Financial Goals - 2018

Last year, I set a financial goal for me to reach 10k in one year. This is quite substantial as I am just a student and do not hold a full time job. So my money will come from savings + parent's allowance. Here were some things I did:

-Worked at FnB. These places are good as they provide meal and transport allowance, thus I would not have that much expenses. FnB customers will also tip occasionally, depending on the quality of customer service I am able to provide. However the work is physically demanding and I realised I did not know how to interact well with customers and the staff there. This is when I realised the importance of interpersonal communication skills.

-Did an internship. While the internship does not pay a lot (800 before CPF), I learnt a lot of programming/technical expertise from the job. I had good supervisors and met helpful interns who were willing to share some tips with me. I believe this helped me land my scholarship as well. Food there was also relatively cheap as the canteen food was subsidised. Transport wise, I did not spend a lot since my dad was willing to drive me to work. Definitely a much better environment than FnB.

-Tuition. Definitely tuition earns a lot more than FnB, but the amount I earn is depending on how much I hustle. There is a limit to how much I can hustle per day because I needed to factor in time taken to prepare for lessons. This job allowed me to manage a business in a way. I needed to advertise myself to potential clients, I needed to learn how to deal with clients. I needed to manage payments, and chase clients for patients. Money was good, but increasingly difficult to manage workload once university started. I also realised I wasn't as good a teacher as I thought.

Teaching is a job that requires a lot of commitment, patience, and interpersonal communication skills. The students typically will not tell you when they don't understand. So as a teacher I also need to read their body language, and make them comfortable with me. I learnt how to code in Latex, I learnt the aspects of managing a business. But perhaps I'm not as good as I thought I was, so I am slowly letting go of this teaching career. I think I should just focus on programming expertise.

-Scholarship. The annual payments alone are much more than 10k. But still I wanted to earn 10k of my own money, so I disregarded the scholarship as a contribution to my 10k goal. I earnt the remaining via tuition. But since my dad stopped giving me allowance, it was harder for me to reach my 10k goal. My expenses also increased a lot since I stopped having meals at home. The stock mrket also wasn't doing well so despite my investments, it was harder for me to reach 10k.

At the end, while I couldn't reach 10k in this year alone, I reached it around January 2019. I think it was still a journey that taught me a lot of skills. I had to learn to persevere even with bad jobs and a toxic environment. I had to learn how to protect myself while freelancing (tuition). I learnt how to talk to people etc. I got myself a scholarship. And I learnt to be more financially literate.