When you are almost loan-free, with almost enough to fully retire before 40 (but I won't), the next thinking becomes... should I take up more loan or not
However, I'm not adverse to taking a loan, but I have two main concerns:
(1) I'm not planning to "downgrade" to a smaller unit, regardless EC or HDB or PC. Why cramp my family into a smaller unit?
(2) I cannot afford a larger unit. The next larger unit after my 111 sqm 5-rm flat is a 4 bedroom 1389 sqft unit. At $1.1k psf, it would be almost $1.62 mil inclusive of resale levy and stamp duty.
Excluding resale levy, which can come from the HDB, I would probably need to fork out $355k for downpayment and stamp duty.
It's not that we don't have that liquidity; we have that in cash already. We have more than that amount in stocks and corporate bonds as well giving a decent yield as some mimimal income, that we could sell and push into the property.
It just doesn't make sense to reset all hard work to zero for something that I think is way overpriced. Not just that, it would also mean sacrificing the comforts of our current lifestyle just for the property. It really doesn't make sense.
I will need at least double of what we have now to comfortably afford and enjoy what the property has to offer.
That's why I think the cash still not enough.