Are you an Aussie Expat in Singapore Turning 40 Soon? 5 Retirement Decisions You Should Consider Making Now

By Jarrad Brown

There’s something about the big 4-0 that makes people suddenly look up from the day-to-day grind of work, school runs and weekend catch-ups and start wondering about the bigger picture. For most people, this decade tends to bring in the highest salary of their working life so far, and it’s also roughly when retirement stops feeling like a someday thing and starts becoming a project with an actual timeline.

For an Australian living in Singapore, that project comes with a twist. You could end up retiring in Singapore, back in Australia, somewhere else entirely, or bouncing between a couple of these. That means your super, savings, tax position and even the currency your money sits in could all need to work across borders rather than just one system. The good news is that 40 is a genuinely useful age to start getting your head around this, since there’s still plenty of runway left to make adjustments.

Here are five areas worth turning your mind to now.

1. Figure out what your future lifestyle will really cost

Most people, when asked to guess their retirement spending, low-ball it. Not because they’re trying to fool themselves, but because forecasting how you’ll actually want to live decades from now is genuinely tricky when you’re still deep in the working years.

Ironically, the first stretch of retirement is often the priciest. You’re generally still fit and full of energy, and that’s exactly when the bucket-list travel, the family visits, and the “we always said we’d renovate” projects tend to happen. Layer an Aussie-in-Singapore situation on top of that, and you’ve also got shifting exchange rates and two very different costs of living to factor in.

A practical way to approach this is to sketch out your likely monthly outgoings based on how you live today, adjust for inflation over the years ahead, then subtract costs you won’t be carrying anymore, a cleared mortgage, kids who’ve flown the nest, and so on. Once you’ve got a rough number, you can start checking it against what your superannuation, CPF (where relevant), and other investments are actually likely to produce.

2. Decide, even roughly, where “home” will eventually be

This question gets dodged a lot, probably because nobody likes committing to something so far off. But your answer, even a loose one, changes almost everything downstream: how your money should be invested, which currency it makes sense to hold, and what your future tax situation could look like.

If heading back to Australia is likely at some point, it helps to know that once you’re an Australian tax resident again, your worldwide income and gains generally come back under the ATO’s gaze. That has real implications for when you sell investments, bring money home, or draw on any overseas retirement savings. Ideally, this gets thought through well before the move itself, not scrambled together in the weeks after you’ve already touched down.

If Singapore, or somewhere else, looks more likely to be your long-term base, then flexibility becomes the priority. That usually points towards retirement savings held in globally accessible platforms, and being intentional about which currencies you’re exposed to, rather than assuming any single country’s system will simply look after you.

3. Give your superannuation an actual look, not just a glance

A lot of expats leave their super sitting in whatever fund and investment option they were defaulted into years ago, sometimes from their very first job, and never touch it again. But by 40, with retirement now a couple of decades away rather than an abstract idea, it’s worth properly checking in on it.

Some questions worth asking yourself: is the investment option still suited to how long you’ve actually got until you’ll need the money? Are your nominated beneficiaries current? Is there insurance bundled into your super, and if so, is it still the right amount?

It’s also worth understanding how being an expat affects your contribution rules and caps, since these can differ from what applies to someone living and working in Australia. This is an area where speaking to an adviser familiar with expat superannuation can save you from missing out on options you didn’t know existed.

4. Check your insurance actually matches the life you’re living now

By your 40s, more people are usually depending on your income than when you first bought whatever cover you have, kids, a mortgage, sometimes ageing parents back home too. That makes it a sensible moment to check whether your protection still fits, rather than assuming the policy you took out years ago still does the job.

A common trap is relying entirely on employer-provided health cover without really knowing what it does and doesn’t include, or what happens to it if you switch jobs or leave Singapore altogether. Worth checking: how well your health cover handles outpatient treatment, specialist access, and portability if you move; whether it reflects your current responsibilities; and whether you’ve got disability or critical illness cover, which tends to be the one people generally forget about entirely.

The flip side matters too. If your mortgage is nearly cleared and your kids are independent, you might be paying for far more cover than you actually need. Either way, it’s worth periodically checking for gaps, and for excess.

5. Build one joined-up strategy instead of several separate ones

Your financial life is probably spread across different currencies, tax systems, and possibly more than one retirement scheme. Left unmanaged, your super in Australia, your investments in Singapore, and maybe a property back home can end up working against each other instead of together, and that’s often when opportunities get missed or unnecessary tax gets paid.

Bringing it together usually means keeping an eye on when your tax residency might shift, being deliberate about how much money you hold in which currency based on where you expect to actually spend it, timing any investment sales carefully since your tax treatment can shift substantially depending on your residency status at the time,
and making sure your will, power of attorney and super beneficiary nominations actually reflect your life today rather than assumptions from whenever you first left Australia.

None of this has to be resolved in one sitting. But 40 is a fair moment to step back and check whether all these pieces are actually pulling in the same direction, rather than just quietly existing next to each other.

Bringing it all together

None of these five decisions demand an answer by next week. But they all reward an early start far more than a rushed one. Retirement planning as an Australian expat in Singapore rarely comes down to a single big decision, it’s more a matter of steadily lining up your super, your investments, your insurance and your future tax position so they’re all working towards the same outcome by the time you actually need them to.

If you’re unsure where to begin, it can be worth speaking with a financial adviser who specifically works with Australian expats. Cross-border rules have a habit of getting complicated fast, and unwinding a costly mistake later is usually harder than avoiding it in the first place.

When you’re ready, feel free to schedule a complimentary consultation, and we can discuss a roadmap to help you secure your financial future, no matter where you choose to retire.

Jarrad Brown is an Australian-trained and qualified Fee-Based Financial Planner of Global Financial Consultants Pte Ltd providing specialist financial advice and portfolio management services to Australian professionals in Singapore.

Jarrad Brown is an Authorised Representative of Global Financial Consultants Pte Ltd – No: 200305462G | MAS License No: FA100035-3

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General Information Only: The information on this site is of a general nature only. It does not take into account your individual financial situation, objectives or needs. You should consider your own financial position and requirements before making a decision.

*Please note that Jarrad Brown is not a tax agent or accountant and none of the content outlined here should be taken as personal advice. You should consult your tax agent and financial adviser to review your current personal finances and financial goals to consider whether this strategy is appropriate for you.