Hi guys,
I am a foreigner who married to local Singaporean. While we are having financial planning, we got a conflict about future plan. (FYI, we just purchase resale HDB flat with HDB loan)
My income is around 6k and my wife income is around 4.5k.
What I think is we have to save 60-70% (at least more than 50%) of the salary for the future plan such as retirement, jobless, hospitalized, have a baby.
But what she think is she only wants to save around 20-30% of her salary and enjoy her life with the rest. She insist that we are still young to think about retirement and have insurance for falling a sick. And baby plan, we can discuss next time.
Is it because you guys have CPF so normal Singaporean don’t worry about retirement and not caring about saving?
As I am a foreigner, I am not very familiar with Singaporean’s future financial planning with CPF.
Is it me trying to be too thrifty? Or she is over spending? When she spend like that, can we still have future plan?
Thank you for your advise guys.
Netizens’ comments
If you’re saving 70% of your salary, it means that you only have $1.8k spending money per month. It’s pretty tight a budget. But if you’re not planning on getting PR and having a CPF, i can see why you’re so concerned about retirement plans. From your wife’s pov, CPF is 37% plus her 20-30% savings, her total savings is pretty close to your 60-70%, so i’d say let her be.
Singapore’s unemployment rate is pretty low (based on official statistics), so i don’t think it’s much of a worry about joblessness for her. You as a foreigner is a different story since there’s foreign worker quotas, it’ll be a lot harder for you to seek employment if you are out of job, so yes, you’ll need to save for that unlike her.
Babies are expensive, but she can still enjoy subsidised rates for prenatal care, so you can discuss about it later on. Don’t need worry too much.
On the whole, i think your wife’s budget and thinking is pretty ok for a singaporean, nothing much for you to worry about her.