Whether you’re Singaporean or not, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the cost of living here is not low.
One person, however, will beg to differ.
A man, who used to live in Kuala Lumpur and is now working in Singapore, shared his hot take on the “cheap” cost of living here on Facebook group ‘Complaint Singapore’.
He wrote: “When I was living in KL with local spending power I often spend RM30-50 (S$9-18) for meals and snacks every time I go out. Even go cheap eatery (sic), it’s RM12 for chicken rice. Now I come to SG earning local money. Everything in SG really chip chip chip.”
We believe he means “Cheap cheap cheap”.
He goes on to explain that with the spending power he has in Singapore, it’s cheap to dine at fast food places, hawker centres, and restaurants.
“I cringe when local colleagues complain GST go up and everything “expensive”,” he continued.
While we agree that food is generally affordable in hawker centres, we’re not sure which restaurants he considers as low-priced. We’d genuinely like to know.
He does, however, agree that cars are expensive in Singapore.
“I would argue as long you meet the requirements, housing is cheap despite being a shoe box. Travel a bit, and you will know your government has done a great job to keep the costs affordable for middle income families. It’s not easy to do that with SG,” he concluded.
Housing cheap? In Singapore? Now that’s a really fresh take.
Perhaps his post was meant to be a commentary on how he has experienced a change in spending power in Singapore, but we wouldn’t go as far as to use the word cheap.
It looks like a number of netizens disagree with the man, with one explaining: “I was stationed in KL for many years and travelled all over Malaysia. You must know there is a big difference [between] living alone here compared with [having] a family to take care of, especially when you are the sole breadwinner…”
Another netizen who lived in Johor also said the man’s opinion was “absolutely absurd”.
There were, however, a couple of individuals who agreed with the man based on the comparison between the average salary of an individual in Singapore compared to someone in Malaysia.
They asserted that with our buying power, we can afford twice the number of meals here in contrast to someone there.
To put it plainly, it’s a wage issue for them.
What’s your take?