Want to earn 5K before you're 28... it's simple. Become an airline cabin crew member. You'd easily top 5K once you move to widebody and intercontinental flights.

As for the merchant bankers... ya, I guess some of them earn a lot very early. But we should note how hard they get worked, how much they travel and how much stress they undergo.

You can earn lots too as a trader (forex, shares, commodities etc). But you can't sleep (one mkt closes, another opens) and forever stressed by the fact that you can (and do) lose a lot of money real quick too.

So, if you are very young, have no exceptional experience or prodigal skills, trust me. Any employer paying you well over the average will extract their pound of flesh from you.

Oh, ya if anyone wants to earn S$370,000 per year when they are 32 years old, join the Singapore civil service. 370K is the starting salary for superscale and the average entry age into superscale is 32 years old. But the job interview starts when you're 4 or 5 years old when your parents try to get you into one of the elite primary schools in Singapore. And the interview doesn't stop until you go through a top Junior College (secondary school), then Ivy League or OxBridge with top honours (not those rubbish "high" CGPA stuff but top few in your graduating class etc) on a govt scholarship and 8 years of govt bond. You have to keep beating your peers every year, every exam, every appraisal to stay in the game... how's that for stress?

Well, firstly, most employers don't consider 'thinking a lot' as potential. They consider it as... well... thinking a lot, which doesn't mean anything. I think 'adequate thinking' is expected of any employee. How can anyone work if they don't think enough? It's like breathing... everybody breathes and it's not an 'advantage' or 'potential' if you 'breathe a lot'.

But if you insist on highlighting it during interviews, then use a better term... like structured thinking process, or meticulous and methodical, or possessing framework or big picture thinking, circumspect... whatever. And be prepared with examples of how your 'exceptional' thinking process actually improved whatever task you were doing.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 20 2007, 10:21 AM

But alas, it's not up to you to define what rich means.

The dictionary defines rich as 'having a great deal of money'. And instinctively, that's absolutely correct.

People who have a lot of money ie. earn, inherit or are given a lot of money are rich. So what if they spend all of it? They are still rich. If you earn 100K a month, and you spend 100K a month, you're rich. Simply because you are capable of benefiting from 100K of goods & services (ie. value) each month.

People who have little money but save a big proportion of it are not rich. They are poor, and will always be poor because of the simple fact that they have little money. Living within your means is not rich. That's simply thrifty. If you earn 1K a month, but only spend 10 bucks, saving 990, you still only have 990. You're poor. You can take all your 'ultra savings' and you still only buy nothing of any real value.

So, it's not how much you spend or how much you save. It's how much you have (to spend or save).

This post has been edited by seantang: Apr 29 2009, 09:44 PM

The definition of rich is not dependent. It is simply having a great deal of money. More specifically then, you are trying to pin down the definition of "a great deal of money".

I was simply pointing out what the true goal posts are. You guys can continue arguing how wide those goal posts should be.

The definition of rich isn't subjective. It's very straightforward (ie. having a great deal of money). But I agree that the measure of it (how much is a 'great deal') is indeed entirely subjective.

Firstly... Savings is not the only way you can have money.

"Money" isn't only cash... when we talk about wealth & value, which is what 'rich' is all about.

When you spend, you're simply exchanging your cash for something else that has the same kind of value to you. Cash becomes goods or services or assets or a myriad things of genuine value. How well those things keep their value or whether they are valued as much by other people apart from you is a pertinent but separate point.

Secondly, why are you saving anyway? So that you have money to spend.

If I have an income of 1MM a month and I spend all of it... what's wrong? I've just done what you're trying so hard to save to do.

And when next month comes, I have another 1MM to spend all over again.

So like I said, being rich is HAVING the INCOME or money to spend. The fact that you actually spend your income doesn't change the fact that you're rich enough to have that income in the first place.

This post has been edited by seantang: May 10 2009, 05:59 PM

You're are insisting that being "rich" is an ongoing or perpetual state of being. It is not wrong, but you are going off on a tangent of what being "rich" means.

I am applying a technical and correct definition of rich e. someone who has lots of money to spend (on whatever he wants). Whether he will have lots of money in the future in perpetuity is of no relevance to the our exercise in defining "rich". Rich is simply having lots of resources or income to spend. Whether it comes from return from assets, or a stipend from an inheritance, or a well paying job is irrelevant, as long as the 'rich' person has a large cashflow to spend. How long he has that cashflow is just a matter of timeframe. If a rich person now is not rich in the future because he spent all his riches today, does not discount the fact that he is already a rich person to begin with.

Tying in all your additional conditions for growth or long term security is irrelevant. If we apply these concepts fully, then nobody is "rich" as everybody is vulnerable to something and there can be no guarantee that one is rich forever.

As for your point about having no reserves, go back to my earlier point about how spending changes the form of value from cash to some other tangible form of value (eg. a car, property, mobile phones, watches, wine etc... as long as it's not purely experiential lika a vacation). Whether you think these things qualify as a reserve is merely a matter of liquidity.

Then who says your definition is correct? I'm right, you're wrong, so there. What now? You don't want to budge, neither will I.

If you can't differentiate between BEING rich and STAYING rich, no problem. You carry on.

Btw, up yours for the BS putdown. If you can't stay civil, you can shove it up your arse.

Rubbish. Buying ANYTHING is expenditure lah, hence terms like CAPEX (Capital expenditure), Investment expenditure etc. EXPENDITURE is a cashflow concept ie. (any) outgoing cashflows. You might be thinking of EXPENSE, which is an ACCOUNTING concept, meaning expenditure that cannot be capitalised.

Now I see why your explanations of your formula is all screwed up.


Hot kitchens I can stand. A confused wannabe cook who doesn't even have a grasp of basic financial terms, I can't.

This post has been edited by seantang: May 11 2009, 08:38 AM

The gallery has spoken. Fair enough... no more fuel into the fire from me. Sorry fellas.

The tests in Facebook?


I really, really don't think so as well.

With the EQ test on FB of course. And also the number of friends you have in FB.

If that was true for each and every case, then why would all the self made tycoons with little tertiary education all send their kids to the best universities their intelligence could cope with?

They could have easily told their kids the exact same thing your boss told you, also with themselves as an example of someone with no tertiary becoming a millionaire/billionaire. But they didn't and instead sent them to uni. Why?

I think your boss just wants to keep a good worker. If you continue your studies, you won't want to work for him anymore. He will have to employ someone else at a higher salary probably. His advice might be the opposite if he were your father instead of your boss.

This post has been edited by seantang: May 15 2009, 08:42 AM