What ‘Middle Income’ Means in Kuala Lumpur

Often you hear discussions about ‘middle income’. You often read about ‘lower income’. You sympathise with the ‘hardcore poor’. You envy and despise the ‘higher income’ … unless you are one of them, lucky you! (read: May you step in poo and ruin those thousand dollar shoes …)

‘Lower income’ and ‘hardcore poor’ are quite straightforward.

‘Lower income’ is the group of people who can afford to live, but can’t afford a nice car or house … and ‘hardcore poor’ can barely afford to live, let alone buy any car or house.

Hey, didn’t say it was a textbook definition! Same goes for ‘higher income’, you get my drift.

Now back to the middles-of-society. Making just enough not to have a negative monthly cash flow, but not quite enough to go after the finer things in life. Coming to think of it, middle never really means middle. If it did, all these middle fingers … opps, I mean ‘middle income’, would afford half of what higher society has to offer. It doesn’t, does it? Too bad.

Obviously, I don’t know what it means to be ‘middle income’ in other parts of the world. But I sure know what it means over here in Kuala Lumpur (yeah, yeah … Petaling Jaya ain’t quite KL but its close enough!).

Let’s see … what would be the best way of doing this? Some figures perhaps? Maybe we’ll just build up a small scenario. Yeah, that might give you a better idea. Of course, if you are from Malaysia you’d already have an idea … but then again, if you are from Malaysia, why are you reading this to begin with? More for the benefit of those foreign guys who even bus drivers earn exchanged salaries equivalent to managers over here … ermm … no offence either way, and I do know about relative cost of living and all that.

Okie dokes, you’d need a house I’d say. Let’s pick a modest location in Petaling Jaya. Landed property? Too expensive for our ‘middle income’ dude. Let’s settle on a mid range apartment or condominium shall we, at RM1,300 per month.

With the electricity bill of RM 200 or so per month (that’s only with one air-conditioner switched on through the night, mind you) and the water, telephone, cable TV, food … lets round that up to RM 700, you have a grant total of RM 2,000 per month.

Now you need to get to work and just so happens that you work in KL … can’t be too choosy now, can you? Travel isn’t cheap, considering that the public transport system is … well, wouldn’t want to get myself into trouble by saying nasty things now would I? Let’s just say that a London commuter used to the tube and bus systems there would probably prefer to kill himself than go through the hassle of commuting to work daily from Petaling Jaya to Kuala Lumpur, purely by public transport.

Let’s get a car then. Oh yeah, with the several hundred percent taxes and duties on imported cars, lets get one of them not-so-cheap-due-to-zero-price-competition local cars. ‘Middle income’ people don’t go around in the smallest and cheapest of cars, thank you very much. RM 600 in monthly payments … well, better than the RM 1,000 for a Honda or Toyota, money-wise at least. Ride-wise and quality much to hope for, but who’s complaining? Life’s all good …

And what exactly does this car drink? Bottled fizzy drinks? Nah, you just fill ‘er up with that cheap black stuff … no, no, no … coffee is expensive! A full tank of petrol would set you back RM 100 for 40 litres of the stuff, and that would last you about a week. Yes, it’s that far from home to work … damn those rich guys who live right next to the office. There you have it, another RM 400 per month.

But wait, we forgot about the tolls. Unless you want to join the riffraff scuttling to work before 6am every morning, you’d want to use tolled roads at some point of your journey. Let’s put that at RM 50 per month.

Total transport cost comes to … RM 600 + RM 400 + RM 50 … where’s my calculator … yup, RM 1,050. Add that to your house payment and bills of RM 2,000 … and you have a grand total to RM 3,050.

RM 3,000 (let’s just discount the 50), and that’s without eating at work, fags or ciggies or whatever you want to call them, drinks after work … just plain vanilla home-work-home daily routine.

Obviously, the phrase ‘get a life’ doesn’t mean much to this group of people …

OK, let’s put that RM 3k into perspective.

RM 3k is net after taxes and other things the Government takes away from you. Working backwards, you would probably need a gross salary of about RM 3,500 per month … and that’s just so that you can go to work and go home and go back to work the next day.

I know of people in their early 30’s that have gross salaries of RM 3k to RM 4k … of course I know some who make much less, but we aren’t talking about that group, remember? This salary range would correspond to perhaps a senior executive or maybe at the lower end of RM 4k+, an assistant manager. That would probably be most people below 30 and half the working public below 35.

Of course most of these people are married by that age, so at least the house payment and bills gets cut in two. So does the food bill to some extent. Balanced out by the kids expenses, for sure.

Anyway, that’s what its like to be a ‘middle income’ person in Petaling Jaya. Unless you are the luckier (or smarter, who knows?) ones who get double that at the same age, wont have much to show now would you? I know I don’t.

More the reason to get moving up the corporate ladder, huh?