Living Expenses in KL

If you live in Mont Kiara, you will need to add the cost of hiring a car as there is no public transport connecting it to the city or sentral area (RM1000-1500 per month). Also add something for transportation for the rest of the family, RM150 should be sufficient, although I think busing arrangements to school can add quite a bit to the monthly cost of schooling.

I trust you have looked into the income tax bands as well, as they are quite high:

http://www.hasil.gov.my/goindex.php?kum … mp;sequ=11

Schooling will be a minimum of RM1500 per month for tuition (expect some hefty one-off payments at the beginning as well).

http://schooladvisor.my/?p=schools

It is possible to do a search based on price for either international or private schools in the right-hand box.

Depending on what housing standard you require, you will probably be able to reduce it down to RM3000-3500 in some areas. The terms are deposit of 2 1/2 x monthly rental as a deposit and first month's rental paid up front (3 1/2 months in total)

iproperty is also a good place to do some research, and in any area of interest, you can just put in say "Brickfields" and see what is available and at what price.  Brickfields prices for the new condos is rather high, but now there is a supermarket in the Nu shopping mall, which is an improvement.

If you are within walking distance of KL Sentral, then you have a lot of options, as the LRT and other train lines converge there. However, even if you can commute to work by public transport, a family really does need a car in Malaysia, although it comes with very mixed blessings, as the traffic congestion is bad.

Even on  local salary, you would need to be looking at about minimum RM10k for a family of 4.

You can check out the guide to salaries in KL here:

SALARY GUIDE

Thanks a lot Gravitas for the help. That more or less tallies with my calculations.