
I swapped Britain for safe, clean, low-tax Singapore – and my happiness has soared
Paul Macaulay
Mon, August 4, 2025 at 5:00 PM GMT+12
5 min read
Writer Paul Macaulay lives with his fiancé Kat in Singapore
When I wake up to sunshine every morning and walk to work along Singapore’s clean, safe streets, I get goosebumps because life feels about as good as it can get right now.
I moved to
Singapore in 2021, during the pandemic, because I wanted a change. I am from Harrogate in Yorkshire originally but went to Southampton for university in 2014 and then on to Bath to work because my younger brother was studying there. I landed a good job as a podiatrist working in
Wiltshire, played golf, tennis and cricket regularly and bought a house outside Bath.
After a while, I began considering opening my own practice, maybe in
Bristol, but on a bit of a whim one night I applied for a job in Singapore. I was interviewed two weeks later, and two more weeks after that offered a position at a Singaporean company, by a chap from Yorkshire – which I took to be a good sign.
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My dad surprised me and said: “Go, you have nothing to lose”. So, without ever having visited Singapore, I went. I’d spent a year in Australia aged 19 and did Camp America, so I’m quite adventurous, and my new company organised my visa and said they’d pay back my £600 flight cost if I passed a three-month probation.
Paul Macaulay with his parents prior to making the move to Singapore
I rented out my house near Bath, found a three-month flat share, got on a plane and have never looked back: my career, personal life and happiness have soared since I arrived.
I found the flat share quite hard as I was sharing with Malaysians who never came out of their rooms to socialise, so after three months I moved in with a colleague – also from Yorkshire – and another girl from Cumbria. My job was interesting, but not perfect – in the NHS I’d been trained in ethics but the company was taking poor decisions focused entirely on money. It took a while to work out whether it was normal for Singapore but it turned out to be just that business, so I moved to another owned by an Australian healthcare firm and things improved drastically.
The average podiatrist salary is around £39,000 in the UK but between £42,000 and £52,000 in Singapore, so I’m earning more, but the big difference is the progressive tax system leaving me with a much higher take home than I’d ever achieve in Britain – the very top rate of tax in Singapore is 24 per cent. There’s no council tax and electricity is really cheap so I can save and invest a lot more now, and we charge a lot more for consultations than in London so my earning potential is much bigger.
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Here my clientele are people pushing boundaries and doing big things, so I’m becoming far more ambitious. In the small town where I worked in Wiltshire, I saw mainly older ladies and was preparing to settle down.
I do a lot of social media now and I think the Singapore hustle and drive has really rubbed off on me to push me onto bigger things. I could also start my own business more easily. Rather than burdening small businesses with crippling taxes like the UK, Singapore supports start-ups.
I also love that Singapore is so safe. When you first arrive here, you’re scared to break any rules – inadvertently littering, for example – and risk deportation, but you soon get used to it. There are cameras everywhere in the city, so nothing gets missed, and the government probably has a full profile of me. The upside is you can leave your phone on the table in a busy mall, go back 10 minutes later and it’s still there. I’ve never seen a fight or drunk and disorderly behaviour, and you would never think to do drugs. People might think it’s a weird world but I prefer this to living a life of vigilance in the UK.
I do miss the British countryside, and having a pint in the pub after cricket. I miss the fresh air and British summers, when it stays light until 10pm, and I can’t play golf as joining a club here would cost SGD300,000 (£173,288)! Buying a car is equally tough, you need a special CEO certificate, and they are so heavily taxed that the cheapest is around SGD100,000 (£57,762), but the transport system is fantastic so you never really need one.
Singapore is among the safest countries on Earth - getty
I’ve recently got engaged to Kat, who is a performer at Universal Studios, so we now live together, and my social life has improved massively since I joined Singapore Cricket Club three years ago. It costs SGD3,000 (£1,732) a year membership which is significantly more than the £20 season fee in Bath, but I’ve made a real network and play tennis, cricket and other sports there, too.
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Right now, my friends are all busy with work, getting married and having children at home, so I don’t think I’d see much more of them anyway. My family and friends visit regularly and I go home once a year.
Paul with his fiancé Kat, who is a performer at Universal Studios
Kat and I get married in 2027 and will probably stay here until our children are four, but then school fees will kick in and I suspect we will return to the UK. In the meantime, we plan to maximise our travel and earning opportunities – Kat is from the Philippines, so we go there, too – and enjoy the quality of life we have.