Cautionary tale of man who earned $88k a month but had just $13k in savings

Almost 90% of his income went to paying for expenses of household of four

- Tan Ooi Boon

A director of a bank drew a monthly salary of more than $88,000, but he had only about $13,000 in his savings accounts during his divorce because his high income would routinely be depleted just from paying for the expenses of his household of four.

His own monthly expenses would come to about $46,000 on average, while his former wife said she and their two children, aged 20 and 18, would need more than $30,000 every month. That meant that almost 90 per cent of his monthly salary would be spent on their expenses alone.

Although it was not disclosed why the couple had such high expenses, a large chunk of it could have been used for travelling expenses because both their children were allocated a monthly sum of about $2,000 each to spend overseas.

With such high expenses, it was not surprising that the high-income executive would need to rely on loans to maintain such a lifestyle.

For instance, he took out two extra mortgages on his $2.9 million family home to fund their expenses, in addition to the original loan to purchase the property.

At the time of the couple's divorce hearing in September 2025, they still owed about $380,000 for the extra mortgages and another $1 million for the main mortgage.

On top of these loans, the director also took out a $200,000 loan on his credit card, and this loan still had a balance of $95,000.

During the hearing for the dissolution of their 20-year marriage, the 49-year-old bank director drew a gross monthly income of $88,828.08, while his 54-year-old former wife, who used to be a flight attendant, is a homemaker.

She did not work during the marriage but took various professional courses to upgrade her skills, such as a one-year beauty technician course, a four-year French language studies course and a one-year nutrition course in 2022.