Saving for Marriage and House

I have a request from MSN chatter to include on this topic.

In Singapore, its not easy to get marry if you want to have a well done wedding and after that you want to have a house for the two of you.

Now, its even more important to have a saving account for marriage and house.

How much will you need?

That will have to depend on what kind of wedding you and your other half want, and what kind of house you want and the renovation and furniture.

For a normal wedding ceremony,

- you need an amount of money to give to the girl family (in chinese called "ping jing") that will depend on how much the girl's parents want, and they will ask for a num of table for their use (normally is 5 - 10 tables). This is the cost you got to pay with cash. So if the girl's family ask for $888 and 10 tables ($700 per table), you got to come out with $7888.

- you will have to spend around $3k to $5K on wedding custume and photos shooting. The more photos you want in your wedding album, the more you got to pay.

- you must have at least $15K in your saving in case you didn't manage to get back the money from "Ang Bao" given by friends and relative during the wedding dinner. You can ask for temporary increase on credit limits from the credit card company to pay off the bill and get reward points. Pay off the bill once you have received the "Ang Bao" money and don't owe the credit card as they will charge you 24% per annum.

That will added up to $888 + $5k + $15K = $20888 in saving for your wedding.

Purchasing a house:

- First hand unit: you need to pay for legal and stamp duty fee which I think is around $3000.

- Second hand unit: you need to pay for legal and stamp duty and the value above valuation. That mean if you buy $20000 above valuation then you got to pay in full on this $20k, and also a 5% of the loan from private bank as first loan payment. eg. the second hand unit valuation @ $300000, Owner want $330000. So you pay the bank $30000 + (300000 * 5%) = $45000.

- Renovation: a very basic renovation will cost you about $30000, that will include kitchen cabinet, wardrode, most of the wall and floor tiles, which is excluding electrical and kitchen/bathroom accessories. To add up all the cost to have a basic completed house done up will cost you around $40K - $50K.

Start to save as early as possible so that you can plan what you want in life earlier and not wait till its time to do certain things then you start to panic.

If you wait till last min then start to panic, that is when you need to borrow all the money from bank, which is your debt.