Working Mum Denise Knowledge Chief

Ran this spreadsheet in detail before deciding to stay car-lite. The brutal reality: owning a car in SG easily runs $1,500-2,500+ a month all-in once you amortise the COE + car price over 10 years and add road tax, insurance, ERP, parking (season + ad-hoc), petrol, and maintenance/servicing. That's $18k-30k a year. For that money you can take a LOT of Grab and MRT. So purely financially, for most people who mainly commute on decent public transport routes, car ownership does NOT make sense, it's a lifestyle/convenience purchase, not a money-saver. When it DOES make sense: you have young kids and/or elderly parents to ferry (car seats + Grab daily gets painful and expensive), you live/work in areas with poor transport connectivity, you need it for work, or you genuinely value the time/comfort/flexibility enough to pay the premium and can comfortably afford it. My take: if it's just you and your partner both near MRT, Grab + public transport + occasional car rental for weekend trips is dramatically cheaper. Do the honest monthly all-in math including COE depreciation, most people underestimate it by half. Buy a car for lifestyle, not to "save money", because it won't.