So many questions, many bad guesses.
I won't be answering every question, but I'll answer a couple:
yyhwin said:
Financially independent means can earn money on his own?
No, financial independence came well after I started getting paid for work.
My first steady job that paid money was from about age 12 or 13 when I delivered newspapers in the U.S. for a couple years. I had the morning paper route (the tougher one; the competing newspaper was delivered in the afternoon, and in my area the afternoon paper was more popular). Every morning, 7 days a week, I got on my bicycle and picked up the newspapers from a drop location, did the final assembly (especially on Sundays, when there were a lot of advertising inserts to put together), and delivered the papers to each subscribing house on my route, to their doorsteps usually. Some homes had a proper front porch of some kind, and in those situations I could throw the (rolled up/bagged) newspaper onto the porch, carefully. If my aim was good, it was the quickest delivery, and I never stopped rolling. If I missed, I got off my bike and fixed the problem. Dogs sometimes chased me, and some of them had teeth.
I also had to collect the subscription fees every couple weeks, and while most subscribers were pretty good about paying in their envelopes that I left with their papers, I had to make a separate trip to collect from those that didn't pay on time. Some subscribers only got the Sunday paper, so they required a little bit of different handling. And I could also request a couple extra copies to start free trial subscriptions, to try to win some new subscribers, so I did that routinely, especially when I noticed somebody new moving into a house on my route. Those trials required some special handling, too. The weekday paper was supposed to be delivered to every house by 6:30 a.m. (Sunday and maybe Saturday also by 7:30 a.m.), and I was pretty good about that but had to handle some complaints if the paper was 10 minutes late or whatever. Very rarely I missed a house, most often when the central office got a new subscription request but I either couldn't find the house or they didn't let me know -- or maybe somebody (rarely) "borrowed" (stole) a paper -- and so the subscriber would call central dispatch and complain, and I'd have to fix that. Or, worse, the regional manager would have to fix that, and you didn't want that to happen too often. Fortunately, most subscribers were pretty mellow and liked their "paperboy," and the relative novelty of it. Newspapers are dying, and parents are more paranoid, so paperboys and papergirls are really, really rare now.
Every couple weeks, on Saturdays, I visited with the regional "boss" and settled the bill. The paper got the full subscription fees, and then they paid me something like half that -- all quite above board. This was all pretty well regulated since it was one of the rare exceptions to child labor laws, a job that middle school students could do before school -- and the newspaper itself had investigative reporters trying to uncover child labor abuses and other scandals, after all. The newspaper also sometimes ran promotions I could aim for, so you could get a free backpack or something like that if you signed up X new subscribers over a couple months.
When the weather was particularly bad my father would help out -- there's that family "backstop" -- but almost always I was on my own. One of the difficult parts is that we didn't actually live on that particular newspaper route (since somebody else, an adult, had the "territory" around our house), so I had to bike some distance away to get into the paper route area itself. And then bike almost past my house to get to school. This paper was a "broadsheet," and an excellent one (still around fortunately), not a tabloid. The Sunday paper was
heavy, occasionally so big I had to make two trips to the drop point.
Anticipating a question, my family didn't need the money. But I earned a little bit of money, I could buy a few nice things with it, and it was something to do before school. It also kept me informed about the world, because I could at least quickly glance at the front page every morning.
That first job was U.S. Social Security exempt, which was the rare exception. Starting at age 16 there are many more jobs allowed, and sure enough my U.S. Social Security earnings history starts at age 16. (Analogous to a compulsory CPF contribution at age 16.) I definitely worked during the summer school holidays, and I probably worked as a camp counsellor that first age 16 summer.
But no, all that wasn't financial independence. Far, far from it. It was just a little bit of income, to help out with university costs (in particular) but also to pay for many of the small day-to-day expenses that I had. Including something fun once in a while, like a gadget, ticket, or hamburger. Somebody else was still housing me, educating me, and much more, until my 22nd birthday.
agau168 said:
Financially independent at age 22 and you still take MRT/buses?
Sure. I don't like riding on motorcycles or scooters, but every other vehicle seems fine to me. I prefer the bus a little since the view is often more interesting.
klarklar said:
I am guessing that his heart got captured by a Singaporean girl.
No.
