Salary.sg – Your Salary in Singapore

Once in a while you get these great gems from reading the papers. In a Business Times interview, David Lawrence practically whacked the greedy banks and at the same time dished out an excellent investment advice. It’s never been so clear.

In the words of the Wheelock Properties CEO,

“A lot of this crap was sold by so-called relationship managers in the heartlands, in the HDB estates. The banks use pretty girls to sell to the uncles and pretty boys to sell to the aunties. All they are interested in is their commission. They know nothing, these people.”

As for the right way to invest, Mr Lawrence said,

“Personally, I never buy any structured product. I only buy stocks… There are very good stocks, with good boards of directors, that pay good dividends. So don’t be greedy. Just invest in Singapore companies (such as the three local banks, Keppel, Fraser & Neave, Singapore Press Holdings, SingTel and Singapore Technologies) … with boards of directors – executive and independent directors – with proven integrity.”

The basic idea is to buy blue chips and hold them (see also market cycle investing), like what Mr Lawrence said:

“Even if you buy high and they go low, you just keep them and live off the dividend. Don’t buy unless you’re going to hold them for the long term.”

Reference: Wanted: A cheap platform to trade in local stocks (BT article, July 5, 2009)

If you are a local resident, simply use the tax calculator 2009 published previously. It takes into account the 20% special tax rebate.

As the rebate is one-off, for foreigners who would like to get a sense of the tax rates in Singapore, without distortion from the one-off rebate, please use the following salary tax calculator. Note that you’re considered a tax resident if you have stayed in Singapore for at least 183 days. In this case, you’ll be taxed at resident rate.

The non-resident rate is the higher of 15% or the applicable resident rate if you had been a resident. In other words, it’s better to be a resident.

Note further that locals enjoy a host of tax reliefs that may not be available to foreigners.

For example, I know of a lady whose assessable income is $90k but enjoys a total tax relief of $60k! Half of the relief comes from the WMCR. Her tax payable comes up to a mere $300, which is then fully offset by the unused portion of the parenthood tax rebate granted to her 3 years ago.

There are salary surveys that you can use to assess whether what you’re getting is competitive.

Bear in mind that some of these salary reports give figures that are perceived to be on the high side.

For example, more than 50% of readers here voted that the figures in Hays Salary Survey and Guide 2009 are too high.

In comparison, the Robert Walters Salary Survey 2009 for Singapore seems to cite lower figures than Hays.

Across the globe, the US-based PayScale.com also has its PayScale Salary Survey Report for Singapore. The figures there seem much more reasonable to me.

Alternatively, you can also compare your income with these Salary.sg tools:

• Compare Your Household Income 2009 (based on SingStat data from the government)
• Compare Your Annual Salary 2008 (based on the latest IRAS data released to public)
• Compare Your Income by Age and Gender (based on Manpower Ministry’s data)

See discussions on the above salary surveys.

It’s been a while since the term life sciences last appeared in the mainstream media. Most recently, it appeared somewhat in the form of “green chemistry” in this CNA report talking about GlaxoSmithKline opening a facility in Singapore and sponsoring some scholarships.
The scholarships are for studies in green chemistry and public health policy.
Green chemistry? Shouldn’t [...]

We have launched Salary.sg Forums.
Now you can discuss salary, job, career and investment matters in a user-friendly forum format.
Powered by vBulletin – which is the most popular forum engine among top discussion forums worldwide – you can now view well organized threads of discussions and reply directly to a particular thread or post that is [...]

In the book “The Millionaire Next Door”, the authors defined prodigious accumulators of wealth as people who manage to accumulate twice their expected net worth.
To calculate your expected net worth, refer to this old Salary.sg post. (Note that I called it “target net worth” previously.)
This chart gives you an idea of how much net worth [...]

As the property market heats up again, you may be interested in buying a new home and taking up a Sibor-pegged property loan.
Do you know that the 3-month SIBOR rate shot up to an astonishing 9.5% in early 1998?
Or that it went to a low of 0.56% in mid-2003?
The following chart shows the interesting history [...]

Former one-hit-wonder Stella Ng has recently been declared bankrupt by the Singapore court. She’s a mandopop singer before her foray into the chocolate cake business.
Back in 2007, Zaobao reported that her cake business in Taiwan was raking in S$500,000 a month in sales. She had obtained the franchise rights from Awfully Chocolate in Singapore and [...]

Thanks to a comment from a reader, I got to know about the Hays 2009 Salary Guides.
After browsing through some of these guides, I personally think the salary ranges are on the high side, especially when the footnotes say “salaries are representative of the total package value, although exclude any annual bonus.”
Here’s a sampling of [...]

About half of fresh graduates polled here are unemployed. If you are a male fresh graduate affected by the recession, you should consider joining the Singapore Armed Forces.
As reported in ST today, a lieutenant-colonel retiring at age 45 (the current retirement age) will get about $700,000 in gratuity. Such lump sum payments make it attractive [...]