No, Julius Bär! Singapore Is Not the World’s Most Expensive City

The Julius Bär Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report 2026 made some headlines recently, naming Singapore as the most expensive city in the world for the second year running. As someone who's lived in Singapore for more than 20 years, and moved to the NY/NJ area earlier this year, my first reaction was to ask what they're smoking and where can I get some of it. Clearly not in Singapore, which would probably save you some money right there vs NYC.

As a recent transplant, this is a topic near to my heart and I have opinions. Those opinions could not be more different from those of Julius Bär. It's not even close.

First, a bit of throat clearing. The report explicitly focuses on a "premium standard of living" i.e., for high net-worth individuals and not hoi polloi like moi.

Second, it really isn't even a proper cost-of-living index since the methodology is to simply compare the cost of 20 seemingly random "premium" items. This includes housing, cars, fine dining, private schools but also women's handbags, LASIK and an MBA (what?). And within those, housing has a weight of 20% and cars of 10%. All other items have an equal weight of 3.89%.

20% on housing I can swallow. But 10% weight on cars? Talk about a measure rigged to make Singapore look worse. Singapore famously has very high taxes on cars. Your base model Toyota Corolla is listed for about US$158,000 as of Sep 2026. You could get one for about US$22,500 in the US. So yeah.

Clearly the purpose isn't so much to capture a true cost of living for anyone but to grab some headlines, which it has done very successfully. But I'll take the opportunity to share my experience of day-to-day living in the two places anyway.

Let's start with the simple stuff (all prices in US$, unless specified).

Transport Buying a car is more expensive in Singapore and so is petrol / gas. But I gave up my car in Singapore a few years ago and didn't miss it for a second. You don't really need one in Singapore or, for that matter, NYC. The MRT / subway, buses and Uber / Grab will get you everywhere in both places more than adequately.

The base fare for the MRT is about $1 with a maximum, depending on distance, of $2. The base (and only) fare on the NY Subway is $3. So your basic 44 rides a month commute will set you back about S$55-115 while the same commute in NYC would cost you US$130. US$1 is about S$1.27.

This is a pattern I have observed again and again. While the SG$ is cheaper, the SG$ prices in Singapore are lower than the US$ prices in NYC. Adjusting for currency, the NYC Subway is about 50% more expensive.

Arguably this isn't a fare comparison (heh heh) because you could use your pre-tax income via some commuter-benefit accounts (if you don't live in the US, you don't want to know), effectively reducing your cost by 10-30%+. Plus the NYC Subway caps weekly charges at $35, so if you were using the Subway for more than your commute, the remaining trips are effectively free, bringing down the total monthly cost. So maybe the Subway is not that much more expensive all in, but it ain't cheaper.

But. Many people working in the City commute from places like NJ suburbs, Westchester, Greenwich and Long Island. Let's just take the NJ Transit, which I know a lot more intimately than I would like to. A one-way ticket from Millburn runs about $10 and a monthly pass about $300. There is no gymnastics that will make this competitive with the MRT.

Now, let's adjust for quality. Aside from a brief period around 2015-16 if memory serves, the MRT is the definition of reliability. During peak hours there are trains every 1-3 minutes. The trains and stations are clean, air-conditioned, well-lit and safe. The NJ Transit runs trains every 30-60 minutes and is anything but reliable. The Subway is largely reliable but the remaining adjectives mostly do not apply.

Uber / Grab? The average fare I paid in Singapore was about $15, maybe less. I haven't used New York cabs at all but a ride of similar distance runs about $30+ here before tips. In Singapore, the premium paid for a cab was generally worth it because those would get you to your destination faster than the trains. This is probably mostly not true in NYC.

Food I cannot yet make a proper comparison between Singapore and NYC restaurants, because I really haven't eaten out in the city that much so far. I do think NYC has a much greater variety of food. For instance, to the best of my knowledge, Singapore had no Bhutanese, Georgian, Ethiopian or Uyghur restaurants while NYC has many.

However I can compare takeaway lunches available in the Singapore CBD and Manhattan Midtown, since I eat those every day. In Singapore I mostly had 3 meals on repeat, over the last 2 years. They were priced as follows: Thunder Tea Rice - $5, Veg. Soba Noodles - $8.50 and Mala Hot Pot - $10.50.

I would prefer those three to literally every single item I have had in NYC over the last 8 months. Perhaps this is a matter of taste, although I do not think so. It's possible that I have not explored broadly enough - I order off GrubHub, from a rotating cast of 2 restaurants daily, chosen by the office manager.

The cheapest meal I have had is probably $12 (excluding taxes and delivery charges). The average is closer to $16. The quantity of food I get is absolutely more than in Singapore but we are somewhere between 50-100% more expensive here.

Groceries? I haven't really noticed a huge difference between the two places on prices and NJ could be cheaper. Certainly some items like cheese are much cheaper in the US and large format grocery stores have more variety. However, between RedMart delivery and the local wet market, I probably spent no more than 2-3 hours a week on groceries in Singapore. Here my weekly Costco trip consumes about 3-4 hours with the added expense of the inevitable lunch or dinner out after the run. This may be a skill issue. We will see.

What about eating out in the suburbs? There is surprisingly good Asian food in Millburn and surrounding towns but the sticker (after tips) on each trip out is probably identical to the SG$ number of an identical trip in Singapore. So 25% more.

Renting We never seriously explored the option of living in Manhattan so this isn't something I have a lot of experience with. But a quick Google search shows the median rent on a 1 bedroom Manhattan apartment runs around $4,500 and a 3 bedroom runs about $6,000-7,500. The 1BR rate "feels" a lot higher than what you would see in Singapore, possibly even in SG$. The 3BR rate is probably in line.

But I suspect the average apartment in Singapore is newer, nicer and has access to more facilities than the average NYC apartment. All but the first apartment that I had in Singapore had lap pools, gyms and many had tennis courts, function halls and some even had large play areas for kids. All were within a 15-30 min commute to the CBD. Based on what I have seen, I doubt that those prices are getting anything even close in terms of quality in NYC.

Childcare This is the big one - in price and in quality. The FDW system in Singapore means you have full-time, high-quality domestic help available for an all-in cost of, call it, $1,000-1,500 a month.

In the US, of course, you must pay by the hour. In NJ, that is about $25/hr. A full-time nanny is probably $5,000 a month plus taxes. If you can't find one, before school and after school care runs $200-300 a week, if not more.

The cost comparison is quite one-sided. The quality of life difference is too vast for my vocabulary.

Healthcare In Singapore, my own insurance (not employer provided) for the whole family was about $3,000 a year for in-patient coverage of about $750K per person per year for in-network, approved treatments. No outpatient coverage but also no deductible for in-network.

You could easily go to a "neighbourhood clinic" for outpatient visits and we often did, incurring about $40 per visit. Specialists were more expensive and a fairly wide range, from $100-250 for pediatricians to $400 for an orthopedic surgeon and ophthalmologist. ER visits probably averaged $150.

I have an employer-paid health plan in the US that I am told costs about $25K for the family, has a $5K deductible and a $7K out-of-pocket cap. A visit to the urgent care cost about $100. So experience so far isn't too bad but we have all heard the horror stories.

The somewhat non-obvious tradeoff there is that there is no upper limit for the US policy (for covered in-network expenses) while the Singapore policy does have one. The US policy is more of a true "insurance" in that sense - you are fully protected in a catastrophic outcome and there is a strong incentive to avoid unnecessary consumption of healthcare.

Singapore is the opposite - 0 in-network deductible can encourage overuse (though harder with in-patient) and it caps out for the truly catastrophic scenarios. Still, $750K is a lot for most cases and the $3,000 vs. $25,000 a year is nothing to sneeze at.

Taxes It is pretty clear with all of the above that NY is more expensive than Singapore, certainly for the non-HNWIs. Common prices are easily 30-50% higher.

But remember, these are all after tax and taxes in the US are much higher.

Even at fairly high incomes, the average income tax rate in Singapore is sub 20% all in. In fact the highest marginal income tax rate is only 24%. In US, you hit 30%+ federal tax rate quite quickly. You also hit the 6-7%+ state tax and additional 4% or so tax in NYC for NYC residents quite quickly.

So that S$100 meal in Singapore, that was US$100 in NY for a 27% gap, is really more like S$115 in Singapore and US$140 in NY for nearly 55% gap.

Perhaps you are a HNWI - living off your capital gains. Well, Singapore has 0 capital gains tax while the US most certainly does not.

The impact of taxes is also quite significant when it comes to housing. We compared rentals earlier.

It's a tad harder to compare prices for homeownership between the two places, especially if you are in the NY suburbs.

Having lived for a long time in Singapore and looked around for a while around NY/NJ suburbs, I am going to compare what feels subjectively similar between two locations - in terms of relative quality, status etc.

Apartments in Singapore are more expensive in most cases. Subjectively, $2-3 million in Singapore buys you the same relative quality / status that a $1-1.5 million house might buy in NY/NJ suburbs.

But the owner-occupied $2.5 million apartment in Singapore carries a $5,000 annual property tax bill while the $1.5 million house in NY comes with a $25,000-45,000 annual tax bill.

If it was an apartment in Manhattan, it might come with literally thousands in monthly maintenance / HOA charges!

I could go on. But combining all of this, it is not clear to me how you could invent a scenario where Singapore is more expensive than the US for most families - unless you are trying to do something the SG govt. is actively discouraging such as buying a car, or foreigners / speculators buying a property. For everyone else, it is not even close.