Lied about his age found out he’s 23 years older

How do I confront him?? I gave him multiple chances to come clean and he kept denying it. I had the chance to look at his IC while he was gone and saw his actual age, I wasn’t shocked but I’m just pissed how he keeps lying when he obviously knows I know something is up.

Edit- I also found makeup in his bag so this confirmed everything I already thought

I also don’t mind being with older men I prefer it but I don’t know how I feel about a man lying like this..

Netizens’ comments

• Ok. What is your age. Age he tells you. And his actual age?
  • (OP) I just turned 21. He tells me he’s 30. His IC says 43
    • Ok 100% red flag. Why are you even trying to make it work. Run
• Um please run. I’m 43, too, and the idea of dating a 21 year old, no matter how lovely a person, is squicky to me. No matter how mature you are, you are still barely an adult and in completely different life spaces. Someone my age who wants someone young, impressionable, and easy to manipulate is a problem. And then he lied on top of it. Abort mission.
• OK, here’s the deal:
  You don’t mind dating older people. His age wouldn’t have necessarily been a deal breaker. HOWEVER, he still chose to lie about this to you and has gone out of his way to hide this. Not to mention that it’s 13 years older than what he was saying initially. If he’s going to lie about this, he will lie about other things – and likely has already. He’s already showing that he doesn’t have your best interests in mind, only his.
  The fact that you don’t see this as an immediate deal breaker is also concerning, as this should be an automatic deal breaker. People who would abuse, manipulate, and exploit you will see this as an opportunity to hurt you. They’ll assume – possibly rightfully so – that you will put up with awful behavior because you either don’t know any better or because you won’t think you deserve better, if not a bit of both.
  I personally don’t think it’s great to date with such a huge age gap, but if you do, go in with extreme caution. You only get one life and it’s not worth wasting your youth on creeps. These types of people are present in any dating population and age range, but they will be more numerous and visible when it comes to age gaps because it’s so ripe for exploitation.

Dad’s debt is implicating the family even after moving out and cutting contacts

Hi, kinda lost in this situation so I wanted to post in this subreddit for extra opinions.

For context, I’m 19F living with my brother 17M & mom and my parents are not divorced however they have stopped talking more than a decade ago and he moved out on his own in 2020. But his address didn’t change because he merely rent a place or something outside we are not sure.

His credit card debts are accumulating from different banks and they are sending many lawyers letter to our address, recently we received a letter from States Court that they will be coming to our place to remove all the items under his name. This is damn infuriating for me because its really causing a inconvenience for all of us.

Another thing that made me super angry is that when my parents were still dating, my mother cleared a 10k+ debt for him before and he still haven’t learnt his lesson until now and even cheated on my mother with many different women and asking for a divorce right now and asked for our current house to be sold and split ways.

Besides that, I just wanna add that I have supportive friends around me but I wouldn’t wanna burden them with my problems whatsoever so I don’t really say much about my personal life.

I have a very loving boyfriend too but he is currently in NS and I definitely don’t wanna tire him with my repetitive stories every week. And he mentioned before that he had the feels to sign on just so to help me out financially, I was damn touched of course because the fact that this thought even crossed his mind just showed me how much he cared for me.

Everyday is a struggle, I have to put on a facade and act like everything is fine but the truth is it feels like everything is falling apart in my life. I know this is gonna be temporary, I can’t wait to grow and get out of this environment but sometimes it gets to me and I take it out on my boyfriend.

Honestly don’t know what kind of help or advice I need but I just wanted to post it here and read what ppl has to say lol I’m badly affected by this whole thing if I have to be honest. Plus I don’t tell anyone the things I go through and have been crying myself to sleep everyday and even resorted to alcohol and cigarettes as a coping mechanism.

Need advice on employment contract terms regarding notice period

I’ve given a notice to my employer and I’m currently serving the notice period. In my contract, there is no clear indication on how the leaves would be cleared out during this period. I was told by HR that I wasn’t allowed to take any leaves during the notice period, so now I had assumed that I could encash those leaves. Note, my contract doesn’t mention anything about encashing. I’ve attached the clauses regarding leaves in the image.

When I searched on MOM website, it clearly says that I could either take or encash my paid leaves. However, when I had a casual brief chat with HR a while back, they mentioned that this doesn’t apply to us as per the employment contract. I’m not sure how to proceed now, and I’m not able to understand as to why singapore employment laws wouldn’t apply to my contract. It’s rather stupid to not allow to take leaves during notice, plus not able to encash them as well.

MOM website clause:

“You can either encash or clear your annual leave if your employment was terminated.

If the unused leave is encashed, it should be calculated at the gross rate of pay based on your last drawn salary.

However, if an employee is terminated for misconduct, any unused leave will be forfeited.”

Could anyone suggest what I should do here ? Shall I have a proper legal advice for my employment contract? Any lawyer/legal counsel over here who could comment ? (Thanks in advance)

Edit1: happy to pay by hour if this needs a detailed evaluation by a lawyer

Edit2: Thanks for all the replies. I’ll be contacting HR and try to understand why they said what they said. I’ll point them to the employment laws here, and see how they respond. To be honest, it’s likely they themselves are not aware and might have just copied the clause from the country the company is headquarted in into the employment contract. If things go south, I’ll bring up the employment contract to MOM and make the HR amend the contract for future employees.

This is my mid-career switch experience from teaching to software engineering. If you are thinking of doing the same, I hope my post would help you in some ways. Long story ahead.

I graduated from NIE with a bachelor in arts degree and was bonded to MOE for four years. During my four years of teaching, I gave my all and was performing above average. However, I always knew I wanted to try something else besides teaching. At that time, I didn’t know what the alternative was but I just couldn’t see myself in teaching for the rest of my life. Towards the end of my four years bond, I wrote my resume and applied to various job adverts on LinkedIn. I was lucky as one of the companies replied me. While I didn’t have the necessary skills they needed, I promoted myself as someone willing to learn and keened to work for the company. I was prepared to take a pay cut as I knew I was starting from scratch again. I settled for a 40% pay cut for this new job.

Unfortunately, things didn’t work out well for me as I found the job to be rather mundane. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with the skills from this job and decided to cut loss by ending my employment with the company at the end of my probation period.

The good thing that came out of this was I realized I wanted to work in an environment where there would be minimal face-to-face interaction and it should be stimulating enough for me. During that period, SkillsFuture was encouraging people to join the IT industry and they were promoting this professional conversion programme for mid-career switchers to train them in IT programming. I decided to go for it. At the same time, I made use of my $500 skillsfuture credit to purchase programming courses on Udemy and continued with my learning at home.

To be honest, the courses provided by the training institute were insufficient. I was expected to learn OOP, MVC programming in 5 days, which was just impossible for someone like me without any programming background. But I was determined to figure it out. So when I was not in class, I would be following my Udemy instructor and learning on my own. The entire conversion programme took around 6 months. I updated my resume with a few mini projects I did and began my job search process. In total, I applied to close to 100 job applications and only heard back from 4 of them. I still remember the agony I went through to this day. You must understand teachers have it easy when it comes to getting a job. Our jobs were handed to us even before we graduated. We didn’t have to go through this excruciating job searching process and I was jobless for more than half a year. All the self-doubt, anxiousness and negative thoughts were just eating me up every night. While waiting to hear back from the companies, I practised my interviewing skills, did leetcode, continued with my Udemy courses and prayed. I also gave part-time tuition during this period to help with my daily expenses.

After being unemployed for more than 7 months, my breakthrough came. My friend referred me to their company’s HR internally. I was given an opportunity to do an online technical test which I passed and was subsequently interviewed by the project manager and MD. What helped was the mini projects I did and knowing the basics of OOP. They extended an offer to me and this ended my 8 months drought. I was drawing a fresh grad pay. It was 20% higher than my last drawn pay. While it was still lower than what I was last drawing in teaching, the opportunity to work and learn in this industry was more important than the salary. I knew I had to be humble and learn from my colleagues who were all younger than me.

The learning curve was steep but I enjoyed every part of it. I’m coming to 3 years in this industry and in these 3 years, I attained two cloud solutions architect associate certifications and was promoted to a senior position. I burnt many nights and weekends away studying and upskilling myself in new technologies.

Looking back, leaving teaching was a leap of faith. With a degree in arts and four years of work experience only in teaching, it was really difficult to find something comparable in the commercial sector. To those who are thinking of leaving teaching or even joining the IT industry, I would advise that you try out those programming courses on Udemy first during after office hours and weekends. It’ll minimally take you 3 months to figure out what you are doing. But you must persevere. Rewatch the videos until you get it. Figure out if this is for you. Most of the udemy courses will teach you by building projects. Make changes to those projects and customize them so that you can show them in your resume. If you plan to go for the diplomas or certifications provided by higher-level institutes, make sure you have enough savings to do so. Even if you don’t plan to, you should also make sure you have enough savings for your expenses in case you need to settle for a pay cut. Those in teaching, at least leave after you’ve collected your 4 years connect plan.

I got headhunted by another company during this recent tech hiring spree with a happy increment. I’m now drawing a salary higher than what I would be getting if I were to stay in teaching. Most importantly, I’m doing something I can see myself doing till my retirement. Was it scary? You bet. But I grew so much in these three years when I chose to leave my comfort zone and I’m glad I made that decision 4 years ago. Oh, and not to forget the benefits of working from home.

To those who choose to stay in teaching, I have nothing but admiration for all of you. The working hours are tough and there is no such thing as work-life balance. You are a teacher to your students 24/7. Thank you! To those who need a way out, maybe this could be an option for you to consider. All the best!

Did I just got catfished by an insurance company?

I applied for an admin role on an online recruitment website, but it didn’t state the company that was hiring. I applied for it in the morning, and I received a message for an interview in the afternoon.

The person that contacted me give me an address for the interview, but seemed to avoid giving me the name of his company. I tried to Google online but there was no indication of what company that resides in that address. I had to ask him and he said his company’s name. It was literally just a typical English first name and a Chinese surname plus the word “Organisation” at the back. I was confused but I still went for the interview because I didn’t know what kind of company it was back then.

I entered his office and then he started the interview. He just gave me a brief job description of the admin role I applied. And then he asked me if all the admin roles were filled up, there will be only the sales role. He continued and asked if I would mind hearing about the sales role. I thought that since I am already here, no harm in listening to the job description of the other role available. And then he continued and told me that the sales role is an insurance agent and proceeded to talk about how much insurance agents earn and how much commission (5-digits monthly) they earn once they reached a certain level for the next 30-45 mins. I was kinda irritated because if he asked me if I mind being an insurance agent at the start, I would have say yes to his recruitment speech. When he finished up and asked if I would mind being an insurance agent, I said no, thinking that that would make me look nice and maybe increase my chances of getting the admin role.

And when I make my way out of his office, I saw his name card. His “organisation” was literally just a small department or subsidiary of a huge insurance company in Singapore that everyone knows. He told me he would get back to me in a few days’ time to inform me if I have received the role.

He texted me back after a few days to say all admin roles are taken, and if I would want to take the insurance agent role. I replied kindly that I have changed my mind and would not like to take the insurance agent role. He never replied back. Now thinking back, the way he spent so little time talking about the admin role and spent 30-45 mins talking about the agent role makes me think that he never had the admin role in the first place.

Are the finance/insurance industry so short-handed that they don’t mind shooting their shot at people who clearly didn’t have the goal of doing an insurance job? They don’t mind wasting their time trying to recruit people who didn’t come in with the mindset of joining the insurance sales role? Was it really just a bunch of coincidences where they were actually hiring admins but they were all filled or were they trying to recruit me for an insurance sales job from the get-go?

friend owes more than $15k.. am I able to find a debt collector to help recover the amount?

A friend owes about $15k (14k++) in money and was initially repaying about $500 a month for the debt and was paying for last 6 mths but started to Mia for the last 1.5 months. Either giving holding answer or saying (will transfer tonight but disappears or doesn’t answer when pressed)

Started exploring getting a debt collector but not too sure if its possible if its loan to an individual and what’s the success rate?

Edit: I know there is a lesson learnt here and he usually returns promptly but at this point I’m not asking for “you deserve it or u shldnt have XXXX” I’m exploring options on getting it back and knowing the success rate/ what to look out for etc

2nd edit for more context: most conversation is via WhatsApp and transfer done by paynow so I do have the nric and (of course) mobile number, so we do have a paper trail of the debt

Normally I will say hey u still owe xxx after ur transfer of (eg) $500 today.

OR it will say hey u still owe xx when u transferring and he will just go ok transfer u tonight/tmr / insert random date here

Netizens’ comments

How did you give him the $15k initially? By cash or by bank transaction? The more paper trail of the debt, the stronger your case, the debt collectors are only willing to take on the case of debt recovery if you have enough evidence like I said, whether through transaction records or phone messages. Also, be prepared to split the money from the debt with them if they do get it back.

NUS alumni here with 5 years working experience in 2 high paying jobs in the finance and investment field; evaluated multiple MNCs and high growth start ups in my career, and currently working on my own side hustle.

Finding a dream job is an extremely painful process. It is nerve wrecking and its not a fault of your own, the current recruitment is loob-sided with employees holding all the information but job seekers literally shooting in the dark.

That being said. There are really 3 types of companies that are hiring. They land in different points across the pay and work-life balance spectrum.

#1 The high paying MNC jobs – Note that its only in selected departments within the tech, finance and consulting space (ie not all IT jobs are equal and don’t be fooled by the job ad). Extremely high pay but don’t expect any work hours to be easy. Work here for 3 years can guarantee a very good exit if you choose to, most which can continue matching your pay.

#2 High Growth Startups – There are the well-funded ones with potential to scale, usually backed by government inc or high profile venture capital. Trust me, these companies will pay for talent, they are in industries that will eventually reap high profit margins and hence have to ability to pay for capable people to build the business. Even if they are loss making today, see the valuation that they are raising capital at, they are lying if they say money is an issue. They definitely have the budget to pay you if you are in an important role. If you are offered a job if such companies that offers a low-ball pay, truth is you are just not applying for the right roles and it is not crucial to their growth.

#3 All others – Relatively lower paying jobs, cannot afford to pay you more and limited growth prospect. This is where you find relatively stable working hours.

In terms of choosing your job, #1 and #2 is the way to go. #1 is straightforward but is extremely competitive, I have seen many undergraduates taking a GAP year to eventually get a fighting chance to get into #1

#2 is tricky. Finding the good ones are like a needle in the haystack, if you find one, congratulations and learn from the founders how to dream big. If the entry pay is low make sure you are getting vested in the company via equity to compensate for the lower upfront compensation. Anything else, lets face the reality that you are just not important enough to the company, hence its best for you to move on and look at other options

#3 Here’s the sweet spot. Compensate the slightly lower pay with more spare time, your biggest asset in your 20s. Work on up-skilling, take online MOOC courses, work on side hustles, monetise your hobbies, learn how to invest with tiger broker or robo funds. Treat your job as a day job but make sure you spend enough time on what really matters to you.

Remind yourself that. Once again, your biggest asset is time and make sure you are exchanging value for that.

I’m relatively new at posting, hope I do this right! Fake names, approx. ages for privacy.