What is life like for poor people in Singapore?

Netizens share their stories

Being poor is tough but not impossible to succeed

I’ll just answer this through three personal anecdotes that I remember vividly.

My father was bankrupted when I was about five. Our HDB flat was protected from bankruptcy but all our furnitures were gone. I remember that day when my parents brought my sisters and I to a lan shop which was odd as we rarely indulged in such activities. Two hours later, when we got home, all we got left was the television and nothing else. It was odd but I wasn’t mature enough to understand what happened. I was actually happy because there’s more space to play and run in the house.

Over the next few years, we slowly bought furniture one piece at a time. During this period of time, there was frequent power outage as we couldn’t afford the bills. During this period of time I recalled studying by the corridor using the corridor light. There was also the fun of blowing bubbles into my small fish tank during power outage. Life was all right, I was largely insulated from the hardship as I was too young then.

Things got tougher when I got into secondary school. The discipline master somehow learnt that I had problems with excursion fees and school fees and often used it as a reason to single me out for the silliest reasons. One of which was smiling; during assembly one day, she singled me out for smiling and asked why I liked to smile so much and that I should feel more sad and shameful about not paying my dues, she then assigned me to the front of the hall in front of the entire cohort to do nothing but smile. I never told my parents about this as I understood by then that they were stressed enough trying to provide for the family. As time passes, not smiling became the norm and I perfected my rbf.

Was life tough being poor in Singapore? Yes. Was it impossible to succeed in life? No. I am doing pretty all right now, graduation in a few months’ time. The toughest part of being poor is being chinese at the same time; even if you succeeded, there will still be many people telling you about chinese privilege in Singapore. I wish I could cash it on my chinese privilege, but what the academics fail to tell you is that the chinese privilege they are talking about only begins from middle class and above.

Everyone’s story is different, but we help each other

I guess people ask the same question in many ways for different purposes. I hope by sharing a little with you it keeps us positive about life.

I am speaking from experience and general observation, knowing that the government did not set any standard for what it means to be poor in Singapore.

I grew up in a comfortable environment in Singapore. My Dad’s pay only became better in early 2000s when I was in secondary school. My Mum had a hard time looking for a job because of her Low education level and my parents figured it would make sense for her to stay-home and organize our living, thereby saving for us. Before that, we made ends meet with my Dad’s low paying job and helped with outsourced factory work assignments, bringing total income to about 18k per year for a family of 4. I am grateful that I could live in a flat that my parents bought with supportive policies from the government. It still is today, while government housing prices have increased there are cheaper alternatives amongst flat options (2-room, non-mature estates) and cheaper than private housing.

My sibling and I did well enough in school to qualify for all sorts of scholarships. Our income easily qualified us for bursaries too, which helped my parents who worked hard to try to give their best to us. There are a lot of schemes and subsidies for education other than cash rewards, like Edusave. At one point, I was enrolled in the meal program in school, which was a nutritious treat for lunch every day. I hardly had to buy textbooks, because there were many sharing schemes in public schools. The only textbook that I owned was an Economics textbook in Junior College, which I did not find helpful compared to what my teacher in JC taught me.

Life became tougher when I was in university. My dad was down with hospitalization bills from his gut problems and chronic illnesses. I took up more assignments as a private tutor to cover his medical expenses though government schemes helped a lot to alleviate the heavy bills.

In a small island with a lot of public resources, it is relatively easier to live on a low budget. It comes with a catch; that is to be extremely well-informed and skilful in planning.

Along the way in life, I met nasty people; teachers who do not bother to help, friends who will compare wealth, social workers who judged and the list goes on…

It was a strange feeling being a private tutor back then, because except for a short tuition of less than 2 weeks in JC for my weak subject (which I declined eventually as it was just too expensive for my parents), I never received tuition and hardly understand what my role meant to my students. There will be friends who do well because they are more well to do at home and could afford private tuition. Despite so, there are many ways to learn and make life good for yourself; I learnt from friends, joined public activities that I was interested in and forged strong friendships.

It was definitely not easy in my younger days worrying about finances, but I know that there are people who had it tougher than I did. I have met friends with very poverished backgrounds and had permanently ill family members to care for. Everyone’s story is different, some better, some worse but we help one another along.

My circumstance today is an outcome of many great help along the way. I graduated with distinction and I am working with an MNC. I travel a lot with the company, and where schedule allows I try to contribute to the local communities on personal account. After all, I might be contributing to another person’s aspirations just like someone did to me years ago.

Elderly woman poor but happy

I had a friend once. She was a single elderly lady. She lived in a one-room flat with her nephew. Every day, she would go to the nearby church where she ate lunch and helped out with feeding the dog, folding pamphlets and such. The dog’s name was Ginny, and she (the dog) listened to no one but her.

One day, her nephew sold the flat and bought another place to live. He didn’t take her along, and she was very sad because she had no place to live.

She met the conditions to stay in a charitable home and was transferred to St Vincent’s Home for the Ambulant Elderly in the city area. She stayed there with up to 13 other occupants.

She had no possessions except for what could fit into a small wooden cabinet. Mostly a rosary, a purse, and a statue of Mother Mary that I once gave her.

She received $450 a month from Public Assistance. Her medical bills were paid by Medifund, a financial support scheme that only the poorest of Singapore had access to.

The Home provided her with at least 1 meal a day. Her typical day started at 6am when she attended the morning Mass at a nearby church. This was followed by breakfast with the priests. Then she would help out around the church until lunch.

In the afternoon, she would meet a friend or go to Chinatown to windowshop. Sometimes she would buy a dress, or a purse, or some make-up. Alternatively, she would return to the Home where various schools and organisations would visit.

After dinner, she is usually asleep by 9pm.

She was happy most of the time, except when she quarreled with her room mates.

I used to visit her about once a month and listened to her stories.

When I got busy in my new job, I stopped visiting her. One day, I got a phone call from the administrator of the Home. She told me that my friend had been admitted to Assisi Hospice, and found my phone number among her belongings.

I visited my friend at the hospice. No one else visited her. She was so glad I came that she cried. She had late stage liver cancer and the doctor said she would go within the year.

I spent some time with her that afternoon. She passed away 5 days later. I attended her funeral service at 6am the following morning. There were only a handful of people in attendance.

She lived a simple, insignificant life, brought smiles to the people she met. She didn’t touch a lot of lives, and she didn’t make a lot of money. But she was happy, most of the time. And she was my friend.

Helping each other

Images source: Unsplash and Vladimir Guevarra on Facebook

91 cent paycheck

hi folks. to make a long story short my boyfriend got fired last week from his job. today he was supposed to receive his final paycheck which should’ve been around $700, and it was only 91 cents.

When he called his job to ask how that could be, they tried to justify it by saying that because he worked there less than six months that he had to pay them back for the training he received.

I don’t see how this is legal at all. They’re leaving a person without a job AND withholding a significant amount of money from him that he needs to survive.

If anyone knows more about how we can try to combat this please let me know. We need to pay our rent and eat and his employer is going to make that a challenge.

Netizens’ comments

1. Did he sign a contract which explicitly states he has to pay back training? Was there any documentation that training would be paid?
   any contact with the former employer should be in writing or recorded. Let them know he is going to report them. If you have not received his paycheck within a week, file a complaint.
   • (OP) to answer your first question- yes he did sign something but it said basically that if he didn’t go to the training bc he didn’t want to them he’d have to pay it back, it said nothing about if he got fired.
     he has to talk on the phone w the employer, not through text, so i’m hoping i’m around so i can record the conversation on my phone.
2. Usually, if they fire you, you don’t owe them for training etc. This is usually only applied if you’re the one terminating the contract, not the other way around. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with a situation like this.
3. It’s not legal. In fact, employers are required to pay him for training. The only way it would be legal is if he signed a contract stating he would remunerate the company if he left within a certain period of time. File a complaint.
   • (OP) i think they paid him for the training hours, but the money was then subtracted from his paycheck to cover the class altogether if that makes sense.

My wife of 13 years divorced me after she cheated and blames me

A little bit of back story is that I met my ex wife when i was 15 and she was 15 And we had that classic friends become lovers kind of relationship.

And after 3 years of us first meeting we started dating 1 year later we got married. Her family loved me and my family hated her, and I had an amazing connection with my family but I loved my ex to much to break up with them.

After a lot of drama, i cut contact with my family and they blocked me on all their social media accounts. I dont even know how old my younger siblings are anymore.

Me and my ex stayed in an apartment for a while working low income jobs barely making rent. But we loved each other and we were very intimate and encouraged each other we would make it out of this hole.

Eventually we did and she found a higher paying white collar job from a friend that I hadnt met before. We started moving up and eventually bought our own home.

We never wanted children because we felt we never truly got to enjoy a good life with just us until she got that job. A year later and we were still very close and our relationship was still very strong.

One day I was shopping for some dinner when i come across one of her friends I recognized from facebook, i had never met this friend in person so I said hi nice to meet you and introduced my name.

She didnt recognize me for obvious reasons. I told her my wife is friends with her. She then asked “which friend” and to that I responded with “Allison” (not her real name)

the moment I said that this woman stared at me blankly, like if she just saw a serial killer or something. She stuttered a bit then said “shes your wife?” I said “yeah what about it?”

She stared a bit then said out of nowhere “do you know her boss?” I didnt and i replied with that again her face got more and more pale.

She looked like she was about to cry I asked her whats wrong and she said “your wife has been sleeping with her boss”

I immediately started asking whats her proof and she said that she commonly sees her go into her bosses office regularly and since this friend is next door she can hear everything.

Im horrified, i almost drop the groceries im holding. I then leave still confused, questioning everything.

When i got home my wife wasnt yet but i just sat on one of the kitchen bar stools with my phone out like i had just been talking to someone.

My wife comes into the house shouts “im home” and then walks into the kitchen with me sitting there. She was talking about her day but then saw my blank expression.

She looked at me asked whats wrong and when i didnt respond she knew what i had just learned.

My wife began crying and screaming at me saying that she had to and thats how she was able to pay for our home for our life. And i just stare. I didnt know what to do

everything i built and destroyed for her piled up to nothing. She says that if dont respond that she will file for a divorce. I finally build up enough energy to ask “why, i never asked you to do that for me, for us.

I was happy in the place we were when i had you.” She cried some more then told me she is sorry but she knew we needed a better life and while yeah we werent in the best place went to far to make it better.

She then said if i hadnt missed out on life changing jobs we could have avoided this.

I told her i left my dream job to be with her more. All i wanted everyday was to see her to hug and kiss her. It was long before I slept on a sofa for a week and that sofa eventually turned into a separate apartment.

We did get divorced and while her parents reached out to me saying they were sorry, i had ignored it. I pushed everyone out of my life, people i loved, people i needed and now for the very first time im alone no one with me.

I dont think i can or want to make it another year and honestly i just needed a place for someone to know what happened.

I know it was out of my control but i passed up on previously good opportunities to make a living because it would separate us. Now i realized i made a mistake. I dont know who is at fault and i dont think i want

Girlfriend of 6 years (24f), said her best friends boyfriends name (30m), really loudly while we were f-ing each other the other day.

Pretty self explanatory, Chloe , my girlfriend of seven years said her best friends boyfriends name as we were doing it.

For context, her bff’s boyfriend has a pretty bad reputation, he’s a father of 3. To 2 different women.

He has stolen money from his current girlfriend and has even tried to make sure that her bff doesn’t go out anymore.

There is more, but please feel free to pm me. I could use advice, I haven’t talked to my friends about it yet

Netizens’ comments

1. Oh wow start digging. Something bad going on there.
2. Well, now you know what she’s thinking about when you’re in bed.
3. You don’t need strangers to say what you already know, sorry bro time to move along
4. Because she didn’t want you to know. But now you do. What’s the next step? Are you going to just sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen, or do something about it?
   Its tricky. Because even if she isn’t sleeping with him, and it “only” happened because she’s fantasizing about him when she’s sleeping with you, and when she’s taking care of business by herself, she’s almost certainly not going to be honest with you. Right?
   Do you have access to her phone? Are there other reasons that you have that suggest that she’s cheating on you – recent changes in behavior?
5. She is already cheating on you with him. Dude, you already know this. After reading your comments, you KNOW she is or has cheated on you with him, and she KNOWS she just let it slip, which means you KNOW what you need to do. Time to pack it up and leave bro.
6. Tbh I would dig around a bit and see if she’s actually cheated on you. Check her phone and think back if she’s ever done something suspicious or suddenly acted strange, sudden changes in libido and how she treats you.
   Might also want to check her friends social media and compare with days she’s said she was hanging out with her.
   Sorry for going down the cheating path but yelling another mans name in bed is not ok even when on accident. Also consider her reaction when talking about it. If she has a small crush or feel attracted to him she should go NC at least until any feelings are gone.

My husband is cleaning the house top to bottom, but it’s already too little too late. I’m leaving him regardless

11yrs unemployed while I worked my butt off and graduated Valedictorian in my BFA and Magna Cum Laude in my MFA and supported 4 people while doing so. Alone.

12yrs of barely being interested in our kid and who they are as a person. 13yrs of being so lazy, I’ve felt alone in every decision, every stress, every headache, every cleaning day, every family event, every celebration and every loss.

14 yrs of grocery shopping alone, building furniture alone. Building a nursery alone while 8 months pregnant because he kept promising and I finally gave up.

Years of my life I’ll never get back. But I’m FREE!!

Netizens’ comments

1. I’m so sorry – this sound so painful and lonely. Sounds like you learned early enough to find yourself and start again. You deserve real love and I’m sending it!
2. Sounds like you were more than patient. Good luck to you.
3. I am glad you are getting out. I wish more women would get out earlier. I know too many in this situation.
4. If his only reaction is to clean the house instead of having an honest real discussion about your relation or treating you with gifts, attention and partnership, he’s only doing it because he’s afraid of losing his live-in maid.
   You’re giving him domestic confort so now he’s trying to prove you he can do it himself so that (in his mind) you don’t have anything to do anymore … Until you’re back, and he start to be lazy again.
5. Wow, single mothers in a marriage actually exist.
6. I would start making a list off all the fun stuff you can do and buy without needing to feed and cloth him

I’ve been pretending to be dumb at work since I got hired.

For context: I used to manage a cafe for years. There were people we would hire and they would be good at their job, but I wouldn’t rely on them for major things.

When I quit there I thought “why can’t I just be a little dumber and work with less integrity.” And so I did exactly that.

I’ve been slightly late almost every day, I keep “forgetting” things that are happening in the week. I ask how to do the same simple things over and over. Nobody asks me to do any extra stuff, and I believe that’s because they think I am dumb.

It’s been fantastic.

I love it. At the cafe I used to work, I always got “we’re so happy to have you on our team! You’re a great asset!” And never got a bonus or a substantial raise.

At my new job, I’m making more than ever, and I am doing 25% of the work I used to do.

Pretend to be dumb folks, it’s great.

Netizens’ comments

1. I dont have to pretend
2. Man, I got so many “what an asset ! Wow, you are incredible in the team !” Yet none of those brought me any raise ever. What did bring me more money was switching jobs. That and that only. If they see they can buy you for a few cheap compliments, they absolutely will.
   I spent my 20s desperate for some pats on my head from my bosses and they absolutely knew they didn’t need to offer me anything else than a sense of belonging in exchange for my near burn outs and obvious work overloads. You absolutely got it.
   I’m an independent now and it’s going well but if I had to re enter the labor market ever again I’d totally look for something I can make cushy.
   I’ll be a “dummie” too and I won’t care at all. They don’t have any sense of personal attachment towards you at all anyways, all of it is a scam. They say bye with flowers but you are about forgotten 2 weeks after the new person comes in.
3. This is so wrong and yet so very right!
4. Never give 110% on day one. Because that’s what they expect from that point forward, and if you have a day where you are at 100% you are “slipping up” and it’s almost impossible to achieve even more. So you will always be “average” or “a disappointment”.
   But you go in at a strong “33%” you aren’t over taxing yourself. You have plenty of room to impress in a pinch, and all encounters will be generally positive as you are improving to 40%.
   Also I forgot which show/movie it was. But one of the people made it a point to eat an edible before his interview/first day. So that him high is what the boss would see as normal. So that there is no suspicion if he acts high because “that’s just how he is.”

My (30F) boyfriend (31M) of 3 years just disclosed to me that he has 20K in credit card debt and I’m heart broken.

TL;DR – the amount of credit card debt my boyfriend has stresses me out. I struggle to see how it is going to be paid off and it makes me question our future together.

Quick background: my boyfriend and I have been together for almost 3 years. He makes about 50K a year and I make close to 100K. I moved in with him 4 months ago, with the intent of getting married and moving into our own place in the next 2 or so years.

This year we went on vacation together, which we had about a year to plan for. All I asked was that he paid for his plane ticket and 25% of the hotel.

When it came time to buy the plane ticket, he told me he couldn’t go. “Too many expenses came up and he couldn’t afford it.”

I was upset, because we had been planning the trip for a year and I was really only asking him to come up with 1K.

Since there were things that were already paid for for the both of us, I came up with the extra 1K for his birthday and his gift was the vacation.

While we were there, he seemed to have no problem spending money. Which was suspicious to me… what happened to the money he didn’t have ? At this point, I realized he was using a credit card.

Over the month following our return from the trip, I gradually inquired about how much credit card debt he has. I said minus student loans, house and card.

What debt do you have that is related to a credit card? He said around 4K. I thought hmm that sucks but it’s not insurmountable.

Still though, things weren’t adding up. So I told him that he needed to really sit down and look at how much debt he has, because it seems like more than 4K.

He said he would but he wanted to do it himself, without me around. Understandable. Today, he told me he looked through everything and minus student loans, house and car he has 20K in credit card debit at an average of 17% interest. My heart sank.

In that moment, I feel like I watched all our hopes for us go out the window. Not just the fun stuff we were planning on doing, but things like getting married, having kids, moving.

Not that I am materialistic but if he tightened his belt and put every extra cent towards paying off debt, and not spending any more he wouldn’t pay it off until 2026.