Derek Chan, Bavani Palanivellu.
- There are 1 million millennials in Singapore — the largest generational group in the country.
- Their parents taught them the 5Cs: cash, car, credit card, condominium, and country-club membership.
- Insider spoke to six Singapore millennials to find out what makes them tick.
Derek Chan
From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Chan works on launching his new solo venture, a B2B consultancy business. Then, from 5 p.m. to midnight, it's time for his side hustle: driving a rented car for Grab, a ride-hailing company.
In April, he quit his job at a government-owned research company, which paid 100,000 Singapore dollars, or $74,200, a year.
Backed by his wife of two years — the couple doesn't have children — he invested SG$35,000 of his savings into launching his startup. His side hustle with Grab earns him SG$1,300 a month. He said he has "no time for hobbies" now.
"Everything is about money, to see if I can earn something," Chan said.
On the other side of Singapore, Adam Azali works as a food-and-beverage associate at Bacha Coffee, a Moroccan coffee brand. He dedicates his free time to performing dance and music shows with other freelance performing artists.
Before the pandemic, Azali worked full time in the performing arts, teaching dance classes to children and performing at social and corporate events.
But being an artist in Singapore is challenging, Azali, who is 40, told Insider. It's not a secure job, and artists often have to take part-time jobs on the side to make ends meet, he said.
"I believe why I survived that long is also because I'm not just a dancer. I'm not just a choreographer. I do makeup, I teach hairstyling, I do even lighting design for some of the performances and all of that, and I do music, too," he said. "So you have to be able to do a lot of things and not just stick to one."
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Singapore is home to one of the most literate populations in the world.
As of 2021, 97.6% of people above the age of 15 in Singapore were literate, per a report by the Singapore Department of Statistics.
Most public schools in Singapore teach in English. Learning a second language is mandatory, and so a significant proportion of the population — 74.3% — speaks more than one language, according to 2020 numbers from the Singapore Department of Statistics.
The country's two public universities, National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, ranked 11th and 19th worldwide in 2023, according to the QS Top Universities ranking.
Singaporean millennials also don't have the exorbitant student loans their American counterparts do. University education is heavily subsidized for Singaporeans and permanent residents. For a Singapore citizen, four years at a local university costs an average of SG$38,250, a 2023 report by financial-planning platform Smart Wealth found.
In comparison, as of 2022, Americans need to fork out $85,000 for four years of in-state tuition at public universities.
A report by the Department of Statistics Singapore in 2022 found that 63.1% of Singaporeans over 25 have diplomas or graduated from university.
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Between 1986 and 1996, Singapore's economy grew at an average rate of 12.8% a year. At the time, Singapore was called one of the four Asian Tigers — the region's fastest-growing economies — alongside Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Some millennials were born during the period when the Singaporean government still pushed a two-child policy to manage population growth.
Unlike in China, Singapore's system was not legally enforced. Even so, many Singaporean millennials come from a "middle-class background with a smaller household size" than their parents did, Tan Ern Ser, a sociology professor from National University of Singapore, told Insider.
As a result, they reaped the benefits of being able to pursue higher education, Ser said.
And from the economic boom came the Singapore dream of the 5Cs — cash, car, credit card, condominium, and country-club membership. The 5Cs have been an aspiration for many, notably Generation X, since the early days of Singapore's independence. These status symbols represented the equivalent of the "Singapore dream," and the race to collect all five Cs pointed to a culture of "kiasu," an intense fear of missing out.
The push toward hustle culture has gotten stronger since. When asked to define his benchmark for success, Chan's answer was simple: He wants sales figures to shoot through the roof.
"I need them to be successful, my sales figures. And also for customers to recognize my company," Chan said.
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Singaporeans between the ages of 25 and 44 earn between SG$53,400 and SG$81,900 annually, and Singapore has an unemployment rate of 2.1% as of 2022.
But that sum doesn't necessarily translate to luxe living. With Singapore tied with New York City as the most expensive city in the world in 2022, per a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Singaporean dollar doesn't stretch too far for most.
Singapore is the most expensive country in the world to buy a car. As of May, buying a car in Singapore comes with a minimum tax bill of SG$92,400. That's on top of the price of the car itself.
Even so, most of the millennials Insider spoke to were focused on saving money.
Chia Quan En, 27, who works in the media industry, said he saves 50% to 60% of his monthly income. He's saving for a house, to provide for his parents when they retire, and for his wedding.
"But I'm on track because I plot my expenses," En said.
Mel Chia, 33, who works as a communications manager in Singapore, said she's earned between SG$80,000 and SG$100,000 annually over the past few years. But she spends up to 60% of her earnings on expenses including insurance and mortgage costs for her apartment.
"I'm not saving as much as I want to," Chia said.
Lyndon Ang
Lyndon Ang, 27, works as a community manager in a gaming company and earns SG$48,000 a year.
Despite working full time and being financially independent, Ang has stayed with their parents and sister all their life and does not have any immediate plans to move out. They work from home, spend most of their money on food and utilities, and try to save about SG$1,000 a month.
But as a member of the queer community, Ang said it is "just impossible to afford housing." That's because Singapore does not allow single individuals under the age of 35 to purchase government-subsidized apartments — and because gay marriage hasn't been legalized in Singapore.
Ang plans to move out with their younger sister, who is autistic. They said the two of them will live in what they call a "nonconventional dual-income family."
"She can support herself. I can support myself," Ang said. "We are not really pursuing any of the Singapore dreams because it's unrealistic. And Singapore is not really open queer relationships yet."
In the last quarter of 2022, the rental costs of government-built, two-bedroom apartments ranged from SG$2,200 to SG$2,850 a month, according to the Housing Development Board. Five years ago, apartments of the same size were on the market for SG$1,550 to SG$1,900.
"There is no policy of providing affordable rental housing except to the very poorest Singaporeans, or affordable private housing, as these are left to market forces," said Walter Theseira, an economics professor at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
"So for lower- to middle-income Singaporeans, there is very little practical alternative to buying an HDB flat directly from the government," he added.
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It's not just high property prices that are pushing millennials to stay with their parents. Many simply don't see a need to buy their own place.
Francis Tan, the CEO of SLP International, a real-estate company, said millennials' parents were so fixated on securing the 5Cs that it takes the load off of their children to accumulate assets.
"The funny thing is that the accumulation of Gen X assets is what is powering the choices that millennials are making," Tan said.
Azali, the dancer, has lived with his parents all his life. His family home is spacious, he didn't want his parents to feel lonely, and it made sense financially, he told Insider.
But he recently bought a small apartment for himself, which he plans to move into next year.
"I think at this age, it comes to a point where you're no longer a kid, and parents will always treat you like a kid, no matter what," Azali said.
For most, marriage is the only way to secure affordable housing. Sending in an application for a Build-to-Order, or BTO, flat is regularly seen as an unofficial marriage proposal in Singapore, with couples popping the "Do you want to BTO together" question before getting down on one knee.
That said, BTOs are oversubscribed: Last year, there were 117,251 applications for the 23,184 units offered.
Bavani Palanivellu
As of 2022, Singapore's fertility rate dropped to its lowest ever: 1.05 births per woman. That might be because of the cost of raising kids — but also because of the cost of taking care of their own parents.
In February, Indranee Rajah, Singapore's second minister for finance, said her ministry expects more Singaporeans will face the "dual pressures of raising young children while caring for their elderly parents."
Chan, for one, told Insider the decision to have children depends on his business: "I think it'll be very stressful if I have kids right now."
For years, millennials worldwide have been chasing experiences and prioritizing living in the moment. A report by JPMorgan in 2016 showed that millennials devote 34% of their spending on Chase credit and debit cards to experiences like dining, entertainment, and travel.
Bavani Palanivellu, 32, is one of them.
"When I was 25, I was so convinced that I'm gonna get married by the time I was 28, and then have kids like 30," said Palanivellu, who works for her family's pest-control business.
"But now I think I don't want to let the biological clock influence my decision to rush the marriage or rush into having kids," she told Insider. "I just want to focus on finding a partner that is in line with me and then let everything else fall in place after that."
She joked that she went on an "eat, pray, love" journey six years ago after a breakup. Since then, she's gone trekking in Nepal, attended a wedding in the Amazon rainforest, and gotten her yoga-teacher certification at an ashram in India.
Adam Azali
Singapore's millennials live and breathe Asia, but they are deeply influenced by American pop culture — to the extent that some say they've felt torn between the pull of the Western world and being drawn back to their cultural roots.
Some of the millennials Insider spoke to told us these undercurrents of tension — to go their own way or abide by more traditional life paths — have spilled over to their relationships with their families.
They disagree on topics like which careers to pursue, whether to settle down and have a traditional family unit, and their views regarding the queer community.
Azali said he faced intense pushback from his family when choosing to go into a career in the arts. His story is part of a recurring narrative among Asian families around the world, where parents believe a career in the arts is impractical, less respectable, and financially unstable.
"I came from a background where my whole family thinks that being in the arts is a joke," he said.
While he hasn't fully received his parents' blessing, Azali said: "I guess it comes to a point when you're old enough and there's nothing else that they can really say."
For others like Ang, being able to present themselves authentically is the greatest challenge they face in Singapore.
When asked what success looks like to them, Ang responded: "When I have the capacity to be myself in public without judgment."
"Being able to present my gender identity properly in public without judgment, especially in a place as conservative as Singapore currently is, it's going to be an uphill challenge, no matter what," they said.
This story is part of a series called "Millennial World," which seeks to examine the state of the generation around the globe.
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