Networking: Planting the seed of opportunities

It has been several years since Singapore leaders led the movement of “Every School is a Good School”. The aim of this campaign is to place less emphasis on academic grades, thereby creating a less stressful environment for our children. While the intention is good, it does not address the main reason why Singapore parents are so keen to send their children to top primary schools. In this article, I will share my views on the importance of network and the importance of who you know.

What you know

To put things into perspective, most Singaporean parents want their kids to do well in life. Having a good education, though does not guarantee success, would likely to open many doors of opportunities. Education also allows social mobility. This means that one is able to enhance his social status on the back of his education. So clearly, the stake is high when it comes to a child’s education in Singapore.

Education is important to our career because it provides the basis of “what you know”. Most people place a lot of emphasis on this because it is used as an indicator on whether you are qualified for a job. There are other factors like relevant work experiences and interview skills when it comes to getting that job but what I am trying to say is that “what you know” is one of the primary considerations as well.

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Why you should not quit without a job in Singapore

Recently I read that one of the fellow bloggers has resigned without a job. When I saw his article, I immediately commented to him that doing so was a terrible career move. Obviously people resigned for various reasons. The push factors could be because of bad bosses, poor company culture, lack of motivation to work or being overlooked for promotion. Whatever the reason it might be, you should never quit without a job, unless you are cocksure that you are going to be your own boss. Ten years ago, I made this career mistake, so now, I am going to share my experiences to young folks who feel like quitting from their jobs. Read on before you take the plunge.

Ten years ago
I resigned from my first job almost ten years ago, after deciding that I had enough of the stressful manufacturing environment I was in. As a young engineer, I could not imagine spending the rest of my career doing the mundane stuff I was doing. The pay was not bad, but not good enough for me to do over-time every week. So after quitting, I was very relieved and ready to venture out to another new job. I went for a few job interviews and the first question that the hiring bosses asked would be why I resigned from my previous company without a job.

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Jobstreet.com: Singaporeans not ready for retirement

The following article is published with permission from Jobstreet.com, a leading online job site presently covering the employment markets in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and Vietnam. The survey done by Jobstreet.com revealed that Singaporeans are financially not ready for retirement. I am not surprised by the results of the survey at all because in general, I find that Singaporeans tend to procrastinate or avoid planning for their retirement. Many Singaporeans don’t appreciate the importance of building wealth early on in their career journey and the worst thing is that many of them are lazy or cannot even be bothered to study the art of making money. Singaporeans have to wake up to their idea that if they chose to work for others, which is nothing inherently wrong, then they must learn how to invest to ensure that they can enjoy their retirement.

With the increase in life expectancy in Singapore, senior workers are considering to postpone their retirement beyond the country’s statutory minimum retirement age of 62 years old. JobStreet.com recently conducted a survey to find out if employers in Singapore are willing to accommodate them. Responses were gathered from 150 employers and 1,400 Singaporean workers aged 40 years and above .

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Internship Opportunities with Thomson Reuters

For many years, aspiring local finance bloggers have been lamenting on how difficult it is to obtain jobs in the Singapore finance sector. There were also many young Singaporeans writing to me on how to get into venture capitalist, investment banks, fund management companies. In Singapore, while our local institutes of higher learning have been churning out finance graduates with good academic results, most of these graduates lack working experiences and track record in investments. So there has always been a gap in the investment industry. With this in mind, SG Wealth Builder is pleased to collaborate with TrakInvest to bring you the Thomson Reuters Challenge. Winners get to work in Thomson Reuters Singapore as interns! TrakInvest is a completely free virtual trading platform that allows users to hone their investment skills and at the same time earn money through monthly competitions.
 

THE THOMSON REUTERS INVESTMENT CHALLENGE

2 students with the best investment portfolios will win an internship each with Thomson Reuters Singapore.*

 
TrakInvest and Thomson Reuters are pleased to announce “The Thomson Reuters Challenge” The online stock market challenge will be hosted on the TrakInvest (“TI”) platform and 2 winners will get the opportunity to intern with Thomson Reuters Singapore for a period of 7-10 weeks.
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New Year Resolutions

Happy new year to all readers! On this first day of 2014, I would like to pen down some thoughts with regard to how the previous year had panned out for me, as well as my new year resolutions for 2014.

2013 had been an incredibly good year for both my career and my blog as well. Readership for my blog, SG Wealth Builder, has soared from 50,000 page views in 2012 to 440,000 page views in 2013. The dramatic increase was due to my commitment to blog more often, surge in my blog’s email subscription and also due to the expansion of my blog network. These factors had contributed steady flow of readers to my blog and spiked up the traffic.

Interestingly, my blog has also attracted new Singapore vendors to form business partnerships with me. I was approached by BullionStar and Fitch Learning to be their affiliate partners. Although there were several lucrative offers from interested partners, my policy is to promote only businesses which I believe in. Thus, I had previously turned down a few opportunities. One of them was to promote Malaysian properties investment seminars for a company which I politely declined.
career
Invest in myself
Many people, myself included, tends to chase the money and invest in everything under the sun (stocks, ETF, property,gold, unit trust, etc).
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Plight of a Singaporean male

Recently, I was flattered to receive a long feedback from one of my readers, Hyom, to my previous post on a business idea to provide services to foreigners and PRs residing in Singapore. There was a lot of angry thinking in his response and I can also sense a tinge of injustice when he mentioned that he, as a Singaporean male, had to fork out much money for his tertiary education whilst foreigners of lesser talent received scholarship using our tax-payers monies.

I thank him for his honest feedback and can relate 100% with him as I am a fellow Singaporean.

Singaporean
Life as a Singaporean male in Singapore is not easy. My wife is a 100% Singaporean, so is my brother, sister, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, parents and grandparents.

I, too, went through the tough education system and paid for it myself. I, too, earned S$300 a month as a NSF for 2.5 years. I, too, compete with FTs for jobs in the market. Having contributed (and still do) to National Defense and economic growth for many years, I wish the country, in turn, can do something for me and fellow Singaporean.

If fellow Singaporeans do not even make the effort to look after our own countrymen in Singapore, how can Singapore continue to survive in this world?

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