I (45M) am a father of 3 but I also take care of my niece (17F) after her father passed away.

My wife (45F) and I have always treated her like family and we give her things equal to the others so that she doesn’t feel left out.

I honestly really care about her but financially I can’t support her all my life. When my eldest got married and moved away I had more money to spare so I was able to get her more things.

My daughter is now going away to university overseas so my niece was excited and came to my wife and I about universities she liked.

I told her it was great she was thinking of university and I said it would be good for to apply for scholarships now so it would be easier later. She laughed and asked why when her tuition would be paid for.

I told her that no I wouldn’t, I only had money to pay for my kids but I would help her out with basic necessities.

She was silent after that then went to her room. Apparently, she spoke to my father because he called me in a rage and said I was being cruel to her especially since my brother was always close to me when he was alive. I told him I just didn’t have that type of money saved and he said if I had cared for her I would’ve started saving as soon as I took her in.

My brother died very young so he didn’t have much saved and my niece’s mother’s side isn’t offering anything. I admit I could’ve told her earlier that I wouldn’t pay for her tuition but I didn’t.

I got a high-paying job late in the year – how should I prioritize my leftover money before year-end?

After graduating from school, I was lucky enough to get a high paying job (earning about 4x compared to my next highest-paying job…though working twice as much as well lol).

I’m hoping to invest rather aggressively but I never gave much thought to what I should do this year, for my three months of employment.

Adding to the complications, I also got married a few months ago – and my husband is unemployed (he is now looking for work).

If I’m correct, my pay this year will amount to $57,000 and I will have about $23,000 to “play” with, after both taxes and fixed expenses.

What I’m hoping for is some advice with how to prioritize my investments. I never had disposable income like this, and when I was plannign post-hire it was in yearlong terms.

I was fired from my job for using the phone.

But here’s the joke, the job requires me to use Whatsapp to communicate with clients 60% of the time.

I work as a customer service support staff in a logistics company and we communicate frequently with customers who have shipping issues.

With the world changing, email is considered outdated or should I say slow and I usually correspond with my customers on WhatsApp.

Other than official documents, I normally answer customers’ queries quickly with Whatsapp and I am good at my job. While other customer service officers are taking forever to do their job. I always finished whatever is assigned almost half the time.

So my boss is this old man who believes in fax and phone calls, it took him several years of convincing by his son to accept the email.

But he doesn’t think that working on Whatsapp or the phone is “working”. During the lockdown WFH period, he was erratic and thinks that he is paying for his staff for nothing as they are not in the office.

The joke is, I am still billing customers and we are getting the money. Meaning not only he made money during lockdown he made even more as the demand increased.

Doing my job fast is the bad part, half the time I appear to be very free and the old boss saw me chatting on Whatsapp on my phone.

The next day, I received a notice from HR that I was terminated for using my phone all the time. I went to look for the boss’s son and showed him that the Whatsapp chatlogs were all work-related during office hours.

He said he understand but could not convince his father.

A month later, the company called me to come back as their current customer service was overloaded. In my head, I was thinking “Now you know I am important”. I told HR to get the boss to call me if not I will not even consider coming back.

The boss called me and said that there were a lot of urgent tasks and so on and said he wants me back and will offer me a pay raise. I rejected him because he did not even apologise once and wanted money to buy me back.

Guess some companies are doomed to fail since they cannot move on.

There’s 3 of us in this story. I’ll just call the other two friends A and B cos idk how else to name them.

Basically, the three of us have been close friends since secondary school. (all 18 now) We got closer as a trio over the past 2 years with me and friend A being pretty much best friends that text everyday and hang out frequently since we’re also in the same school till now.

Recently, we were at our part time job working together. Friend A is typically not very onz at work and was legit slacking off that day. Friend B and I obv were kinda pissed cos we were doing all the work so we joked around calling her a slacker and saying we’ll split half her pay among the two of us. Despite that she continued slacking off and we went on with the jokes about splitting her pay etc. Next thing we know she’s showing us black face and then she tells the manager she’s “sick” and goes home.

Now, it’s been like 3 days but we’re both hidden from her ig stories and she clearly wants nothing to do with us (muted our stories, doesn’t reply texts) apart from me attempting to arrange to meet her so I can finally collect back my 2?3? portable chargers that she keeps forgetting to return me. When we actually do meet it’s gonna be fking awkward and I’m tempted to show attitude back but I know I shouldn’t. It’s just so childish and immature on her end.

I know maybe Friend B and I should’ve been more cautious with our words but I still don’t see how this is something worth her going MIA on us.

I don’t see myself or Friend B being able to apologise or whatsoever because to us she’s the one being petty rn. But we know she won’t budge either bc she’s got too much pride. So much pride that I don’t even see her being able to get past this whole thing even if we do make a move to resolve it.

Tbh, it’s more of her loss if she actually kicks us out of her life bc shes been drifting from other people too so she doesn’t really have a lot of people to surround herself with besides us. I know this, but yet somehow I’m so irked and hurt by the mere fact that she’s seemingly willing to throw away years of friendship and adventures (even future plans like grad trip etc) over something childish like this.

Idk what she expects. Do we have to be the “bigger people” in this? Actually, is this even worth my time? Is the friendship even something worth saving if she seems so willing to blow things up just like that?

Girlfriend has only guy friends…

I (23M) started a long distance relationship a few months ago with a girl (20F) I’ve been in absolute love with, however there is a single issue that bothers the Hell out of me.

Essentially all of her friends are guys online that hit on her, it comes to blows where I tell them to stfu and she tells them to stop, but ultimately she says she can’t control how other people see her and does not want to cut contact with them because they’re her only “friends”.

She has a guy best friend that she just revealed to me admitted his love for her 4 months ago and she told him he is like a brother to her, so he “changed” his stance (which I don’t believe) as only seeing her as a friend.

Apparently he and his family are flying out for vacation next week to where she is and she wants to go see him and I outright said absolutely not, but she makes me feel like the bad guy for not wanting her to be around dudes who want to bang her or have “secret” romantic interests in her.

I do not believe men and women can be friends AT ALL without there being secret implications.

I trust her, but I do not trust her friends whatsoever and want her to cut contact with them, but she says i’m isolating her.

I need advice. Am I the bad guy here? Is her refusing to cut contact with these guys for the sake of our relationship huge red flags?

All names are fake…

ppl around me often see me as a XMM because of my physique and my personality and it’s bugging me as I want to be taken more seriously and I’m not young anymore at all, so what can I do?

This has been bugging me a lot. People around me – from colleagues to friends, acquaintances and even ppl I’ve just met, all share the perception that my personality is like a XMM and I’m “cute”. And not just physically.

One time my boss casually mentioned to our group that I’m like the “small sister” of the group. And one time I met this girl, she’s much younger than me, and 30 mins into chatting she ardy commented that I seem like someone who’s nice to bully (not in a mean way more like poking fun)

I’m in late 20s, have a professional job, very petite, I like to dress casually most of the time and doesn’t carry around any luxury bags or stuffs.

Why this bugs me is because I feel like this implies they don’t really take me & my opinion as seriously and have the impression that I can be pushed around easily. I have to say that my personality is quite meek, can’t hide my emotion, I’m nice but a little bit awkward around ppl sometimes and am goofy and laugh a lot.

But I am totally independent, take care of myself well, and like to care and listen to others.

I don’t know what is it I do that make ppl perceive me like this. I don’t see friends or colleagues around me having the same issue so I can’t ask for their help.

So what should I do? Change my fashion? Be more aggressive and confrontational? Less nice and acts more aloof? Play more mind game?

Any input is really appreciated! 🙂

I was offered to join a company in the F&B industry. Spoiler: I quit in a few months.

The boss spoke greatly of his company and said that he will take over the food industry in Singapore. The interview was quite weird as it took place at a Coffeeshop.

He proudly flaunts his wealth and said that he runs the coffee shop blah blah, (You know old people can go on and on).

Shortly after I joined the company I was brought to the office and I thought that I was in a third-world country or a homeless shelter. The boss said that his office is grand and has the “flavours” of a traditional office.

Yeah right, crawling with rats and cockroaches.

There were regular meetings at this company that accomplishes absolutely nothing, the boss of the company will spend 90% of the time telling us about his dream but he is literally one step into the coffin while the other leg is at a retirement home.

The meetings goes on for hours and hours and we accomplished nothing. Literally, a broken radio which repeats itself every 15mins.

We can literally spend 4-6 hours wasting time with this senile old man and he leaves us with less than 2 hours to finish the job.

Leaving us with so little time to complete our work, we can barely make it or complete sub-par standard work for him. Yet he has the audacity to complain and wanted us to work overtime.

So most of the staff was getting kind of sick of the old man’s worth ethics, The moment he starts saying a few words we will complete his story for him so that we can move on.

He knew that we were mocking him but he was still happy to hear his own stories.

The old man had a pipe dream of dominating the F&B industry in Singapore but he was just paying young people like me to listen to his grandfather’s story.

I hope I don’t become like him when I get older.

Months ago I spoke to my friend about passive incomes and looking into doing something along side my full time job.