My immediate reaction to your post is; “Come on who are you kidding! A design job without OT? That’s like KFC without chicken!” Onward to solving your problem; I suggest that you flag it up to your boss to ask for more design related jobs. Behind their back you look for another job with preferably a better salary. Alternatively if there is a new project you could volunteer yourself to take the designing for the new job. Sometime you’ve got to ask for something to get it. Noticed this was posted late last year. Hopefully your situation has improved, otherwise it’s time to make a move. (But remember to quietly get the new job first before resigning)

Depends on how close they are. what they are trying to do; 1. Make you envious, 2. Start of progress to sell you MLM 3. try to attract you (>vo) If 1, can ignore cause it’s probably a sign of insecurity. If you are really close, you can act “wow” and ask for treat, but pity them inside for their insecurity. If you really dislike this person, try to sell them some product. If 2, ignore, if you ask for treat they might invite you for an MLM event. But... if free meal... 3? Up to you. Actually there is a possibility that they don’t know what they are doing is showing off. Cause after reflection, I realise did this before, but it was regarding my savings not salary. I was actually sharing cause I was feeling abit insecure about my financial situation (after retrenchment exercise in 2008) didn’t think it was considered “show off”. My friend later privately told me not to talk about money during meet ups. So if you think this is a possibility and you are close enough. You can remind them nicely. Maybe you could phrase it like “don’t make yourself a target.”

In my case, I was introduced to MLM as a consumer. For the groups that are more focused on getting customers as oppose to getting people to join them, there is less of an issue you’ve highlighted above. With the exception of bad sales service, & hard selling to get people to buy more, by appealing to their greed (more discount) though. The upline I’m with would frequently describe how hard it was at the start and it was some time before it pays off. So affording luxury immediately is definitely not possible unless they have been doing MLM for sometime before graduating. edit: I’m still a loyal customer after 10 years, and Friendly with the upline, so you can say I’m the positive example on this post? XD. Always remember 一种米养百中人. I actually read that MLM has bad name overseas because it was considered as exploiting salespeople cause they don’t get paid a salary and have to buy the products before selling. But if you think about it, isn’t this how franchises work as well? Unfortunately most people who join, don’t judge (or don’t have the capacity to judge) the product to see how profitable it is before joining, hence all the complains. Below is my attempt to answer your questions; 1. With regards to affording luxuries, you don’t need to be with MLM to “show off”. There are lots of people out there who rack up debt just to “live the life”. 2. entrepreneur sounds nicer than free lance. Think about all the “xxx managers”, “xxx ceo“ out there. Housewife can also call household logistics manager. 3. I assume change company name refers to the “group” not the product brand. If it’s the product Brand You should quickly run in the other direction, and never get involve with it. There’s actully no particular wrong reason to change the name. It might be that they’ve changed their base of operation and join in with another group, hence change of name.

As a person that tried to sell MLM to friends before (about 1 month before I realise I not cut out of it). My Friends just told me, “sorry ah but I really not interested.” And we’re ok. Just firmly and politely turn him down. Don’t say ambiguous things like, “I’ll think about it.” You’re just asking him to check back with you again. I’m not sure how far he has gone to sell the product to you so don’t want to suggest more stronger method to reject.

First you need to understand the difference between MLM and pyramid/ponzi. MLM and pyramid are actually 2 different things. MLM is legal. They have an legitimate product to sell. Pyramid and ponzi is illegal, they don’t have a product. Just using the money from the lower tier to pay the upper tiers. Pyramid usually uses MLM as a front. Hence the misunderstanding and negative outlook on MLM. For MLM, It’s just a choice the company made to sell through MLM instead of through direct stores. It makes sense to the companies because they get Super on sales people without having to pay a salary and shop front. It’s MLM cause they get these sales people to recruit new sales and gave them benefits for recruitment of good sales people (key note benefits not for recruitment but good sales people). All this is done to improve the sales of the products. Think free lance insurance agents. Then under MLM there are legitimate product. Things that actually improve people’s life. Tupperware is a good example. I personally join Herbalife as consumer. There are definitely a more out there. One way you can check how big these companies are. And then there are fake products. The fake ones are really bad. Usually they will try to sell huge amount of products on you at once. Then run with the money. Even under the legitimate MLM companies, you need to watch out for the type of sales people you are meeting. Especially if they are trying to get you to join as sales, by buying large amount of products. I treat and judge the sales, like financial Advisors, whether they are just try to sell to you to get commission from sale of product or actually think of your situation before making suggestions. If you are not thinking of joining, it actually isn’t a big issue just ignore everything. If you are buying as consumer just use common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is fake. If consumption product. Please check if it has all the required licenses. Rule of thumb. Whether as sales or consumer. Always start your purchase with 1 item, even if it’s more ex.. Don’t be greedy for discount. If possible get free trial.

In my case, bonds and endowment plans was the only investment I had in my early 20s and know nothing about investment. As your knowledge get better and your confidence grows. (And you have more money) You will adjust accordingly. There’s a lack of information here. Is your 30% based on what you have now or your plan for what you plan to save for investment in the next few years. If it’s what you have now. Depending on the amount, might not be worth diversifying now. E.g for good bonds I personally will not subscribe less than $10K. (SSB except, cause I treat it like a high interest fix savings account.) Don’t be too fixated on the percentage, until you have a sensible pool of investments and need to balance out, maybe do a review of all your investment every half a year or annually. (Usually the percentages are based upon a fairly large sum of money, so might not be relevant to beginners who only have a small sum to start with) IMPORTANT. Don’t die die buy bonds because you need to put 30% in. Look for what is suitable. Similarly to your other 70%. (Ignore my comments if you are looking into funds and their proposed allocation. I am assuming you haven’t bought anything so your first purchase will actually be 100% of your portfolio minus savings, and I’m assuming you’re not given a huge pool of investment funds by your parents.)

I read to the answers of the others before replying. Most of what they say is right. One way to cut a large cut out of your expense is to move to a place with lesser rent. Think a room rent in HDB flat, in say Yishun or Sengkang is about $400-500. But this is subject to your current contract. I’m assuming your Budget above is not what you’ve been spending but what you are proposing cause if you have followed it you would have saved more than $20k already. Looks good for a starter. If you keep to it. But follow the advise of others if you want to save more

Cutting out the small things just don’t make sense to me, actually I don’t have a lot to cut out already. - Don’t do grab except for reimbursable office work, unless I get Seedly grab vouchers XD. - already on Sim only plan, saved $35 - cancelled my cable TV last month. Saved $45 My only comfort is food. Which I monitor the Budget closely. That said, I mostly prep food at home. Don’t spend more than $200-300 on restaurants and cafes, eating out in general (including hawker) Sacrifice Vacations maybe. (It’s occasional for me now. Not a must go, annual affair) Can save about $2000-3000 for small trips $5000-6000 for major trips Sacrifice privacy to get extra cash? Not sure if it’s good for my mental health though. Can earn about $2000-3000. Can also save on taxes if utilities included in rent. Currently, I feel my situation is just right. But if I need to do something drastic, I will consider to move in with my parent and renting my house out.

Agree with the rest on the risk of short time investing. Especially with the global market being so volatile now. I’m not a roboinvestor so don’t know the info. You should check if you can keep your investments in the account even if you don’t stay in Singapore. Definitely don’t suggest you to invest if you die die must remove your money immediately when you leave Singapore. You should only invest if you have the flexibility to leave the money there, should you need to leave the country during a market down turn, it will at least gave you an option to cash out later at a better time. Do note that leaving investments in another country might result in other situations like if you need to keep a local bank account for them to transfer your investments to, can you even keep your local bank account, min sum in bank, transfer fees etc, so you need to do your homework.

If I remember correctly, the transfer is non reversible. If you think you will be using the money in your OA, just leave it there. SA is mainly for retirement. This option will not be relevant to you, since you are still young. You should consider it after you’ve gotten your commitments in place and know if you can afford to not use your CPF for any future purchases. A better option will be to top up your OA account, especially if you are planning to buy a place in future. This allows some tax relieve, though the amount might not be critical if you belong to the lower tax tier.