First of all, thanks for all the comments and shares of the post! Surprised to receive so many comments. Reading them all with a open mind and laughing at some of the candid comments.

From this I learnt that perspective is important, and many people can have different understanding when reading the same sentence.

Apologies for not phrasing it more clearly. I do not really buy clothes and toys monthly ,

but kind of mean that my money is used to cover all the miscellaneous stuff for the household. But of course as mummies sometimes I do splurge a bit here and there on myself and the kids, but definitely not every month. I’m also the kind who gives no qualms about spending money like on snacks and food for family and friends, this is my way of expressing my love to them. But moving forward I will be more mindful of my spendings.

I do admit we eat out quite often especially on the weekends. Will try to cut down on this. And groceries definitely sometimes cost quite a bit with the snacks for the whole family.

Definitely not showing off here ah but genuinely wanted to hear from others. The combined income allowed us to live comfortably, but I was curious to know if there are free good advices since Singaporeans are supposed to be good at saving up , so that I can tap on as a good reminder to improve on myself. Sorry I do not trust financial advisors at all hence I will never approach them with my finances. The monthly savings plan from insurance agent is actually a good example of my regrets, it has very low returns, but I’m locked for another good 10 more years.

I like to use the credit card because it has cash rebates, and I treat it as form of payment only. I don’t have any problem paying the bills monthly and I always pay them on time. But I do agree sometimes it is easy to overspend with credit card. One of the comments mentioned 6 jars financial management system, which I didn’t hear before. Thank you so much for that!

My $100 monthly is for term life insurance, excluding the hospitalisation insurance. For me I think it’s good enough. There is insurance from the company that I’m working in too.

I know the $1400 for parents seems a bit too much with the amount I’m taking home. I have a younger brother but he earns much lesser and has his number own family to feed. My parents are near 70s already with very little cpf and they prefer cash. I don’t mind forking out this money because I rather give them and make them happy while they are still around. What is the point of burning money to them only when they are gone. I wish they will live long until 90s and I will be able to be a filial kid to them as long as possible. This is possible with my husband’s support and he don’t mind too. I know this sounds irrational to some of you, but this is my way of showing my love back for my parent.

I particularly like the comment “what you spent is yours, anything else is not yours because the moment you’re gone, they become others”. Of course I feel in life we should strike a balance , not overly stingy on oneself and also not overly spendthrift so that one have nothing to fall back on. There was also a comment on health is the most important asset which I totally agree. And thanks to the comment saying 40 years old should have at least $300k and another comment with the screenshot of the retirement sum amount required.

I hoped the advices in the post were also able to help others, whether you have more or less money than me. I will continue to improve on myself , work hard to earn more money and spend more wisely.

I believe that good attitude and positive mindset will attract good energies. I wish everyone a good life and may all of you be blessed with happiness and good health always.

I’m a former investment banking analyst for 3 years. Thought it may be of interest to some of you to provide an hour-by-hour breakdown of a good day vs. a bad day in banking.

This is just based on my own personal experience and every day was pretty different so treat this as a bit of a general overview.

A Good Day

Here’s what a good day would look like and I’ll assume I’m mainly working on a few marketing books which means we haven’t signed on the client yet and we’re just trying to win business

• 8:30AM: Wake up around and scroll through ~20 emails and see that nothing requires immediate attention so snooze for another 15 minutes. Luckily, I live super close to the office (a must-do if you’re a banker) so I get ready and get to the office around 9:30 AM
• 10:00AM: I get my desk set up and answer a few emails but given that my projects are pretty quiet, I ask my analyst buddy if he’d like to go get a breakfast burrito with me
• 10:30AM: I hurry back to my desk for a conference call for a potential IPO that we’re working on. Luckily as an analyst, you don’t ever have to say anything so I quietly eat my burrito and take notes I can send to my team
• 10:30AM – 12:30PM: For the next few hours, I start working on spreading trading comps which is one of the ways to value a company for a marketing book I’m working on. Trading comps entails going through financial statements, looking up financial metrics, and copy pasting them into an excel spreadsheet. At first it was fun, but now that I’ve done this hundreds of times, it’s a little boring.
• 12:30PM: It’s now around lunchtime and I go out with a few analysts and associates to grab a sandwich to eat back at the desk. 
• 1230PM – 3:00PM: I scarf the sandwich down and get back to work on the trading comps and start double checking all my numbers. I then create a nice chart to showcase all the numbers and print it out for my associate. Since I got my pages done, now I can relax a bit for my associate to check over the work. I check on my phone, start texting my friends to see what plans they have for the weekend, etc.
• 5:00PM: My associate is done checking over the page and says the numbers look good but want a few formatting changes, so I quickly make those and send the full presentation to our team for their review. We now play the waiting game again, and this is often why bankers stay late into the night. Even though we finished our pages by 5PM, our Managing Director is out there having a life and responding ASAP to some analysts still in the office isn’t exactly his number one priority
• 7:00PM: I go back to surfing the web and grab dinner to bring back to the office and finally get our comments at 7PM. Our MD gives us a list of 15 changes, which isn’t too bad since they’re all pretty quick fixes.
• 7:00PM – 9:30PM: For the next few hours, I finish up all the changes and send it over to my associate and VP, who are both at home now. They both check over everything and give me a few more comments. I make those changes and send them back the revised version.
• 10:00PM: Team gets back to me saying the presentation is good to go. I send it to our printing office who creates prints and binds the books into professional-looking booklets
• 11:30PM: I pick up the books from the printing office and drop them off at my MD’s desk and call an Uber home
• 12:15AM: I take a quick shower and crawl into bed, watch a show and crash
• Commentary: This is a relatively easy day even though I didn’t necessarily leave the office early (sometimes I would leave from 8PM-10PM on some really really good days). But the work wasn’t intense and there was some waiting around which feels a little more like free time.

A Bad Day

Next up is a bad day, and here, I’ll be assuming I’m on an intense live M&A deal

• 7:00AM: The worst start to a bad day is that you haven’t slept much the day before so let’s say I slept at 3AM and am now waking up at 7AM
  • Not only did I not get much sleep, sometimes, my seniors or clients might be overseas, which means I have to wake up early since I worked on the other side of earth.
  • I wake up to 50 emails and slightly panic because 10 minutes ago, my MD asked for some changes to the presentation I sent out last night in advance of our 9AM call
  • I email my associate that I am working on the changes on my phone and boot up my computer which is just a few feet away from my bed
  • I work like a madman for an hour turning comments and send it to my associate and while waiting for comments, I brush my teeth and put on my suit
• 8:30AM: By the time I’m in the office, my associate has provided me a few comments and after making them, I send it off to the client
• 9:00AM: I have a short breather for about 5 minutes before jumping on a conference call with a client. Let’s say that we’re in the beginning stages of an M&A deal and the call is about valuation
  • For the next 30 minutes, I take notes on the call and at the end, I learn that the client has finished making changes to its management model and will be sending it to us right after the call so we can build financial models based on their figures
• 9:30AM: Right after the call, the model is sent to us, and my associate and I each take the next 2 hours going through the model and trying to understand how everything flows (any reputable company will have an internal financial model it uses to project its next few years). Bankers use this model to build out valuation materials but these models can often be really hairy, confusing, and unorganized
  • Usually, it takes more than 2 hours to dissect a management model if it’s really complicated, but let’s just say for our purposes it takes 2 hours to briefly look through all the tabs
• 11:30AM: My associate and I discuss the questions we have in the model and set up a call with the client at 12PM
  • In the meantime, my Managing Director wants the latest information about the company, so I compile the latest equity research reports of our client and send it to him
• 12:00PM: My associate leads the call and asks our questions about the model while I take notes and during this time, my co-worker drops off a salad at my desk since I won’t have any time to grab lunch myself
• 1:00PM: My associate and I run into a meeting in our MD’s office to discuss what we need to do.
  • Our MD lays out to us the presentation materials he wants page by page, referencing old materials we can recycle and update and laying out the financial analysis that we need to do
  • During this meeting, my associate and I are furiously taking down notes so that we don’t miss anything
• 2:00PM: I scarf down my salad which is the first thing I’ve eaten all day and then get working on the model first while my associate puts together a shell of the presentation
  • Over the next 5 hours, I’m using the management’s model to create a discounted cash flow analysis which is one of the ways to value a company
• 7:00PM: I send over the model to my associate who starts checking over it while I work on the rest of the presentation which involves updating market overview slides and spreading trading and transaction comps. I also hop on a Grab food order with my colleagues for dinner during this time
• 8:00PM: My associate gives me changes to make to the model which I refocus my attention to and work on for the next 4 hours
• 12:00AM: I’m finally done with the next draft of the model, which I send to my associate, who tells me to work on the other parts of the presentation and focus on the model tomorrow
• 4:00AM: I finish making updates to the market overview pages, finish spreading the trading and transaction comps, and send all of these materials to my associate and then head home to crash

Commentary: It’s certainly possible to have 1-4 weeks of many 2AM-4AM nights in a row. Usually, an intense live deal also meant working 20+ hours on the weekends (though you could sleep in a bit). I’d say about 20% of my days were bad days, 20% good, and 60% in between.

Reply to “Malaysian girls of better calibre than local girls.”

Since this is an anonymous post, I can be completely honest here. As a local Sg girl, with around 30% of my friends being MY, there are some points which I wish to express my point of view, in regards to yours.

1) MY girls are more hardworking than locals?

Yes, I think generally and if you compare by mass, most MY girls more hardworking than most SG girls. You know why? Because most of them, their lives here SG here are very simple. They usually after work then go home already. Most of them have lesser friends than local girls(since it’s our home, we generally have more friends). And they are very thrifty. Their main purpose in SG is to earn more money, so they choose to work more O.T, earn more money, spend less money by going straight home, especially when they have fewer friends.

SG girls on the contrary are a bundle of energy after work as they meet up friends for dinners, ktvs, pubbing/clubbing, mahjiong, rollerblade/badminton, east coast park etc. It doesn’t mean SG girls are not hardworking, they work like a maniac during office hours so that they can off work punctually to achieve their work-life balance because they care about the quality of life. On the other hand, local girls in the self-employed sector like property and insurance are usually very hardworking because the more time/hardwork you put in, the more you earn – as compared to normal salaried jobs which doesn’t pay/doesn’t pay much more when you O.T. In short, SG girls don’t blindly be hardworking – but they will – if the rewards are good. They are smart.

While you mentioned MY girls are more willing to help their colleagues, I have to say MY girls are generally, really nicer than most Sg girls because they are warm-hearted and helpful, even to strangers. Culture maybe. Sg girls are more aloof(colder), cynical if they don’t know you well. But, once you are close with SG girls, they will definitely help you. The SG girls you know most probably are not close to you. I probably know why~

2) SG girls are more snobbish than MY girls?

Like I mentioned, MY girls easier to talk to than SG girls. As for snobbish girls, I hardly met or know any except those in boutiques. To be very honest though, Sg girls are less easily impressed than MY girls. So if a guy is trying to flaunt his income/background/education etc or being judgy(like you), a SG girl will TURN snobbish because they couldn’t care less. On the contrary, the MY girl may really be impressed with your flaunting or if not, they will be nice enough not to show you attitude by smiling politely. But not SG girls, they will clearly show you that they are not impressed(or ask you to f off). That’s why SOME local men bear a deep bitterness/hatred towards SG girls because they want them, but just couldn’t get them. Then, they will start saying SG girls are materialistic.

3) MY girls are better-looking than SG girls?

I feel quite the same. Tall/short, pretty/ugly, fat/slim, not much difference. But I think MY girls generally wear less makeup and wear much simpler/conservative/less fashionable. Different styles I guess. Perhaps in office or at work, they will look on par. But once go out, when SG girls doll up, I think (generally)they will attract more attention than MY girls who dress really simple with minimal makeup(not that they are not pretty). That being said, if MY girls put more effort into dolling up, I think they will be equally attractive.

The MY girls you know are probably not from KL(city) so of coz you can’t compare the mass of MY non-city girls with SG city girls. I know a MY KL city girl who dumped a local guy friend of mine, saying he’s not worthy of her because she’s very rich at home. Just saying. Cultures and environments are different. Of course we will be different but we both have our pros and cons.

Generally, I find that Malaysian guys seems to be of better calibre than our local ones.

Firstly, they are hardworking. Most of these guys who I know dont mind working overtime or help to cover the duties of those who are on leave. Most of the time, they are the last to leave the workplace based on my observation. On the other hand, the locals are usually the first to zao, even before 6pm.

Secondly, even for those who do not have the opportunity for higher education and end up doing sales in shopping malls, they are usually quite friendly and polite to customers. They understand basic etiquette, unlike some local staff, full of snobbish attitude.

Moreover, they seem to be better looking even without going to the gym, compared to the local ones. They know how to dress up, work around a problem and don’t scream at cockroaches.

Figure-wise, they are more masculine and buff, hence are suitable for local girls. Most of the local ones I know do not know how to take good care of their body and have a high BMI. They may be relatively taller, but the horizontal aspect remains questionable…

Could diet and culture play an important role in explaining this big discrepancy?

Editor’s note: I see what you did there… lol

I had a really busy day today getting things together for my upcoming masters degree. As mentioned in a previous post I have a chronic illness which gives me debilitating pain and fatigue.

I don’t work, so I usually make dinner and do all the chores. Last night I went to bed super early because I was feeling unwell and didn’t wake up until late this morning. I didn’t do the dinner dishes.

This morning I was running late to an appointment so the dishes didn’t get done then either. Before I left I got the meat out for dinner to defrost, and while I was out I texted with my husband about what we were having and said I’d be back in time to make it. My errands took longer than expected so I just got home and it’s 9pm and I’m absolutely exhausted. It’s important to note my husband works from home.

When I walk in my husband is eating dinner. The dishes from last night are still in the sink. He asks me why I didn’t do them this morning. I told him I was running late and he asked why I didn’t set an alarm. I said “I wasn’t well and I didn’t expect to sleep the full night when I went to bed so I didn’t set an alarm, it should show you just how unwell I was that I ended up sleeping 14 hours”. All he said was “anyone can sleep that long”.

I then asked him why he didn’t wash the dishes and he said “I did as much as I can”. It looked like he had washed his plate and glass, not much more. He also said he washed the pan he used to make his dinner tonight. I asked where my dinner was and he said “I didn’t make you any, I didn’t know what you wanted.” I told him we had texted about it and he said he didn’t read it right. Maybe this part is true because he didn’t make himself what I had texted we were having. I said to him I feel like it was thoughtless of him to not at least text and ask if he could make a start on my dinner (we sometimes eat different things because I’m trying to lose weight) but he chose to just leave everything to me. He said he was really tired from work and “I’m not going to push myself to do more than I can when it’s not things I should be doing in the first place.” I asked him what happens when I’m at university next week and we’re both tired and there’s things to be done. He shrugged and said “I’ll do what I can but I’m not a machine.”

I’m currently lying in bed, hungry, tired, in pain, not sure whether to sleep or eat. Is this just my husband being really tired from work? Am I expecting too much from him?

I worked at a IT retail store. I got fired 30 minutes after the store closed as soon as the “investigation” ended.

Someone stole a laptop. They blamed me. Not for stealing it, but for “aiding” the thief.

This was false. I gave the laptop to the cashier and told her it was for that guy. The guy slipped out of line and said “I forgot 1 other thing”. Came back with a monitor box and placed it beside the laptop to hide it away from the cashier’s PoV. While she was cashing other people out, he swiped the laptop, walked up to the greeter at the door and said “this is my laptop, I was just getting it repaired”. The greeter let him go and off he went on his merry way.

The retail does not have barcode door detectors somehow did not ring. The greeter also got fired at the end of the shift, and he was rehired 5~ months later because he has down-syndrome and was going to sue the store.

F that place.

That was my first “infraction” and was there for 2 years as a Service Technician. Selling laptops wasn’t even my job, I was doing the salesman a favour. The same thing would have happened to anyone. But because I TOUCHED THE LAPTOP, I was automatically labelled as an aid in theft.

I threaten to sue the company and I was compensated me for 9 months of same-wage pay. Win.

I’m 31, and my then-girlfriend is 27, and we both met each other through a mobile dating app.

Even after several weeks of frequent meet-ups, she still refused to answer me whenever I asked her about her past relationship. I would say if I’m totally unaffected by her past relationship, she will always be at least a 9 out of 10 to me.

One day we both decided to take our dating to the next level, where she finally revealed to me her past relationship. It was at that point of time I was instantly devastated, not by the amount of exes that she had, but the experience that she had with her last ex-boyfriend before she met me. To be honest, over the past 3-4 weeks since we first met, I have developed feelings for her, and we both were really just meeting each other exclusively since our first meet-up, and it was rather difficult for me to back out when I learnt about her past.

Ex Cheated on her

She met her then ex-boyfriend when she was 20, and he broke up with her when she was 26. According to her, her ex cheated on her, and even when he no longer wanted to be with her, he still went missing in action for a month. Despite numerous phone calls and text messages from her, he did not respond to any of them at all. She chose to give him a chance for reconciliation because she loved him very much, but he decided not to continue the relationship anymore.

Bear in mind that this dude earns about $2k+, doesn’t have savings, has no proper financial planning, smokes without her knowledge though he had promised to quit smoking, prioritizes his friends more than girlfriend, and has no intention to progress further in his job, but she still wanted to stick with him for the rest of her life.

Yes, I do pity my ex-girlfriend, and I did promise her that I will be a much better boyfriend than him. I’m totally different from her ex. Prior to my current doctorate study, I was earning $4k a month, I’m always hungry for more, and apart from my savings, I invest in stocks as well.

Most importantly, I have never ever once cheated in any of my relationships. However, I do have my flaws as well. Just like your boyfriend, I can get very mad and sometimes even talk harshly to her, but deep in my heart I really love her. I get triggered easily by her past, by so many things, pretty much everything that they had been through for 6 years.

Their overseas trips, their time spent with each other’s parents and family, they stayed at each other’s place, they celebrated anniversaries, festivals, and events together, they even applied for BTO, the list goes on.

For instance, when we passed by the plot of land being developed for her then-BTO flat, it triggered me of how much they had been through, and I would become moody and would not feel like talking to her. Please don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of you guys will throw sarcastic remarks like asking me to date a virgin, or why am I complaining when I have my past as well. No, virginity does not matter to me, and I have dated non-virgins as well. And also no, I do have exes with past relationships, just that their relationships lasted from a few months to a year, in which not much “milestones” were achieved, so I didn’t get triggered by them so easily.

The entire relationship progressing from getting to know each other until the stage where they thought of getting married and buying a house could easily get me into rage mode instantaneously.

Over the course of 10 months when we were together, I had always been trying to look past whatever she shared with her ex-boyfriend, by thinking of all her good points, all the big and small things that she had done for me, yet, I still failed at the end. A close friend of mine knew about it and advised me to break up, but I still chose not to give up on her, and continuously calming myself down whenever her past came across my mind. I swear I will never ever find such wonderful woman in my life, and I have really tried whatever I could to stay away from trigger points caused by retroactive jealousy, but it was a very painful experience.

Whenever I got reminded of her past, I would get mad at her, and she always had the patience to provide me with reassurance and comforting, and I would in turn apologize to her and gave her a hug. On the day we finally broke up, I burst into tears, because I knew I can no longer walk through my life journey with the favourite woman of my life.

In every of her past relationship, she strived her best to give her 100% to make things work, and in her most recent one, after holding on to the same guy for 6 years, he let her down. I know for sure that if I could overcome this massive issue, together with her loyalty and strong determination to love me forever, we both would definitely get married and lead a happy life together, but sadly, I really tried my best, and I failed to get over her past.

Bumped into an ex-colleague (who is the same age as me) earlier and had an interesting brief catch up chat over coffee.

He and his wife are now divorced. But except that there is nothing wrong with their marriage and they are still living together. The sole purpose of getting the divorce is to be able to buy ANOTHER HDB FLAT (under the singles scheme). So they collectively own two HDB flats as two single individuals.

You see, he was a manager that had recently been displaced by cheaper foreign labour. As all of us know, at our age, there is a real challenge in getting a job that would pay him a decent salary. Yes, there are lots of employers that wants to hire him. He is, afterall, a qualified professional with a wealth of 30 years’ experience behind him. However, these greedy employers are just not willing to pay him his worth and wants to exploit his skills and experience for a mean salary. He refused to prostitute his skills for a low salary. He end up driving a cab that (ironically) pays him more than any of the offers that he had received.

He won’t be getting any of his CPF money next year because he won’t be able to meet his minimum sum. All his past CPF contributions (more than $800K) had already gone into his 5rm HDB flat that they are staying in now.

His wife has some CPF left but she (too) won’t be able to get a single cent out in a few years’ time because she (too) won’t be able to meet the minimum sum as well.

So they planned, got a divorce and bought a second HDB flat just before they could lock away her CPF as the minimum sum in her CPF.

They then moved into the new flat and rented their older flat out legally because he had already and duly met the “Minimum Occupation Period” required for the legal renting out for that flat. And this rental income will serve an additional passive retirement income.

When I asked if he would be flouting any HDB regulations by doing that, he replied,

1) They are legally divorced and they are both legally SINGLE now.

2) He can retain the existing 5rm flat under the singles scheme and his wife is eligible to buy another flat under the singles scheme.

3) There is no law in this land that prohibit two single persons (divorced or not) from living together as a couple regardless if they were previously married or not.

4) At his age, being legally married is just a marital status. It doesn’t stop them living together as man and wife. They both had made their wills.

5) Instead of having the money stuck as a minimum sum in their CPF, they might as well utilise whatever that they can get out of their CPF so as to get an alternative passive income since:-

– – a) they won’t be able to get any of their CPF money anyway

– – b) even when they do get their CPF monthly payouts after the age of 65 yrs old (which is still a long way to go), the amounts will be so miserable that they would hardly be able to do anything decent with it anyway…

– – c) so…. they might as well get a second HDB flat with whatever money that they can siphoned out from their CPF (before the money is being locked away instead under the minimum sum)…. rent it out and (at least), the monthly rental income of $2,500 can help them live a more dignified retirement IMMEDIATELY (right away) rather than waiting till they reach 65 yrs old for that miserable delayed CPF payout that is so insignificant….

Thinking aloud now…. could this be the new norm of retirement in Singapore that Singaporeans will be planning for? Wouldn’t it be so sad that we have to come to this, in order that we can respond to how our hard-earned CPF money is being wilfully and forcefully withheld from us…