mrst3030 wrote:We will be relocating to Singapore this year. We will have our relocation costs paid but no housing or schooling costs paid. My salary is decent but we will be going from two salaries to one as my husband will be a stay at home dad to start.
Are there other expats out there living a non-luxurious, less typical 'expat' life. I'm starting to worry we will be social outcasts because we will be on a smaller budget than most. We are only a family of 3 (myself, husband and 3 year old) so the salary definitely suffices, but it doesn't allow us the luxury that seems to be the norm for other expats. Would be great to hear from some other expats living similarly.
There are so many wise insights in reply already there's not much to add. [Despite inevitably huge treatise to follow.... lol]
BTW congrats on the relo, and welcome to the forum...
When I first relo'd to SG (mid 90s) they were big-swinging times, and some colleagues I worked with had that v high end package and lifestyle. They were very senior colleagues and were apparently given membership of the American Club and so on. I never missed not having that, nor did I get invited there either, nor feel I was missing out. I found my own social circle that worked for me. Perhaps worked out best as private-member clubs can being painfully cliquey and snobbish, and so on. And I felt I was there to experience more of the real Singapore, than some gratuitously snobby hierarchy from back home.
As others have said this kind of club membership as a perk really got pared back. It's expensive, increasingly so. So gawd knows the kind of people you'd encounter there as a newbie these days...
Next time I moved back ['08 or so] I was semi-retired/self-employed and doing well. Faced with no local employment via which to provide the basic foundations of a social life on a plate, I again wondered if joining one of the Clubs might be a useful social avenue. By then I could have afforded the fees myself. So I looked at various of their websites and was struck by several things. The crazier than imagined fees. All the snobby blah-blah about having to proposed by a member and ditto seconded blah blah (for transient expats far from home, come off it), and I just concluded I'd take it if it was free as a perk, but no way would I pay for it myself. It looked like paying to be in a 24/7 'keeping up with the Jones's' scene...
So I think you might be better off away from all of that, probably happier, and certainly retaining more of your income. Instead, try and hook-up with colleagues via work. At the same time start looking up local 'group' social activities where people like you might be along. SCUBA, horse-riding, sailing, wind-surfing, football.... etc. IMO it's via shared interests you meet people with their 'social barriers' down, and get to make some genuine friends. You only need a few, then from meeting their friends in due course, that might provide all the social circle you ever need.
-- Most people on this forum are waaay closer to knowing and living in the 'real Singapore' than the milieu I was amongst on my first posting. And the best bit is it doesn't cost a penny to hook-up with them here (ok, maybe a few beers
).
-- I was a SAHH the 2nd and 3rd time we posted too. My suggestion is be chilled about that the first couple of months, see how it goes, but be aware he might struggle to make his own friends. [It's waaay harder when you don't go to an office each day.] To feel he's achieving something with the day [that masculine sense of drive/achievement
]. Give some thought to him getting stuck into some more social activities, pref together with you, and help him do so [after a few months, you'll be half-native, he might still feel fully alien - Mind the gap]. Also upon arrival you can expect to be working and called on all hours of night and day. Meanwhile him being 'home alone' too long, with you as his single er... channel to the outside world might become pressured... try and find time to help him connect into a social side that works for him...
