Singapore Expats

Please add to my list if I forgot something:
Paperwork Processing
Flight to Singapore
Monthly Wage
Levy
Insurance for Medical & Bond
Food
Toiletries

What About:
Air Ticket for Home Leave (once a year or once every two years?)
Cell Phone Allowance
Monthly MRT/Bus Allowance
13th Month Bonus
Medications (if any)

Maids Responsibilities?:

I think it would be great if you updated this post with some "general" numbers on costs so people can have an idea of what sort of costs to expect. Perhaps they would later make it a "sticky" thread so others can easily see it and it can be updated as costs change.

Perhaps some suggestions on insurance companies and plans and links to MoM relevant pages, etc.

This would really help people like me!

New maid, never worked for expats before. Figure all in per annum costs of 12K/year or 1000/month, includes all incidentals.

What about those experienced ones? I know this can vary based on cooking experience, first aid and baby rearing training, etc.

Any ballpark figures out there?

1-3 years:
4-9 years:
10+ years:

See my first post. Unless you are picking up a maid who's had a expat employer for a long time. Then you could probably raise it to 1300-1500/mo all in. LOS really doesn't matter too much. Granted it means more than one with less than say 1.5 years of experience or one that worked in Hong Kong previously and are used to getting a reasonable wage and not the slave wages paid here.

If you this wage is low, look at West Africa region where a well paid maid earns 200USD and provided a room. That's it, no hidden costs inless you elect to pay for medical (cheap healthcare) and some schooling so they can improve their reading and writing.

I would say Singapore rate is close to what ppl are paying in Dubai too.

So, this number would include airfare home and all, right?

What about cost if you use an agency?

How much do you think an Indonesian or Sri Lankan maid was getting here up to one year ago? $150/mo while Filipina maids get something like $350/mo and other somewhere in between. The other costs are the monthly government levy of what is currently $265/mo, insurance, repatriation airfares, year end bonus, vacation trip home and return, birthday present, Xmas present or other major holiday depending on race/religion. Food differences. Other incidentals like cost of agency etc.....

http://singaporemaid.blogspot.com/2011/ ... up-23.html (from the Employer POV). Very biased read. Makes you want to not trust any FDW.

http://www.maidinsingapore.net/ (from the Domestic POV) very enlightening read. Makes you want to kill certain employers.

OP I don't think you are obligated to pay phones, bus passes etc. Pay a fair salary based on the local market, then a bonus and/or trip home.
But remember you are also on the hook for medical.

Ours is an experienced expat maid, we pay her $600/mo + one month's bonus per year. Don't pay any of the other stuff, and don't pay a trip home - she gets the cash bonus instead.

Lots of maids are paid a lot less than we pay ours tho. Just depends. We paid her more as she has a fair bit of responsibility with our kids.

movingtospore wrote:OP I don't think you are obligated to pay phones, bus passes etc. Pay a fair salary based on the local market, then a bonus and/or trip home.
But remember you are also on the hook for medical.

Ours is an experienced expat maid, we pay her $600/mo + one month's bonus per year. Don't pay any of the other stuff, and don't pay a trip home - she gets the cash bonus instead.

Lots of maids are paid a lot less than we pay ours tho. Just depends. We paid her more as she has a fair bit of responsibility with our kids.

Well, no wonder the maids are insisting on expat employers : D - yeah, I know .. but, nobody pays "BONUS" and the kind of salary you are paying -but then again, you are not paying for trip home.

I guess it depends on which country the person is coming from : In Brunei, a travel home every six months is the norm as most expats take vacations twice a year.. whereas in Singapore, there are maids who haven't been home for years and years, saving the flight ticket cost ..

And in Dubai, employers allow maids to stay out - whereas in Singapore, with the strict laws, it is like committing suicide if you let your maid stay out ..

PS: Did you say 'fair salary based on market rate' ? well, i am not opposing your paying the maid so much and in fact, I know one employer who pays her maid 1,300 $ PM, but market rate and the agreed agents standardised rate is much lower than the 600 $ S

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily pay others that much. And in retrospect it could have been a mistake with this one in particular - once we started paying her more things started going sideways. But that's another story! She started out much less than that. We gave her a big raise when I went back to work f/t as we were expecting a lot more of her and her working hours got much longer, so I figured it was only fair. And from what I've seen of a lot of the maids here she was pretty good, honest, reliable and relatively hard working. The odd thing was once we paid her more we started having issues.

Honestly I don't begrudge paying a decent amount but I do begrudge it when that's taken advantage of. But again that's another story! If I found someone fantastic I'd pay them more to keep them.

I'm having to reframe my thinking a bit tho - originally my idea was very western - I'd rather treat her like an adult, given her more money (instead of trips home, phones, etc) and let her be independent and make her own choices. Needless to say that hasn't work out so well. I know some people who actually set up savings accounts for their helpers and manage them for them - raises go there instead of into the maid's pocket. That totally rubs me the wrong way in principal but I get it now.

movingtospore wrote:I'm having to reframe my thinking a bit tho - originally my idea was very western - I'd rather treat her like an adult, given her more money (instead of trips home, phones, etc) and let her be independent and make her own choices. Needless to say that hasn't work out so well. I know some people who actually set up savings accounts for their helpers and manage them for them - raises go there instead of into the maid's pocket. That totally rubs me the wrong way in principal but I get it now.

That also goes in with my disputing a friend, who insisted the maid must have a bf, so she will be happier .. not a dumb idea it was, for that friend .. and she seemed pretty intent on finding a BF for the maid, if the maid couldn't do it herself .. damn .. (I wish I had a boss who went out to find a gf for me- regardless of my current status - so I will be happy

As for the girls, when they get money, they get a lot of 'instant' friends who insist and ensure that the new found richness is shared ..

My ex-boss' maid was getting paid to the tune of 900$ a month, so much so, when her contract finished, she was frantically trying to find another employer, and it turned out she had been doing 'money lending' to her kababayans ..

My ex-boss, when he got his next maid, did what was advised by the agent: give her the pocket money, and opened an account, and he held the atm card, and when she was going back, took her to the bank and withdrew the whole sum and made a draft and sent it with her so she can bank it in her home country ..

Then again: MOM is vary of employers who cheat the maids, and there have been cases of employers 'holding' the salary but in reality, the employers never had money to pay the maid .. and on departure day, the maid finds out her employer has no money ..

Tricky stuff .. yeah ..