Worth owning a car?

Well owning a car in Singapore certainly is quite expensive. Let's say you get a Corolla altis which will depreciate about $9500 a year. You still have to pay things like insurance, road tax, gas and maintenance. Let's say $2100 for insurance since you are young. Road tax will be $742. $200 worth of gas every month so that's $2400 and let's say maintenance cost about $600. This will add up to $13242 a year! Your current allowance is $12000 a year so overall you would still have to fork out a bit every year. Keep in mind we also have not taken in to account of the small things like parking and erp. To answer your question, it would definitely take more than $1000 a month to own a car if you are getting one that is still within it's first 10 year COE.

As you are a project manager and movement around different locations is quite frequent, having a car does bring about much benefits. You could look to get a car with it's COE renewed. The Corolla altis with a renewed COE can be found for about $6200 depreciation a year so this can reduce your cost by about $3300 a year. However you will have to pay additional cost of road tax, maintenance and insurance since the car is more than 10 years old. If you need a car and you are looking to stay closer or within $12000 a year then I believe this should be the way.

Hope this helps!

There are many factors in estimating the monthly cost of owning a car. Perhaps this SingSaver blog post can give you some indication:

How Much Does It Truly Cost To Maintain A Car In Singapore?

Whether it is worth it depends on how important owning a car is to your job.