I want to put up some things I've heard which I feel is poor mentality, leading to poor decisions and eventually being poor financially.
According to Singapore statistics, median monthly household income from work was $7,570 in 2012.
I saw a post on Facebook.
6 days a week with 14 hours of work (84hrs/wk) for $4500. By dividing by the total numbers of hours put in per week and convert it back into a 5 days work week with 10 hours of work (50hrs/wk) context, it only adds up to $2700 per month. No bonus no AWS no annual leave and need to stay away from family and friend. A lot meh???????
If u really think it's a dream job, ur really naive. Loll
Grow up. It's definitely not that easy for sure.
When the child grow up u will lose ur job
utterly underpaid for 1 of the toughest job.
Admin job - $1500 , baby sit -$1500 driver- $1500 total =$4500 all done by 1 person. Mon-sat burn . Not a good job. Still think banana peeler is the best job in sg follow by Sakai shushi dishwasher .
And here, we have comments from folks with just pure negativity. Oh it's just too hard, there must be some catch, etc etc. Every job is hard when it starts, you just get used to it. This job will probably be the same. It might even be easier than other jobs. Thing is this role would be considered very attractive. However, for some folks, all they think of is the negativity and will just keep doing whatever they are doing as they will believe that any change is just too difficult. Although statistically, there is evidence that the change will be for the better.
Here's another example on a website on Poor Economics. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty (2011) is a non-fiction book by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo, both professors of Economics at MIT. The book reports on the effectiveness of solutions to global poverty using an evidence-based randomized control trial approach. It won the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.
(Taken from Wikipedia)
Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their book Poor Economics – Rethinking Poverty & the Ways to End It write a very interesting story about a woman they met in the slums of Hyderabad. This woman had borrowed Rs 10,000 from Spandana, a microfinance institution.
As they write “A woman we met in a slum in Hyderabad told us that she had borrowed 10,000 rupees from Spandana and immediately deposited the proceeds of the loan in a savings bank account. Thus, she was paying a 24 percent annual interest rate to Spandana, while earning about 4 percent on her savings account”.
The question of course was why would anyone in their right mind do something like this? Borrow at 24% and invest at 4%? But as the authors found out there was a clear method in the woman’s madness. “When we asked her why this made sense, she explained that her daughter, now sixteen, would need to get married in about two years. That 10,000 rupees was the beginning of her dowry. When we asked why she had not opted to simply put the money she was paying to Spandana for the loan into her savings bank account directly every week, she explained that it was simply not possible: other things would keep coming up…The point as we eventually figured out, is that the obligation to pay what you owe to Spandana – which is well enforced – imposes a discipline that the borrowers might not manage on their own.”
The example brings out a basic point that those with low income find it very difficult to save money and in some cases they even go to the extent of taking a loan and repaying it, rather than saving regularly to build a corpus.
This includes a lot of very small entrepreneurs and people who do odd jobs and make money on a daily basis. Such individuals have to meet their expenses on a daily basis and that leaves very little money to save at the end of the day. Also the chances of the little money they save, being spent are very high. As Abhijit Banerjee told me in an interview I did for the Economic Times “The broader issue is that savings is a huge problem. Cash doesn’t stay. Money in the pillow doesn’t work.”
Hence, as the above example showed it is easier for people to build a savings nest by borrowing and then repaying that loan, rather than by saving regularly.
Similarly, I wonder why some low income individuals in Singapore choose to work for menial pay. There are instances of people working for SGD800-1000 per month as cleaners! That will never get someone out of the low income cycle. Furthermore, I think it is a waste of their energy. There are always alternatives and I often wonder why someone would want to keep themselves in such a situation. For example, I myself have set up a flea market stall on a Saturday. Essentially, the event allows an individual to set up a makeshift stall with SGD50 to sell some stuff for a couple of hours. On 2 separate instances, I made SGD100 and SGD200. This is for 1 day work for about 6 hours. Flea markets are available every weekend at different locations in Singapore. If someone chooses to set up a stall on every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, they could potentially earn about SGD1200 per mth, considering SGD100 per day selling some items. You could buy some products wholesale from Thailand, Indonesia, China, Malaysia and sell them at a good mark up at these makeshift stalls. Naturally, you would need to be selling items which are in demand and not selling items which do not move. One could think of other alternative income avenues for Monday to Thursday and you could probably earn easily more than SGD2000 per mth. It's not a lot, but it's a start and it's still better than SGD800-1000 per mth.
Which brings me back to the start of this blog, what you think makes you poor. If you do not think of other alternatives and keep doing what doesn't work, well, it will never work. People tend to HOPE that things get better instead of take active steps to make the situation better. They hope for big bonuses or to strike the lottery and to them, just by buying a lottery ticket is deemed as trying to make things better for themselves. The thing is, success starts from within. If you always think of yourself as a victim, you will always be a victim. One should always try to think of ways to make things slightly better. Same as the concept of compounding. Slightly better every day, results in large improvements in the long run. But if you're not trying or not even thinking, then nothing will change even in 10 years.
Simply put,
If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
Henry Ford,
US automobile industrialist (1863 - 1947)
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