EDMW Retirement Thread

[westtraveller]

Hike to Bow Glacier Falls today.

Beautiful!

 

[makan tidur]

My annual expenses come to around $135k.

But the country I live is has lower COL than Singapore.

Is that for one person or you have dependents? 135k (SGD) expenses is very high for one person. Your retirement lifestyle is unaffordable for majority of Singaporeans, except the HNWIs.

 

[Hello_Kitty]

Today I went climbing....

At Calgary Climbing Centre Rocky Mountain.

your country got real beautiful mountain, yet you go and climb fake mountain

 

[cyke69sg]

Is that for one person or you have dependents? 135k (SGD) expenses is very high for one person. Your retirement lifestyle is unaffordable for majority of Singaporeans, except the HNWIs.

For whole family. Not just me.

 

[cyke69sg]

your country got real beautiful mountain, yet you go and climb fake mountain

Have to start learning somewhere first.

I am just beginner. Will go climb real walls in the mountains later.

It's also a big step up technically to climb real walls in the mountains. If you do this sport for real you will know the difference.

Must learn to crawl then walk then run. No point think can run when cannot then get injured also.

 

[New_Account]

Ts how old?

 

[cyke69sg]

https://drwealth.com/no-you-dont-need-us1-1-million-to-retire-in-singapore/

No, You Don’t Need US$1.1 Million To Retire In Singapore​

by Christopher Ng Wai Chung

August 17, 2026




The most consistent thing in the personal finance space is that journalists will continue to project how much Singaporeans would need to retire. The numbers fluctuate, but more importantly, you should analyse how the numbers are derived to see whether you agree with the methodology. This article examines the latest attempt to project your baseline retirement funds needed to live out your remaining years in Singapore.

The chart that’s making the rounds​

If you’ve been on LinkedIn or Instagram this week, you’ve probably seen it: a world map from Visual Capitalist titled “Mapped: How Much Americans Need To Retire Comfortably Around The World,” with Singapore lit up as the single most expensive country on the planet to retire in: a cool US$1.1 million (roughly S$1.4 million at current exchange rates).

It’s a great chart. It’s also, if you actually read the fine print, answering a completely different question than the one everyone assumes it’s answering and, consequently, Singaporeans are the group most likely to be misled by it.

Before you spiral into thinking your retirement number just went up by seven figures, let’s take the chart apart.

What the study is actually measuring​

The underlying data comes from NetCredit, a US consumer lending company, using cost-of-living inputs from Numbeo. Strip away the infographic polish and the methodology is quite simple:

• Retirement window: a hypothetical retiree stops working at age 64 and lives to 78.4 years, the average American retirement age and US life expectancy. That’s 14 years and 8.4 months, or 176.4 months, of retirement.
• Cost base: multiply that window by a monthly cost-of-living figure pulled from Numbeo for each country, built around an assumed lifestyle of inexpensive restaurant meals, weekly nights out, a couple of overseas holidays a year, moderate transport and no smoking.
• Buffer: add a flat 20% “comfort” margin.
• Currency: everything expressed in US dollars.
• Exclusions: taxes and healthcare costs are explicitly left out.

That’s it. There’s no adjustment for local retirement age, local life expectancy, local currency purchasing power, or, critically, local retirement institutions. The 176.4-month runway is the same whether you’re retiring in Lagos, Lausanne, or on Lavender Street. Only the monthly cost figure changes from country to country.

In other words: this isn’t a model of “how much does it cost a Singaporean to retire in Singapore.” It’s a model of “how much would an American, retiring at an American retirement age, need to fund an American-style consumption pattern, if he paid Singapore’s prices for it.” Those are very different questions, and the gap between them is where the scary number comes from.

Four reasons the Singapore figure is inflated​

1. Numbeo’s Singapore price data is an expat’s price list, not a resident’s.​

Numbeo is crowdsourced, and its Singapore contributors skew heavily toward foreigners and higher-income residents, who price private rentals in the city centre, imported groceries, and Western dining. That’s a real market in Singapore, but it is not the market most citizens retire into. It systematically overstates the cost base for the median Singaporean household.

2. It assumes you’re renting, when 9 in 10 Singaporeans own their home.​

Housing is typically the largest line item in any retirement budget, and it’s the one the NetCredit model gets most wrong in Singapore. Roughly 77% of resident households live in HDB flats, and Singapore’s homeownership rate is above 91%. By age 65, most homeowners have long since cleared their HDB mortgage, often using CPF Ordinary Account savings rather than cash, so the largest “expense” in the model (renting an apartment in the city centre) simply doesn’t apply to the typical retiree. A model built around monthly rent will produce a wildly different number from one built around a paid-up flat.

3. The 14-year-8-month runway is imported wholesale from the US, and it doesn’t even match Singapore’s own numbers.​

This is the tell that the “life expectancy” figure was never localised. Singapore’s own life expectancy at age 65 is now 21.2 years (Department of Statistics, 2024). That’s several years longer than the 14.7-year US-derived runway baked into every country’s calculation, Singapore included. If you’re going to build a “how long does the money need to last” model, at a minimum, the number of years should change when you change countries. It doesn’t. The 176.4 months is a constant, not a variable.

4. It pretends CPF doesn’t exist.​

This is the big one. The entire premise of the NetCredit/Visual Capitalist model is that a retiree self-funds every dollar of spending from a lump sum they’ve saved and now have to draw down over a fixed period, the classic “4% rule”- style problem. That’s a reasonable way to think about retirement in a country with no compulsory pension system. It is not how retirement works in Singapore.

By the time a Singaporean turns 55, decades of compulsory CPF contributions from both the employee and the employer have already been building up a Retirement Account. Set aside the Full Retirement Sum, S$220,400 for those turning 55 in 2026, and CPF LIFE pays out an estimated S$1,780 a month for as long as you live, with no risk of outliving the money, because longevity risk is pooled across everyone in the scheme. Medisave and MediShield Life separately cover a large share of healthcare costs, which is precisely the expense category NetCredit excludes from its US-style number anyway. None of this appears anywhere in the “how much you need saved” figure that gets turned into a world map.

What a more realistic number looks like​

We don’t have to guess. The Department of Statistics’ Household Expenditure Survey 2023 found that households made up solely of non-employed persons aged 65 and above spent an average of S$2,349 a month. Even if you gross that up generously for a genuinely comfortable (not bare-bones) lifestyle, run it over the 21.2-year post-65 life expectancy, and layer on a margin of safety, you land nowhere near S$1.4 million (US$1.1 million). That’s before counting CPF LIFE payouts, a paid-up HDB flat, or Medisave as part of the picture, which the NetCredit model doesn’t do either.

This isn’t the first time a headline number has gotten away from us​

If this feels familiar, it should. Around this time last year, an HSBC “Quality of Life” survey made similar headlines, claiming that Singaporeans need S$1.79 million to retire comfortably. That number wasn’t wrong, exactly. But it was a self-reported figure from HSBC’s affluent, private-banking client base describing their own aspirational retirement lifestyle, not a study of what an average or even median Singaporean actually needs. The methodology quietly determined the answer before the survey even started: ask wealthy people what they think they need, then report it as “what Singaporeans need.”

Visual Capitalist’s map makes the mirror-image mistake: instead of surveying an unrepresentative group of people, it applies an unrepresentative American template to Singapore’s prices. Different method, same result: a headline figure that’s technically sourced but practically meaningless for the person reading it over breakfast and wondering if they’re behind on retirement.

The takeaway​

A retirement number is only as good as the assumptions baked into it: retirement age, life expectancy, spending pattern, and crucially, what institutional support (if any) is already doing some of the work for you. Strip those assumptions out of the Visual Capitalist map and what’s left isn’t “how much Singaporeans need to retire,” it’s “how much it would cost an American to import an American retirement into Singapore, in US dollars, while ignoring CPF, HDB and Medisave entirely.”

That’s an interesting number. It’s just not your number. Before any retirement statistic changes how you feel about your own progress, it’s worth asking the same three questions every time: whose spending pattern is this, whose life expectancy is this, and whose safety net, if any, has already been assumed away?

 

[cyke69sg]

 

[Spike]

Have to start learning somewhere first.

I am just beginner. Will go climb real walls in the mountains later.

It's also a big step up technically to climb real walls in the mountains. If you do this sport for real you will know the difference.

Must learn to crawl then walk then run. No point think can run when cannot then get injured also.

This serves to say that 57 years old, you are likely fitter than most of us here.

Rock climbing is not exactly easy.

 

[Spike]

Getting $1k from passive income, mthly expenses less than $500 with cdc.

$1K passive income is quite power!

$500 expenses is really low.. utility, internet and mobile probably cost $200? If you throw in $100 for transport, you aren't spending much?

 

[Perishable]

how do you all invest your money? i have majority in vwra, some in bitcoin and some single stocks i picked.

 

[cyke69sg]

This serves to say that 57 years old, you are likely fitter than most of us here.

Rock climbing is not exactly easy.

I am not 57 years old
Agree that rock climbing is not easy.

 

[Kum Jit Pow]

Semi retired. No one wants to buy my business so have to continue. Basically my guys are running it.

Everyday wake up, check emails, go drink kopi, come back do some gardening and feed the pets. Go for short trip once every 2 months. Somewhere nearby or go spearfishing. Go long trip twice a year. Dont really monitor my expenses, all from current account and not touching savings. I have rental income and dividends from my business. I think my regular expense is my medical insurance... about 500/mth. My wife say cannot downgrade. No one is offering the 100% no question ask coverage anymore.

 

[cyke69sg]

how do you all invest your money? i have majority in vwra, some in bitcoin and some single stocks i picked.

Mine is pretty simple: two engines.

Growth: Broad-market index ETFs for long-term capital appreciation.

Income: Mainly covered-call/income ETFs generating monthly cash flow, with much of it DRIPed.

Plus a substantial cash reserve for safety and opportunities.

Basically growth + income + cash. Mostly passive, minimal management, and it suits me.

 

[Perishable]

Semi retired. No one wants to buy my business so have to continue. Basically my guys are running it.

Everyday wake up, check emails, go drink kopi, come back do some gardening and feed the pets. Go for short trip once every 2 months. Somewhere nearby or go spearfishing. Go long trip twice a year. Dont really monitor my expenses, all from current account and not touching savings. I have rental income and dividends from my business. I think my regular expense is my medical insurance... about 500/mth. My wife say cannot downgrade. No one is offering the 100% no question ask coverage anymore.

what business you're looking to sell? share more here. a lot of hidden dragons here maybe will bite.

 

[cyke69sg]

Semi retired. No one wants to buy my business so have to continue. Basically my guys are running it.

Everyday wake up, check emails, go drink kopi, come back do some gardening and feed the pets. Go for short trip once every 2 months. Somewhere nearby or go spearfishing. Go long trip twice a year. Dont really monitor my expenses, all from current account and not touching savings. I have rental income and dividends from my business. I think my regular expense is my medical insurance... about 500/mth. My wife say cannot downgrade. No one is offering the 100% no question ask coverage anymore.

Sounds like pretty good active in retirement. I like it that way too.

 

[Perishable]

Mine is pretty simple: two engines.

Growth: Broad-market index ETFs for long-term capital appreciation.

Income: Mainly covered-call/income ETFs generating monthly cash flow, with much of it DRIPed.

Plus a substantial cash reserve for safety and opportunities.

Basically growth + income + cash. Mostly passive, minimal management, and it suits me.

covered call etf a lot of withholding tax?

 

[Spike]

Semi retired. No one wants to buy my business so have to continue. Basically my guys are running it.

Everyday wake up, check emails, go drink kopi, come back do some gardening and feed the pets. Go for short trip once every 2 months. Somewhere nearby or go spearfishing. Go long trip twice a year. Dont really monitor my expenses, all from current account and not touching savings. I have rental income and dividends from my business. I think my regular expense is my medical insurance... about 500/mth. My wife say cannot downgrade. No one is offering the 100% no question ask coverage anymore.

Nobody wants to buy your business? Engineering firm?

 

[Kum Jit Pow]

what business you're looking to sell? share more here. a lot of hidden dragons here maybe will bite.

Distribution business, approved vendor for quite a few MNCs. Products are spec in on their BOM list.

 

[Kum Jit Pow]

Nobody wants to buy your business? Engineering firm?

Have to take over my inventory.... quite a large amount.

Chopped the engineering side a few years back. Now just sitting on distribution. Still supporting some plants, just wait till product EOL.