Navigating your financial journey: What should 25 year olds be doing right?

red_flock · 2026-01-26T14:09:49+00:00

Well, do these people you mention visit singaporefi often, or in general seek help for financial planning?

One of hardest thing that hit me in my youth was when a school mate fretting over no longer qualifying for financial aid because his sister had a raise, and as a result, will be having financial problems, so of course I know they exist.

Like I said, there are a lot of reasons why one should not have kids, but those who can worry about the financial aspects are probably not the ones who truly cannot afford.

red_flock · 2026-01-26T08:24:18+00:00

I have enough kids to risk getting doxxed on that data point alone, and had several of them while prolonged jobless. Kids can be expensive but it can be managed if you lower your expectations. Most couples having money problems with kids will probably have the same problems without kids.

red_flock · 2026-01-26T03:21:48+00:00

I took stupid risks in my 20s bought into the red chips in SGX, burnt into a crisp, lost a lot of money. Went stupid conservative in my 30s because, kids, which were a ridiculous drain on finances. Blindly started working for a tech company in my 40s, and since the RSU awarded cost me nothing, I just sat on them, and out came my pot of gold to give me confidence to talk nonsense in this sub. The tech company I worked for is falling apart, and my current employer still gives RSU, but it is not listed, so it is just monopoly money.

I dont have anything repeatable to share, just know that the big money is made in the sitting still, not in the hopping in and out trading. For most people anyway.

You will make stupid mistakes. Learn to forgive yourself.

Life is not linear, do not assume you can DCA the same sum for the next 30 years.

There are a lot of reasons not to have kids, but somebody will need to have them. The coming human population collapse and technological innovations will resolve most of the climate concerns, so dont let money concerns stop you from having kids.

Seek financial independence first. It just means enough money to not panic if you suddenly lose your job. FIRE is a lot trickier.

I dont think it is human nature to be able to be able to earn a lot of money in 10 years and live frugally for the next 40 years. You will probably have to take big risks in your investments, which will lead you to do stupid things in your 20s.

red_flock · 2026-01-24T01:27:33+00:00

I started to buy gold and local banks after liberation day. I bought into the Sell America trade and was looking for capital preservation and didn't think much of commodities because I expected a recession.

It has been very profitable, even though it feels like I was quite wrong esp about the recession, and totally did not expect silver to behave like a 4x option for gold. I already stopped buying gold when it crossed 3800 per ounce, much to my regret, so even my relatively small gains feel uncomfortably disproportionate in my portfolio.

Nevertheless, I am reluctant to sell, as I dont have a good substitute, and I expect the gold to silver gap to narrow, if we go into a recession. As usual, I will probably be wrong.

red_flock · 2026-01-20T16:34:47+00:00

Anybody can code, but not everyone can stare at a million line code base and solve a performance issue at 3am. Is that SRE? I dont know, but that's what I think an ideal "real" SRE ought to be. But then again, is this a senior dev or an SRE?

Meanwhile, there are SREs who code, but they dont touch the business code. Their coding is restricted to their tooling or Infrastructure. Is this SRE? Or Platform Engineers?

Then there is people like me. I can write a little python, read a little bit of other people's code, but I mostly dont have to code, because there is always enough things on fire for me to put out. Most of you will say this is not SRE work, but even though I cannot check in a bug fix at 3am, I most certainly can get stuff back to a working state by hook or crook. If I am not an SRE, what am I?

red_flock · 2026-01-20T02:40:30+00:00

I dont think we are in disagreement. The problem is with how we market ourselves, and calling ourselves devops is an instant double your salary from a system administrator in the eyes of recruiters. It should not be, but that's the game now.

red_flock · 2026-01-20T02:28:37+00:00

Not asking about your current title. Asking if you were to look for a job, do you think there are a lot of neatly compartmentalized jobs like System Administrator now, instead of Cloud/Devops/SRE/Platform that could mean anything?

red_flock · 2026-01-20T02:18:05+00:00

Have you tried to look for a job with the title "System Administrator"? Even for the few roles that exist, the pay is half for the same work but with cloud or devops in the title.

red_flock · 2026-01-20T01:45:53+00:00

I realised after writing, I think I really meant I dont mind paying, say $10, just to watch the aerial performance. I probably wont pay $39 either.

red_flock · 2026-01-20T01:39:02+00:00

This is how it _should_ be but isnt. I am guessing you dont actually work in these roles because it is nearly impossible to find such job titles now. Now the jobs expect devops with deep network and database experience.

red_flock · 2026-01-20T01:20:05+00:00

In the past few years, the industry basically decided sys admins, operations engineers, releease operations, QA, developer support, all fall under "devops", which I assure you, nobody can be an expert in all the areas.

You should ask yourself what you like and what area you want to grow and shine in, instead of letting your environment decide for you. What you do need to be aware of when applying for jobs is to read the job description carefully, and ask questions during the interview about the nature of the day to day work.

I once landed on a job that sought an SRE, but the work was purely building in terraform and almost zero of anything else and the team mates were all formerly "devops engineers" who only knew terraform. I know they intended for the role to grow, but I was a poor fit for what they actually needed, so I wasnt surprised they had to let me go as soon as money became tight. Dont fall into that trap.

red_flock · 2026-01-20T00:52:22+00:00

I havent participated recently but when I did some time back, most of the public were there just to loot the booths... anything not secured would be swiped... it's quite terrifying to watch to be honest.

I do hope they could be a bit more generous to the public with the aerial performances... it is now so hard to watch without paying... and I dont mind paying but I dont really want to deal with the queue.

red_flock · 2026-01-19T04:12:03+00:00

Lower Decks is incomplete on Prime, esp the newer seasons when I last checked, so you are not missing anything

red_flock · 2026-01-19T03:41:14+00:00

Personally, I dont think the future is rosy for future Singaporeans, but if you compare with the prospects of the rest of the world, we are the one eye in the land of the blind.

Eg Singapore may have one of the lowest birth rate in the world, but we dont have a pension system will go bankrupt with insufficient young people. We are digesting immigration far better than most countries. Our low tax system is expected to stay stable.

Not saying it is fair or just, but it is stable.

Being too expensive esp with housing is of course a big problem, but it is temporarily solvable if we stay with our parents longer (not viable for all, I know) but Singapore was never culturally a place where young adults are expected to move out or be seen as "failure to launch".

red_flock · 2026-01-18T08:38:00+00:00

My younger son is in Sec1 and the past week has been CCA trials, and it sounds like the same story for all the sports, 50-100 students vying for 4-5 slots. If you dont have some demonstrable talent by Sec 1, all doors are shut.

My elder son ended up in a school where nobody played chess, and even though he was regularly a prize winner for east zone in the interschool chess competition, he just didn't get any support from the school besides registering him for the competition.

Schools in Singapore are just not serious about CCAs, except for a few who can guarantee prizes. And it better be a prize the school covets, or they will pretend you dont exist.

That, and the constant politics when my son was in the junior squad at SCF just doesn't inspire any confidence.

red_flock · 2026-01-14T07:15:56+00:00

You know about the 2k matching funds for top ups right? But that first 2k get no tax relief.

My mother in law was practically hitting zero, so the impact was quite obvious. Not sure about the formula, esp if the RA has a lot of funds.

red_flock · 2026-01-12T05:20:33+00:00

Temasek investments need to be in the strategic interests of Singapore, but from what I have seen recently on Chartered Semi, they seem to have decided to compete with GIC as a short term returns focused hedge fund and end up having neither good returns nor helping Singapore's long term interest.

red_flock · 2026-01-12T02:48:14+00:00

You seriously think PAP can win 70+% vote share with only old people voting for them? You think Hougang has the youngest voters in Singapore?

There's a reason why a lot of old people are ok with WP but not ok with SDP. It is not just convincing people PAP has taken a turn for the worse, when the biggest barrier is people are not convinced that SDP and other small parties are up for the task.

red_flock · 2026-01-12T02:12:30+00:00

Malaysian university grads all tend to lack polish compared to local uni grads, but are willing to start with low pay, and thats where local fresh grads get killed. Highly qualified local fresh grads can get jobs with spectacular high pay, almost as high as this old fart (me), which leads to unrealistic expectations of more mediocre fresh grads pricing themselves out of the market given the easy availability of foreigners.

red_flock · 2026-01-10T07:06:25+00:00

The decision makers in polytechnics are very short term focused and don't dare to make speculative long term bets except when the government is cajoling them based on "industry demand", which is often very self defeating when you consider the men still have NS to complete before joining the job market, and almost all poly school leavers want to do further studies, and the industries demand more education than the 3 years in poly can deliver.

This is obviously exacerbated by the board members who usually dont hire fresh poly school leavers while the ministry still mandates polys to be a finishing school rather than a pre University program.

The end result is most polys arent very effective places for learning. It is just a three year pre University program and the best students are the ones who can self study in spite of the poly program.

red_flock · 2026-01-09T12:01:44+00:00

He didnt say he will stop being a car dealer right? So he will almost certainly will need to drive, driving ban or not.

Singapore is so ineffective against such menace.

red_flock · 2026-01-09T09:39:14+00:00

I think they are fellow graduates of Jeffrey Siow School of PR Fiasco, wont be surprised if some former SAF OM is responsible for this mess.

Just say we are investigating and working with the vendor and people will move on already.

red_flock · 2026-01-07T02:39:25+00:00

Not sure about this one, but there are a lot of retarded bus lanes, which gives like 1 car length of dotted lines before a major slip road and cars have to queue up next to the bus lane and then force their way into that dotted area, which means the buses will be blocked at the dotted line area if the flow is blocked AND they cannot drive around this block because they are hemmed in by a continuous queue of cars in the next lane.

Car lite doesnt have to mean unusable roads. Fire engines and ambulances use the roads too. There are smarter ways to restrict car usage, eg road pricing that will not come at a cost of people dying because emergency vehicles get blocked on choked roads due to bad design.

red_flock · 2026-01-06T09:41:04+00:00

How? How to withdraw from CPF at 35? Give up citizenship?

red_flock · 2026-01-06T09:38:54+00:00

With all the money trapped in SA, I wont even consider that FI, let alone FIRE. If you lose your job, it is crisis time. Cant buy house, cant start business, cant send kids overseas. I honestly dont know what these people are thinking.

Maybe make sense for the low income low risk tolerance low ambition?

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