Singapore is a city of contrasts. You can pay $1.50 for a kopi at your neighbourhood hawker centre and feel like life is beautifully affordable. Then, in the same evening, you are $50 poorer after two cocktails.
It is tempting to blame ourselves and say we lack discipline. But in many cases, the higher price tag is not about reckless spending, but rather the fact that certain “vices” are structurally expensive in Singapore and that’s usually down to policy and taxes (although not always).
Sometimes other factors, like land and labour costs, can also play a part. Or simply, it’s just the reality of being a small, high-income country that imports nearly all of what it consumes.
Here are five everyday “financial vices” that tend to cost more in Singapore than in many other countries.
#1 Cars: A Luxury In Singapore
If you have ever wondered why so many Singaporeans are perfectly happy to take public transport, it is not just because the MRT and buses are convenient and efficient. It’s also because driving here is ridiculously expensive and not affordable for everyone.
The headline culprit is the Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which every person needs to have to own a car. And COE prices have remained eye-wateringly high. In the 4 February 2026 bidding exercise, according to the Land Transport Authority (LTA), the Category A COE closed at $106,320 and Category B at $110,890.
To put that in context, that COE is not the car – it’s just the permission to own one and for a limited period of just 10 years too. Then you still have to add the vehicle price, additional registration fee (ARF), insurance, servicing, parking, road tax and the daily costs like ERP charges.
In many other countries, a car may be a necessity. In Singapore, it’s clearly a luxury.
Read Also: Cost Of Owning A Car In Singapore Over 10 Years
#2 Alcohol: Tax Inside Every Sip
Alcohol is another classic “why is this so expensive?” category, especially if you have just returned from other Asian destinations like Tokyo, Seoul and Bangkok, or almost anywhere in Europe. Part of it is structural because Singapore imports most of its alcohol, and retail and F&B rents are not exactly cheap. But there is also a very direct factor, and that’s excise duty.
Singapore levies excise duty on many alcoholic drinks at $88 per litre of alcohol (that is, per litre of pure alcohol, so higher ABV means higher duty). This duty is then included in the final price you see at the shelf or on a menu.
So yes, when you feel like a casual glass of wine turns into a $22 decision (or close to $30 with service and GST added in), it is not only the “nice ambience” you’re paying for. It is also taxes layered into a product that is often imported and then served in a high-cost operating environment.
And if you have noticed nightlife feeling quieter than it used to, that’s also no coincidence. It is not hard to see why people pre-game at home, drink less, or just decide the juice is not worth the squeeze. Added to that is the fact that more people nowadays are becoming increasingly health-conscious and deciding that drinking little to no alcohol is a big part of a healthy lifestyle.
Read Also: Why The Cost Of Living In Singapore Is So High
#3 Cigarettes & Tobacco: Expensive By Design
Smoking is one of those vices where Singapore is very upfront about the policy intent: make it more expensive, make it inconvenient, with the aim of reducing consumption. The excise duty is significant.
As of early February 2026, Singapore Customs listed the excise duty on cigarettes at 49.1 cents per stick. However, in the latest Budget 2026 on 12 February, the Government announced that the excise duty on tobacco products would rise by 20%, from 49.1 cents to 58.9 cents per stick, effective immediately. That was the first tobacco excise duty hike since 2023.
Compared to many countries where cigarettes are still relatively cheap (especially in parts of Southeast Asia and particularly China), Singapore’s pricing can feel brutal. But that is the point of the government’s pricing strategy. If alcohol is expensive because it is taxed and imported, cigarettes are expensive because the government wants them to be, in an attempt to put people off smoking and push them to live a healthier lifestyle.
#4 Eating Out At Restaurants
Singapore is famous for affordable hawker food. But once you move beyond that tier, prices climb quickly.
Crowd-sourced data platform Numbeo estimates a mid-range meal for two at around $90 in Singapore, compared to about $40 in Bangkok. A draft beer can cost $10 here versus roughly $4 there. Even if we take such comparisons with caution, the lived experience rings true. A dinner for two with a couple of drinks can easily cost $120 to $150.
The real issue is frequency. If you dine at a $60-per-person restaurant twice a week, that is close to $500 a week for a couple. Over a month, that adds up to $2,000.
Singapore’s high rents and labour costs mean businesses must charge more. But for households, the danger lies in normalising it. When everyone around you treats mid-range dining as standard, it no longer feels like a splurge.
Yet financially, it still is.
#5 Services-as-a-Lifestyle (SaaL): Gyms & Entertainment Costs
Singapore has become a place where you can outsource almost any discomfort, and that’s great, but it also does come with a pricey entry ticket. Don’t feel like working out alone? Just pay for a gym membership, boutique studio classes, or a personal trainer. You want an easy night out? Movie tickets aren’t exactly cheap. Want a productive weekend instead of sitting at home doom-scrolling what to watch next on Netflix? That might involve paid activities that are priced like mini-events.
For a simple benchmark, Numbeo’s dataset comparison between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur shows that a monthly fitness club membership is estimated to be around $138 in Singapore versus only $63 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The same comparison pegs a cinema ticket at about $15 in Singapore versus about $6 in Kuala Lumpur. If you opt for the more premium (and higher-cost) IMAX experience, that gulf could widen.
Again, these are not exactly “necessities”, but they are exactly the kind of lifestyle spending that becomes normal when everyone around you is doing it, and when convenience is a cultural default. The trap is that these services and entertainment options feel harmless because they are usually paid in smaller (relative) amounts. However, they can be recurring in nature, and that’s precisely what sneaks past your mental budget.
How Should We Realistically View This?
The point is not to moralise and preach on how you shouldn’t spend on this or that. Everyone needs a bit of joy in their lives. The more useful takeaway for us, though, is to recognise which categories are “Singapore-expensive” and to treat them differently.
If you know cars are priced like a luxury good here, you should obviously think much harder about whether convenience is worth dropping five figures a year. If you know alcohol and cigarettes are expensive by design, you stop pretending that it’s just a cheap but occasional indulgence. The same goes for eating out. The hawker centre is affordable. The café/restaurants are not.
In other words, the win for us is not the deprivation but just being more honest about which vices are expensive in Singapore, then choosing the ones you actually want to pay for. Think of it as “conscious spending” for the line items in our financial life that can quietly (but seriously) drain our wealth over the long term.
Read Also: How To Spend 2026 Buying Things That Bring You Joy (The Marie Kondo Way)
