Should I sell my hdb after MOP?

My hdb has reached MOP. My wife and I make about 20k a month. Should we sell off our HDB and buy a condo/ landed?

Cannot decide if the investment is worth it. Now we have a lot of freedom with money and can easily pay off our entire HDB in less than 5 years (solely using cpf oa)

But property agents say it is a waste to keep our HDB.

Any advice?

Edit Both early thirties No kids No car No loans except housing loan

Netizens’ comments

• of course property agents say it’s a waste. they want to help you sell and earn the commission…
  hard to advise without knowing your background – kids? savings? how much outstanding loan u have? what kind of condo/landed as prices can range a lot…
• Who cares what the Property Agent say. are they going to sponsor your new home? Nonsense sia
  Why care if you’re happy at where you are staying right now?
• Funny, All my married friends want to move to mature resale HDB, because old HDB has bigger space. New Condos and their pigeon hole rooms are not worth it
• Best is to stay debt free and do what you like in life without a mortgage hanging over your head. Freedom is very rare, don’t bind yourself to the rat race.
• Did your property agent also offer to help you help the next best private property after s/he is done with selling your HDB? 🙂 2 times the commission!
• You obviously do not have a desire to upgrade. If you really don’t, just invest your cash and have a strategy to grow your CPF OA faster (transfer to SA or invest your CPF)
  At your income level you probably don’t want to grow your SA too quickly to do CPF SA top up for tax relief (RSTU), so I would say just invest your OA.

In 2020, I joined as co-founder of a startup. The founder had the patent in his name.

The verbal agreement was he’ll transfer the patent to the company name. I started working on the project. In 2021, I was getting my legal things sorted to claim equity when I was told, (as required by law) that the company had a considerably large fine that was increasing every day due to the founder not paying taxes.

I was lied to, not aware. My accountant who was supposed to check things for me, such as the health of the company, also screwed up and didn’t inform me while I was getting ready to register.

So I’ve been in a relationship with gf for 3 years alr but mentally, I’m drained and physically I been asking for breakup but she don’t to accept it.

We was sec sch cca mates and went different ways until we met in NUS again.

We started to catch-up n get into a relationship, at first it was sweet but now all it have is sour,salty relationships.

I’ve very weak stomach digestion n have GERD but she like to eat spicy foods a lot. She’ll force me to eat, angry at me when I don’t want to eat and only want me to follow her preference on everything. From foods to clothing

There was once she bought couple tee n told me to wear on our next date but I didn’t wear as the tee wasn’t washed yet. Usually I’ll wash my clothing first before wearing as I not sure how dirty is the shirt before production n etc. She angry at me for the date when we’re outside

She took a ride from the motorbike I was riding, her skirt was white colour n it has stained from the motorbikes engines part. She was angry that I didn’t remind her of that and take a tree twig and scratch the motorbike. now the motorbike have scars on it

I’ve been asking for breakup but she been saying no. She know where I live, my parents number. If she complain to my parents, they’ll nag at me for not treating her well, saying ppl is female, must treat her nice n etc.

As someone now officially menopausal, who has had significant symptoms for about 2 years, I had a thought recently.

While people are trolling or sharing how great their career is, I cant help but worry over mine.

Having spent a few initial years at business firm, I left when the company was cutting manpower due to covid19. I didn’t get laid off but the company had very long working hours.

I went into the special needs industry as I had a passion for the kids and the school accepted me. However, things weren’t what I thought it would be as the SN teachers aren’t ‘protected’ by the school at all. What that means is that the SN kids can attack you and get away with it scott-free. I felt very upset as I felt that us teachers, should have at least a basic form of protection from the school. But nope, not one.

After leaving the SN industry, it was tough returning to the finance industry as I had been away for a few years. I managed to finally get a job after 6 months of searching.

Things didnt turn out as planned and I left after 5 months.

Once again the job search begins.

Sometimes, I look back and wonder if I made a mistake anywhere and would have changed something if I had the chance to. But back then when I was applying for the job, i wouldnt know how the company and job would truly be like until I’ve actually started it. There wasn’t much I could do or change actually.

I’m just really disappointed that my career has turned out like that. It has been around 8 years since I’ve graduated and my peers are earning much more with better prospects too. But thinking about it I don’t think I’m very much far off from them in terms of aptitude and attitude. I was willing to work and give my best always.

I cant help but feel that you really need the element of luck in building a career and finding the right job. I must admit I totally did not see myself having a career path like this.

Anyone else’s career did not turn out as planned or you know of people’s who didn’t? Is that common among most graduates?

27 male. I’m a software engineer. The following is for reference but not the point of this post.

Here is a rough breakdown:

Net worth: ~$263,000

Salary: $93k
Bonus: $2.5-5k
Side hustles: $15k-30k

Cash: $135k

Debt: $0

Monthly expenses (bills/necessities): $1k-1.5k

I can look at my position and understand I am extremely fortunate to be where I am and I know I am doing fairly well. I can say that but I don’t think I truly believe and or can convince my brain of this. My salary is high for my age but I don’t think it is high for my field.

I regularly see those around me and peers online routinely making 3-5x what I do.

I really do not enjoy working for others. My goal is to have enough money to retire into my own personal endeavours. My favourite hobby is making money, my least favourite thing is working for others.

My FIRE number is $2.5m and it feels light years away. I just recently hit 1/10th of my goal which should feel rewarding but instead put into perspective how far I really have to go.

An old friend of mine recently sold his company for $50,000,000 as it was acquired by a very large company that recently IPO.

It hurts to see someone a few years younger than me doing only what he wants every day lavishly for the rest of his life. This isn’t even my biggest life steal currently but just an example. I am bothered just as much by seeing others in my field making multiple times more than me. I think to myself damn I have to work for the next 5 years to make what they will be earning this year.

Fellow FI friends, how do you personally deal with this?

Seeking advice regarding toxic workplace and dealing with people’s impressions of me.

I started working (this is my first job) late last year in the public sector. I was placed into my position based on their requirements, meaning the position I’m currently in was not what I initially requested/applied for. I was told that my position had been empty for years, so there wasn’t even a proper job scope. When I first joined, I barely had anything to do and was more like the PA for the department, assisting them with ad hoc tasks. Fast forward 1 year, and little has changed. I have a few peak periods where I have work to rush, but I’m otherwise free. On top of that, I’m excluded (idk unintentionally or otherwise) from many things. I’m never informed about meetings, projects etc until the last minute. Sometimes I’m not even informed. They just decide among themselves and leave me with question marks. But I’ll come back to that later.

There are different employment schemes in the company- I’ll just call them category 1 and category 2. The structure of my department is my supervisor (category 2) and two colleagues (category 1). I’m under category 2 and I’m the most junior in terms of age and experience. There is a thick and invisible line between the different categories. The category 1 people are typically very clique-y and stick among themselves. My two category 1 colleagues have been working together for a few years and are very close, but they keep arm’s length from me. They used to be friendly but are actually two-faced which I only recently finally realised. They’re civil but they wouldn’t bother standing up for me, which explains why they don’t keep me in the loop about alot of things. Then there’s my supervisor- a category 2 worker but much more senior. My supervisor is a repulsive micro-managing tyrant who is biased against me the moment I started work. I can’t be bothered to go into detail, but I’ve been reprimanded in front of the whole office on several occasions. My supervisor has no respect for my dignity and knows who he can abuse. I’m a very easy target simply because I’m young and a category 2 worker. He would never dare to use the tone he uses on me to the category 1 workers even though they are also his subordinates. It is so blatant the difference in the way he talks to my colleagues and me. I have never been so disgusted by anybody. So naturally, I avoid him as much as possible.

So back to workload, my colleagues have very full portfolios, but my supervisor hasn’t assigned many major projects to me. At the start, I tried to ask my colleagues if there’s anything I can help them with, but their attitude was like “we’re technically your colleagues not your boss, we shouldn’t be assigning you work”. But I’m obviously not gonna go directly to my supervisor asking for more work, especially when I don’t even want to be anywhere near him. So from some point this year I’ve been slacking unapologetically. I’m mostly just using my phone at work, waiting to go home (sadly no wfh). I can tell my colleagues are feeling animosity towards me because I don’t have much work, but am I really to blame for this? When I offered to assist them before, they declined.

Recently I was made aware that there’s some talk in another department that I have “no initiative and am not doing any work”. I got a little defensive, because they don’t know the full picture and how I’ve been treated. If I don’t feel like I’m part of this department, have such toxic supervisor/colleagues, and am treated like an outsider, is it any wonder that I wouldn’t go above and beyond the bare minimum? I don’t know and don’t want to know who talked to the other department about my work, but it’s pretty obvious. Recently there’s this buzzword called quiet quitting and I’m doing exactly that. I literally just wait for my paycheck. I don’t know how I should react to those remarks about me and what i want to do about it. Half of me feels like idgaf because except for the boredom, I enjoy that I get away with not doing much. I’ve lost my motivation anyway. I don’t have any peers around my age in my job category in the office, so I don’t have anyone who really understands, I’ve just bottled up all the frustrations. It’s been very lonely. But the other half of me wonders how badly these gossiping and bad impressions spreading around will affect my career in the long run

Can you date someone from a different background?

So I (29F) just started a new relationship with my new BF (33M). We met at a party. We are together for about half a year. I know what is his job title, and where he works, but don’t really know exactly what he does. He tries to explain but I do not understand. However, something has been bugging me.

Whenever we go out on dates, we will always go to those atas restaurants. The prices are insane! Spending $1000/pax a night on dinner is crazy to me, but it seems like a norm to him. I am just a normal office worker earning about 3k/4k a month and I can’t imagine spending that kinda money just on one dinner, but this seems like the norm to him and he never once expected me to pay him back. Sometimes he will ask me to go somewhere cheap, but it will still cost at least $100 for both of us.

There was another time where I accidently dropped his watch when I was over at his place. It got damaged and he told me not to worry about it, but I felt extremely guilty and offered to pay him back. He kept insisting it was fine but I secretly went to google his watch, just to check out how much it is and what will be the expected cost of repairs. I wanted to surprise him, I know how men are with their watches. His watch is a brand I have never seen before and it costs 6 figures…… there is no way in hell I can afford to pay him back, and I think he knew.

I once questioned him about his spending and things. He claims that he works very hard and wants to enjoy the finer things in life, but I really feel that this amount of spending is crazy. It’s a whole different world. I went quite ballistic as I was worried about debts and stuff. He then promised me that he has 0 debts.

Am I crazy? What kinda world is he living in? I thought 6 months is too soon to talk about money la. I wanted to ask him to show me his NOA, but I feel it is too soon to show my psycho side la. I did beat around the bush and tell him that I want to buy a house, and settle down eventually, so maybe we should discuss about our future and maybe we can look at BTO in the future, just to kaypoh his finances. He just say that if we do end up getting married, we will just buy any house we want, it should be ok one, no need to worry. He is a sweet boyfriend and never once made me feel uncomfortable (other than this). Should I just let it go?

For context, I’m a M-F every week frequent flyer. I’ve boarded hundreds of planes. I just got on a flight and was going to my seat near the back of the plane (only window seat available) when I ran into the flight attendant heading to the front of the plane.

I don’t want to say which airline is it cause I don’t want the flight attendant to find out, but all I can say that it is not a budget airline.

She doesn’t move over for me. All the seats next to us were still empty and no one was behind me because they were still boarding sky priority which was mostly at the front.

Returning Singaporean shocked with Expats and Job Interviews here.

I am a returning Singaporean who has studied, worked, and lived in North America for a decade. I am amidst a job search now. They have interviewed me in the local job market for a while and I often get interviews from MNCs. The NGOs and SMES were kind to me, but in MNCs, I keep meeting insecure expat interviewers.

The moment I tell them I was in North America and have an accent while holding a Singaporean passport, I feel the interview becomes an interrogation session. The interview becomes unfriendly and the questions become condescending. I am not being xenophobic here, but I’ve seen this expats qualification and work experience in the Americas. They studied at mediocre universities in the Americas and the companies they worked for in the Americas are not huge either. They are just more politically correct and act more professional (Which sadly Singapore doesn’t teach in our schools).

I know am speaking from a bad experience, but the insecurity I see in the interviews from expats is obvious. And here’s the thing. A mediocre university degree in arts/sciences is very easy to get in North America. There is a reason why you get international students who don’t even speak English going to Americas and returning with degree in 4 years. It’s a cash cow for those countries.

Compared that with Singapore, we grew up with streaming education and PSLE from age of 10. We’ve been taught to compete for those 3 universities locally or spend money to go overseas for that paper.

Now coming back to interview sessions, it makes no sense to get a condescending tone from a non-Singaporean who just got a degree qualification scraping off and working in random companies in the west and just speaking in an accent. (It just takes 5 years to get that accent)

I assure you, they would not get this cushy job in the Americas. That’s why they moved here!

Are we being suckers here? The whole competition with the world talents is bullshit when we have saddles, hooked on to us.