My friends and I were computing how much I should demand if they force me to transfer to Singapore.

Based on this self-assessment test by the Ministry of Manpower, the minimum salary of someone with my position and profile should get at least SGD 10,000++ or around USD 7,400. That’s the minimum and does not guarantee that I would get an e-Pass. A rival company had advertised for SGD 13,000 (USD 9,000) so they would have to justify why I would only get SGD 10k and not SGD 13k.

Given that the parent company is cheap, they wouldn’t give me the SGD 13k while the SGD 10k is too tight a budget given that HDBs in SG for 2-bed (it has to be 2 bed or otherwise the apartment would be too small) is SGD 2,600 in the outskirts like Jurong West. The school around that area is OWIS, which is around SGD 20k a year but the reviews are terrible given that it’s a budget international/private school. Ok, let’s just ignore the reviews for a second there. My housing would be SGD 2,600 + SGD 400 (utilities) + SGD 400 groceries + SGD 4,000 (school fees and other expenses) = SGD 7,400. It would be SGD 2,600 for everything else–that’s SGD 10k net. So that means I need to add 15% for tax and whatever contribution to pension or whatever the government subtracts.

I don’t think this would be a happy arrangement.

I think I would win the argument and they would let me just stay here.