r/singaporefi

I'm just going to list everything in point form to make it easier to read:

1. I asked my boss for a salary increase because I knew my worth. My position is one of a kind, and I was confident that the value I brought to the company was something only a handful of people could offer. My boss told me he would check with HR.

2. About a month later, I received my contract renewal to sign. I checked it and saw that there was no change to my salary if I continued for another term.

3. Over the next three months, I started job hunting and eventually secured a new position.

4. I submitted my resignation. Exactly one week later, I received an email from HR informing me of a salary adjustment for my current role. There was a slight increase, but it still wasn't competitive enough to match my new job.

5. At this point, I'm just going to quietly do my job until my notice period ends before moving on. I'm not sure if HR will ask to meet me to try and convince me to stay, but my decision has already been made.

Why do companies only seem to act on salary increases after an employee submits their resignation?

What's a realistic amount of time to stay at one company before moving to another? Job hopping is often seen as the better way to get real salary increases, compared to staying put long term so how long should you actually stay before making the jump, and how do you avoid getting labeled a job hopper in the process?

Made a rookie mistake today. I didn’t know SingSaver was a thing, so I applied directly for the Citi Cash Back+ on Citi’s website. About 30 minutes later I found out there are SingSaver promo’s for the exact same card when browsing.

My application is only showing “Application Received”, so it hasn’t been approved yet. I’m planning to call Citi tomorrow to see if they can withdraw the application, if that's even possible.

If Citi can cancel it cleanly, would you try withdrawing it and reapplying through SingSaver, or just keep the current application? It’s my first credit card, so I’m still figuring all this out. I know it’s just a welcome gift, but it feels like a shame to miss out on a pretty decent promo for the exact same card. Has anyone been in this situation before?

Hey everyone, was wondering if DCA 2,000 USD into FWRA every month is a sound long term investment plan?

Context:

1. Already saved up my 9 months emergency fund in a HYSA, no bills to pay except for iCloud, Netflix and Claude.
2. 5.8k/month take home pay, not eligible for bto (foreigner), life and hospitalisation insurance already covered.

Hi, per title - UOB PPV deducted my UNI$ automatically to pay the annual fee. Tried calling and applying for waiver via the app but both got automatically rejected.

1. Is it normal for waivers to be rejected? I have not had a late payment so far, this is the first time my cc fee waiver has been rejected

2. Any way to recover my UNI$, or is it gone?

Mildly panicking now, appreciate if anyone has any advice! Thanks :")

How do you keep track of stocks you've researched but haven't bought yet? I have a watchlist of 15 tickers I've done analysis on months ago, but I seldom remember to go back and check if the thesis has played out. I've tried price alerts, but they don't tell me if the actual reason I bought the stock still holds up. Anyone found a better way to track this?

Hello guys, may I know pro rated LTV is it applied to the maximum loan stated on HFE letter or the loan amount of property price?

My case here is that I am looking at a house that can cover me until around 94 years old, I am worried about the LTV to drop to 73% as it means to fork out another 10-15k.

My maximum loan on HFE is around 550,000, the loan I wish to borrow is 400,000.

In short, will the loan amount be affected? Anyone has similar experience?

Thank you in advance

I'm researching golden visas as a way to retire in neighboring countries like Indonesia (Bintan/Batam), Malaysia (jb-sfz, js-sez, Penang) or Thailand. Can anyone share their experiences if they went that route?

I’m trying to understand considerations surrounding CPF for overseas Singaporean workers. I spent maybe a couple of years working in Singapore and then took up a job abroad. I have something like S$85k in my CPF. If I remain abroad I doubt I will make even the basic retirement sum. How would that work for me when I reach retirement age (whatever that may be at that time)? The CPF money isn’t very consequential for me as I have other retirement vehicles where I currently am, but I’d still like to know how I may access that cash and what it can be used for since I’m clueless when it comes to CPF-related stuff. So explain it to me like I’m in 5th grade lol.

I'm considering using 2x or 3x leveraged ETFs on the S&P 500 or QQQ, aiming for quick gains over a 1 year horizon, since the index is up most of the time. What are the pros and cons of this approach?

Hello guys, I will keep this short, I am going to pay for the resale hdb for the leftover with cash around 20k, however I have had this saved and until recently my family had an urgent matter and I really needed to provide them the money.

However my resale hdb process is due in another 2 months and I have no other method to gather 20k in such a short time besides getting a personal loan, which I am able to afford it with a 2-3 years installment. But my main question is will this affect my house purchasing as I have heard that this is illegal.

I really need some advise on this, please don’t comment that it’s not financially sound, i am sorry if it sounds rude but I can comfortably pay off the loan I just wish to know if it’s allowed or legal, please help me please.

Thanks a lot everyone, I truly appreciate that.

My salary crediting account OCBC 360 reaches $100,000 already so open GxS account

But sees a few red flags already

The QR payment can’t even support those QR codes in hawker centers

Debit card can’t add to Apple Pay

Physical debit card took long time to arrive

Boost Pocket I understand is basically fixed term deposits, but I don’t understand Saving Pocket… like can’t you just give Saving Pocket interest rate instead of us having to keep transferring between Main Account and Saving Pocket

What do you guys think about GxS… or which other bank account I should use instead to park cash with somewhat decent interest rate

Edit: I mean sus like the frontend (the app) is like highly advanced… but the backend like cannot support this cannot support that… even the physical card delivery that normally takes 5 business days also almost take a month. Like underneath is a very cheap operation like that

My wife and I FIRED in August 2025 with S$3m.

At that time, I was 50 and my wife was 48.

My original post - https://old.reddit.com/r/singaporefi/comments/1mn8yd7/dink_couple_50m_48f_finally_fired_with_s3m/

This is our year 1 update.

• Overall thoughts

  Retirement has been great and we do not feel bored, and we have not thought of going back to work.

  My wife and I give each other space, and each of us has time to indulge in our own hobbies, so we don't feel suffocated by seeing each other 24/7. I think this is a good thing and we are both happy with our lives, and our relationship is excellent.

• Current portfolio - S$3.24m, increased by 8%. The stock market has been doing well, and we have been selling our ETFs every 2-3 months to fund our lifestyle.

• Total expenses for the past year - 84k. I've been tracking our expenses and things have been manageable so far. Most of our expenses (around 38k) go to holidays.

• Travel

  Splurged 20k on a week-long luxury trip to the Maldives, which was spectacular. Spent 18k on 'normal' (non-luxury) trips to Korea, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia.

• Hobbies

  Gaming - keeps my mind active. Baldur's Gate 3 has been great, it's a gigantic game, so taking my time to play through it. Also played Last Epoch and Desperados 3.

  Others - watching movies and TV shows at home, taking late-afternoon walks in parks and neighbourhoods, idling in cafes and people-watching, window-shopping in malls. We love going out during weekdays when most places are not crowded.

  Read some books from the library - need to regain my attention span and reduce my phone time.

• We feel healthier as we now eat healthy home-cooked food, spend more time exercising, experience minimal stress, and getting better sleep.

• We took full-time Skillsfuture courses to take advantage of the training allowance. I took a data analytics course and my wife took a course on IT software support. For a 4-month full-time course, the training allowance is 12k per person (3k per month), so this added 24k to our portfolio.

  The courses were quite interesting, but I know that there is no way that I can get a job in data analytics based on a 4-month course.

(Edited for formatting issues)

Say one has done the sums and is comfortable opting for early retirement at 50 years old, should he then pay off his mortgage OR use the funds sufficient to pay off the mortgage to invest? Afterall housing loan interest rates have come off a lot to below 1.5% and it is not difficult to get investment returns of 4-5%? Of cos the argument is how safe is the investments but fundamentally, I am of the view that the mortgage should NOT be paid off and the gearing is considered “good” gearing. No? Especially so when the LTV on the property is comfortably below 50%.

I won't get into the weeds with exact numbers and whatnot. But basically the situation is this: I have 3 ILPs and 1 Whole Life Plan. I've held the ILPs for quite a while (let's not get into the "why the hell did I buy them" discussion), and they're reaching a stage where it makes sense to cash them in before the costs of protection outweigh the amount that goes into investment. Which means I will need to buy another policy or three to shore up the gap.

The upside of doing this is I've now realised that I can use this opportunity to reconfigure my insurance needs. My wife and I don't have kids, and she makes more than enough moolah on her own. So I don't have dependents, meaning death benefits can be kept to a minimum. I do need to boost my ECI / CI and TPD though. Investments are on track - I can't say I'm rolling in it, but god willing, if the market (and Trump) keeps going like this for a handful more years, that'll be sorted.

Anyway, since a lot of you guys are really tuned into the insurance dos and don'ts here, please tell me how to complement my remaining Whole Life Policy? It gives me adequate Death benefits, which I feel I don't necessarily need to add to. But I want to beef up all the other aspects mentioned above. Just for example, it covers me for Death, ECI, CI and TPD for $200k each. I don't need to add to the Death benefit, but I would like to double each of the others, at least.

Bottom line: Reconfiguring my policies. Intention is to lower death benefit and increase all the other aspects. Is there a "best" way to structure this, especially if I want more ECI, CI and maybe TPD?

Thanks for reading. I appreciate it.

Currently 42 yo, married with 1 kid. Working in a FI for 6 years in corporate role. Recently theres a reorg and my dept got absorbed into another. My previous boss resigned and most of my previous team are struggling to adapt because role is different, theres no proper onboarding and the role changed from more strategic to operational. We also really do not like the new boss.

Tbh, previous years with the initial team I really liked my job, had a great boss and work life balance. But now, this new boss likes to keep coming up with new projects because he feels like he need to justify the new headcounts. So every other week we are thrown additional projects to be started in few days, on top of trying to do the new jobscope. There's also work to do on weekends because there will be reports that go out early Monday.

I've looked around but cant find any job at the moment but I feel its affecting me mentally and hate that I cant be present for my family. Really feel like quitting and shifting to something part-time and building up as a content creator(have some personal branding arnd a niche). Currently still paying mortgage and have about 1 year emergency funds.

I know i can definitely afford the break but also fear its not easy to go back to corporate. My goal is to see if this content thing can take off, spend time with kid (8yo) before I go back to full time work. Anyone have similar experience or regret leaving without a job?