&quot;New York - Downtown, as I figure in terms of status and location that seems comparable to Singapore.&quot;<p>&quot;Feel free to correct me, I&#x27;ve only been to America a couple of times, so I don&#x27;t know the most appropriate place to search for comparison.&quot;<p>You narrowed the scope of our conversation to one of the most expensive and famous parts of the entire United States to compare to the <i>average</i> of Singapore? At least you offered that you don&#x27;t know where to do the comparison. ;) In my area (Memphis Metropolitan), there&#x27;s tons of businesses, restaurants, activities, service sector, events... you name it. It&#x27;s not even one of best areas: actually a bad one. Yet, just around $1000 a month. Lots of areas in the South are like that where I hear some suburbs in Northeast near tech capitals are as well. West is expensive everywhere. Good parts of big name cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, etc are as well.<p>So, it&#x27;s best to avoid comparisons with those as mostly rich people live there. The rest of us dare not try. :)<p>&quot;I know people living in my building who pay half what I pay in rent simply because they are Singaporean.&quot;<p>Never heard of this before. How does that work?<p>&quot;They are not allowed to move in (by law) until they are married, and can only buy as a single if they are over the age of (35) i believe.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s really messed up. Thanks for telling me, though.<p>&quot;I pay...&quot;<p>Your house is double or more what many Americans will pay in rent. The power bill is reasonable if that comes with water. Or does water come with rent or free? The internet leaves me jealouse: I heard you had uncapped Gigabit but didn&#x27;t know how many or how much. $59&#x2F;mo. Wow. Corruption is preventing that here with a handful of cities having gigabit ranging from a little above that to $350&#x2F;mo. Corruption puts me at 50Mbps down with a cap for $70&#x2F;mo.<p>&quot;Taxi in Sydney cost me $27 to get to work in the morning. In Singapore, it takes 3x as long to get to work in a taxi and costs $10.&quot;<p>Hmm. I&#x27;ve always wondered about this tradeoff but have no hard data on it. It happens here. In cities, people taxi or walk to work. Rates I paid were similar. Out here in suburbs, we mostly own cars to do that 20-30min drive I mentioned. Gas is maybe $5 a day. Car and insurance can be had for as little as $600 a month for 4 years. Interesting enough, that puts it at about the same rate per day although we pay with or without a trip to work. Ego reasons mean many people pay a lot more for their car, though. ;)<p>&quot;Basically my cost of living has significantly dropped living in Singapore.&quot;<p>That I believe. Australians tell me the country is expensive to live in if we&#x27;re talking the cities. You might have dropped your cost of living moving to... anywhere. Just kidding but cities cost $$$ in First World countries with Singapore obviously cheaper.<p>So, what kind of work do you do? With good hours, wages, and breaks? Is that average for your area?