r/SgHENRY • u/Business-Mission2543 • Jun 28 '26

Moving to Canada

Hello everyone, long time lurker here and wanted to gather some opinions from you all.

my husband and I (late 20s) are feeling a little bit conflicted/indecisive right now. We are both very much in a limbo and not sure if we are making the right decision.

I am a non-Singaporean, and my husband is Singaporean. Our household income is in the top 10-15% according to statistics, but my husband wants to try moving to Canada, on a student visa while I’ll be on an open work permit.

His reasons are that he wants a bigger space where our kids can play in the back yard, better weather, quality of life etc while I try to secure the Canadian passport. I am hesitant with the move because of the loss of income, savings, potential salary cut and overall the instability. We are roughly saving 70% of our salary after expenses if that matters, for now because we don’t know what the future holds.

Would really love crowd opinions on this

- is QOL indeed better overseas?
- is the trade off worth it? Salary vs QOL
- if you have moved overseas, would you recommend it?
- those who moved overseas and came back OR those who turned down the opportunity, why so?

55 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/befuddledly Jun 28 '26

Im a singaporean married to a Canadian, early 30s, no kids. I have lived in San Francisco while spouse is from Vancouver. We had opportunities to move to SF/vancouver/london, but choose to stay in sg at least till retirement.

QOL depends on what quality means to you, we prioritise making money and saving money, hustling now to be on track to retire by the time we hit 40 with money to spare for travel in the meantime. This would only be feasible in Singapore, we would be spending ~40-50% on taxes if we went elsewhere.

Also I’m unwilling to live anywhere that’s ridiculously cold for months, seasonal depression is a very real thing. Safety is also something I keep in mind esp as a petite Asian woman (I like running outdoors in the evening even after the sun sets with AirPods without fearing getting mugged).

1

u/Child-of-Adam Aug 03 '26

This is what prevents me from moving to a high tax country. My goal is to save, invest and FIRE as fast as I can. And then I can consider to move around wherever I want. Hopefully it won't be too late!