“Money Not Enough” in Singapore: Are We Comparing Fairly?

If you spend any time in Singapore conversations (or comment sections), you’ll hear a familiar line: “Money is not enough.”

Sometimes that’s about genuine pressure — costs, caregiving, uncertainty. But often, the feeling comes from something more subtle: a biased, cherry-picked comparison.

Not “How am I doing, objectively?”More like “Why am I not doing as well as that person?”

And “that person” is rarely a random Singaporean. It’s usually:

• the colleague who moved into a condo

• the friend who upgraded to landed

• the cousin driving a continental car

• the influencer whose life looks permanently sponsored

When our reference points are consistently the people doing much better, it’s easy to conclude that everyone is ahead and we are falling behind — even when that may not be true.

So instead of starting with feelings or assumptions, let’s apply a more FYT way of thinking: define the problem, develop hypotheses, and let data do the sorting.

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A FYT-style approach: the 6 steps to analytics (applied to income)

This article isn’t about “how to get rich”.It’s about how to hold an informed opinion about where your income stands among Singapore residents — and how to avoid building life decisions on a distorted comparison set.

Step 1: Problem definition

Before we decide whether “money is not enough”, we need to define what “money” means.

Most comparisons default to monthly salary or annual salary. They’re common, but they’re only part of the story.

Because income is usually a means to an end: supporting a household and sustaining a life.

So to make the comparison more meaningful, this article explores four ways to view income:

1. Monthly Income (paycheck lens)

2. Annual Income (broader lens that may better reflect bonuses/variable pay)

3. Household Income (total resources available to the household)

4. Household Income per Person (a fairer lens of “how stretched” resources are)

That last one matters because two households can earn the same amount, but live very different realities depending on how many people are sharing the same pool.

Step 2: Hypothesis development

A lot of income angst comes from using national averages as a personal scoreboard.

But averages and medians are population summaries — they can tell us “how Singapore is doing”, but they do less to help an individual answer: “How am I doing, given my context?”

Here are two common (and unhelpful) reactions:

• If my income is above the average/median: I feel validated (sometimes a little smug).

• If my income is below the average/median: I feel discouraged, or I blame the system.

Neither reaction improves decision-making.

A more useful hypothesis is:

If we control for factors like age, education, occupation, and industry, the question becomes clearer: am I genuinely behind my comparable peers — or am I comparing myself to a cherry-picked group?

Because income is not randomly assigned. It’s shaped by many drivers, including:

• age (experience and career stage)

• education

• occupation

• industry

• and life constraints that don’t show up on a payslip

So the goal isn’t to “beat Singapore”.It’s to compare more fairly, so your conclusions are grounded.

Step 3: Data gathering

This is where we shift from vibes to evidence.

FYT has built an interactive dashboard that allows you to explore your income position in context, across those four income lenses and relevant segments.

Think of it as a way to replace “I feel behind” with:

• “Here’s where I sit”

• “Here’s the range”

• “Here’s what’s typical for my segment”

• “Here’s what changes when I adjust the lens”

Step 4: Analysis (broad observations worth reflecting on)

A few patterns tend to show up clearly when you explore income properly:

1) Income tends to rise with age — until it doesn’tModal and median incomes generally increase with age (as a proxy for experience) up to around the mid-40s.They often plateau through roughly the mid-50s.After that, median and modal incomes start to fall.

Even among segments earning five figures monthly, many see softening after 55.

That’s not a “problem statement” — it’s a useful reality check:

Income trajectories are not linear forever. Planning assumptions shouldn’t be either.

2) Education still shows strong signalNo surprise: degree holders generally earn more than those with lower qualifications.

But the important point isn’t status — it’s decision relevance:

If education is correlated with higher earning potential, then skills, credentials, and role pathways matter as levers people can actually think about.

3) Occupation and industry effects are realFinancial and professional services often trend higher. PMET roles also tend to earn more.

Again, not a moral hierarchy — just an analytical one:

Some roles and industries have structurally higher wage bands. If you’re benchmarking yourself, those structural differences must be part of the comparison.

4) The annual income reality check can surprise peopleMany people find it genuinely interesting (and grounding) that the median annual income is around $45,000 to $50,000 — which works out to roughly $3,750–$4,170 per month on a 12-month basis.

For some readers, this can be a reset:

• “Maybe I’m not doing as badly as my social feed makes it feel.”

• Or, “Now I understand why so many households feel stretched.”

Either way, it’s information you can work with.

Step 5: Interpretation (what the data can and cannot tell you)

Data can tell you:

• where you sit in a distribution

• how your segment compares

• what’s typical vs uncommon

• what changes when you shift from personal income to household lens

Data cannot tell you:

• what lifestyle you should want

• what trade-offs you should accept

• what responsibilities you should carry

That’s where judgment comes in.

The value is not in the chart.The value is in the interpretation that leads to better decisions.

Step 6: Decision and action (without turning this into a “get rich” piece)

This is the real point of the article:

To hold informed opinions about where your income stands among Singapore residents — rather than living with a perpetual assumption that “most people earn more than me.”

Once you’ve grounded yourself, you’ll generally fall into one of two camps:

If you’re doing better than you assumed:You might still want more (that’s normal), but you may realise you’re not “behind” in the way you imagined.In that case: count your blessings — and consider a question Singapore doesn’t ask often enough:

If I’m stable, how can I help someone who isn’t?

Not performatively. Not as charity-as-status.Just practically — family support, mentorship, community giving, paying it forward.

If you’re doing worse than you expected:That doesn’t mean panic or despair. It means you now have a more accurate starting point.And accurate starting points are powerful, because:

Future plans built on clarity are sturdier than future plans built on comparison anxiety.

Use the dashboard insights to explore:

• whether your comparison group was unrealistic

• whether household responsibilities are the real driver of pressure

• which levers are actually plausible (role moves, skill shifts, industry transitions, negotiation timing)

This isn’t about judging yourself.It’s about making decisions that you can live with.

Becoming more “factful” about income

Hans Rosling’s idea of being “factful” is simple: our instincts often misread reality, and data helps us correct course.

Income in Singapore is exactly that kind of topic:

• easy to feel strongly about

• easy to compare unfairly

• easy to get trapped in a story that “everyone is doing better”

A factful approach doesn’t remove ambition.It removes distortion.

And that is often the difference between:

• upgrading because it fits your life and future, and

• upgrading because your reference group made you feel small.

If you want to start with context instead of comparison, use this self assessment tool, simply key in your own income the the dashboard will show you where you sit in Singapore's income landscape

Informed decision-making is how value gets created.And FYT is here to help you turn data into insight — and insight into decisions you won’t regret.

If you’ve tried the dashboard, we’d genuinely like your help improving it. What surprised you, what felt unclear, and what comparisons did you wish you could make but couldn’t? If something doesn’t match your lived experience, tell us where the mismatch shows up — the income measure (monthly vs annual vs household), the segment (age, education, occupation, industry), or the way the numbers are framed. Good analytics isn’t about having the last word; it’s about asking better questions. So share your questions too: What would you want the data to answer next? What would “a fair comparison” look like for you? Your feedback helps us refine the tool, add the right context, and make the insights more useful for real Singaporeans making real decisions.