to make this statement in the year 2026 is mind-boggling.
Has she looked at the COE prices lately? Cat A and Cat B are consistently hovering at ridiculous, eye-watering levels. To buy a basic, entry-level Japanese sedan now, you are looking at easily $150k to $180k minimum. That means downpayment alone is like $50k upfront cash. Then you factor in road tax, insurance, petrol, ridiculous CBD parking fees, and ERP every time you pass a gantry. You are easily sinking $2,000 to $2,500 of cold, hard cash every single month into a depreciating asset.
For what? To sit in a traffic jam on the PIE during morning rush hour?
I tried to explain to her that a guy over 30 without a car might actually be the greenest flag ever. It means he knows how to budget. It means he is probably dumping that $2.5k a month into high-yield savings accounts, ETFs, or building up a solid downpayment for a resale HDB or condo so they don’t have to live with his parents after marriage. It means he has financial literacy!
But no, to her, if he turns up to a date via the MRT or calls a Grab Premium, he is “low effort.” She literally expects a guy to burn a quarter of his monthly take-home pay just so she can be chauffeured to brunch on Sundays without walking 5 minutes in the Singapore heat.
The funniest part? She herself doesn’t drive and takes the bus to work every day.
This hyper-materialistic, old-school mindset needs to die. Choosing not to own a car in a city with one of the best public transport networks in the world isn’t a sign of poverty; it’s a sign of sanity. If your metric for a man’s worth is a piece of paper from LTA that expires in 10 years, you don’t want a partner—you want a private hire driver.
End of rant. Please tell me I’m not the crazy one here.