Most Singaporeans Cannot Afford to Fire Their Boss
This is a follow-up to last week's article, "How to Fire Your Boss. And Safeguard Your Future."
Last week, I wrote about why the real goal is not to quit your job. It is to build enough of a financial position that the decision to leave is yours, not your employer's. My sister read my article and asked me: So how much do I actually need to fire my boss?
I sat down with her to work through the math. What came out of that conversation was not what she expected. Not because the numbers were impossible. But because she had never actually calculated them before.
First, what does "having options" actually mean
When people hear "financial freedom," they tend to picture retirement. No work, no obligations, money flowing in from somewhere vague.
That is not what I am talking about here. Hundreds of conversations with clients over the years have shown me that most people do not actually want to stop working. What they want is to live life on their own terms. And that looks different for everyone.
The way I see it, having options means something more immediate. It means having enough investable assets that if your company restructures next month, you are not forced to take the first offer that comes along out of fear. You can choose your next move. You can upskill from a position of strength rather than desperation. You can negotiate differently.
That kind of position has a specific price tag. Most people do not know what it is.
The baseline calculation
Let us start with a single person spending $4,000 a month today. That is a conservative baseline for Singapore. Transport, food, rent or mortgage, some entertainment, modest travel. Nothing excessive.
Assume that lifestyle cost grows at 3% a year due to inflation, your invested portfolio earns 5% a year, and you are roughly 35 years old and need this to last until 85.
The lump sum you need in investable liquid assets today is approximately $1.5 million.
It is not your total net worth or your HDB equity nor what sits in your CPF account. It is liquid capital that you can actually deploy, capital that gives you the power to survive being restructured, to upskill on your own terms, and to stay ahead of a world that keeps shifting faster than anyone planned for.
Most people, when they see this number for the first time, go quiet.
What the Singapore data actually shows
The Ministry of Finance's 2023 household wealth data gives us a starting point. The middle 20% of resident households holds an average net worth of around $1 million. The wealthiest 20% averages $5.3 million. On the surface, those numbers might feel reassuring, particularly if you consider yourself a high earner on a strong trajectory.
But there are three problems with taking those figures at face value.
The first is that the data represent households, not individuals. The average Singapore household has roughly 3 people, which in practice means roughly two working adults. A household sitting at $1 million in net worth translates to approximately $500,000 per adult, before we account for anything else.
The second problem is composition. From the same MOF data, even among the wealthiest 20% of households, only approximately $1.44 million sits in liquid financial assets outside of property and CPF. The rest is locked in the family home and retirement accounts. For households in the middle of the wealth distribution, the liquid portion is considerably less. Which means that $500,000 per adult figure is mostly property equity and CPF savings that cannot be drawn down to fund daily life.
The third problem is age. Wealth accumulates over time. The households pulling up those averages are not 35-year-olds. They are people in their 50s and 60s who have had decades to compound their savings and pay down their mortgages. A professional in their mid-30s to early 40s, even one on a strong trajectory, is early in that curve. Their share of household wealth today sits well below where they will eventually land.
When you bring all three of these adjustments together, the conclusion is not complicated. A typical 35 to 40-year-old in Singapore, even one doing the right things, is very unlikely to have $1.5 million sitting in investable assets. For most people at that stage, that number has not even entered the conversation yet.
And yet that is precisely the amount required to sustain a basic $4,000 monthly lifestyle through to age 85.
Now consider the high-income professional
One of my clients earns between $400,000 and $500,000 a year. By most measures, he is doing extremely well.
His family spends around $200,000 a year. Two children, a good home, and the costs that come with that stage of life. Using the same assumptions, 3% inflation and a 5% portfolio return from his current age of 37 through to 85, he needs approximately $6 million in investable assets to sustain that lifestyle without relying on his salary.
He does not have that yet. That is not a failure. He is 37 and he has time. But the point is this: a person earning $400,000 to $500,000 a year, who by every signal looks financially strong, does not yet have the options that his income suggests. His income is high. His financial runway is still short.
Income and financial independence are two very different things. Most high earners have not built the bridge between them.
Your number is different from mine
While $1.5 million is the baseline used in this article, what you actually need depends entirely on how you live. Someone spending $8,000 a month needs roughly double that amount. A household spending $20,000 a month with three children needs closer to $7.5 million.
These numbers are not meant to discourage. They are meant to give you something concrete to aim for, because you cannot build toward a number you have never calculated.
The exciting part is this. Having even half of your lifestyle secured already gives you a degree of freedom that most people will not feel until their 60s, if at all.
That is worth starting early for.
Originally published on LinkedIn.