Salary.sg – Your Salary in Singapore

A former classmate told me that most investment bankers have relatively short i-banking careers. In fact, many start their second careers in less lucrative sectors before they hit 35.  In investment banking, It’s either “up” or “out”. That cruel.

So, why am I still waxing lyrical about investment banking?

Say you graduate with a good MBA at age 25 (add another 2 years if you serve NS) and start your career in i-banking. In the next 10 years, you can possibly and quite easily make an average of US$200k per annum. If you are prudent enough not to splurge on Ferraris or Lamborghinis, you should be able to save at least US$100k every year. In 10 years, that’s US$1 million.

You’re a freaking millionaire by the time you “retire” from your first career. Get my point?

NUS recently started placing full-page ads in Straits Times.

I’m not aware of any official graduate employment survey from NUS this year (see SMU graduate employment), but the NUS ads say that the top 20% of NUS Business School with BBA Honours are getting an average starting pay of $5,046, with the “top salary hitting $11,500 before bonuses.” Another investment banker perhaps?

As for NUS engineering graduates, the “top earners (draw) a monthly salary of $8,000 before bonuses.”

What about the average of all graduates?

Following up on my previous post on career choice, this post explains why I think investment banking is a great career choice for smart students.

So you’ve got into the top schools in Singapore, scored distinctions, and represented your schools or even Singapore to compete in all sort of brainy competitions. Australian Maths Competition, American High Maths Exam, Maths Olympiad, Physics Olympiad, Chemistry Olympiad, National Software Competition, IOI, you name it…

Ok, so you’re smart. Heck, maybe you even do well in other areas – sports, drawing, music, dancing, dating, mahjong, etc.

You’re really smart and capable.

How about challenging yourself to make a million dollars before 30? Too easy? How about $10m before 40? And achieving that without burning your dad’s savings on starting some lousy startup, or doing high risk stuff like betting on stocks, options, futures and commodities.

Possible? Definitely. IF you are smart.

Here’s my suggestion:

1. Get into a good university. I’m talking about MIT, Stanford, Cambridge, and the Ivy League unis. Try to get a bond-free scholarship (more on scholarships another day another post).
2. Do extremely well in university. Nothing less than an A-. Better yet if you maintain perfect GPA. Challenge yourself with extremely tough courses like advanced computer science theory, advanced econ, advanced math, advanced statistics, econometrics, advanced financial calculus, etc. You get the idea.
3. Seek internships with the top investment banks. Only consider the bulge bracket ones, i.e. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers, and maybe Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, Citi, Deutsche Bank, and UBS. Don’t forget to get a good testimonial at the end of the internship.
4. Then graduate as valedictorian (or close to), and go for interviews. It won’t be too hard to land a job in investment banking, possibly with a starting pay of US$100k upwards.
5. Better yet, get into the top business school (“B-school”) and get an MBA. You can do this right after college, or after a couple of years in Wall Street.

Zaobao.com reported that the perception that expats make much more income than locals may not be entirely correct.
A recent survey on 79 companies in Singapore (some are MNCs) showed that only 14% of the companies differentiate between expats and locals in terms of remuneration.
The same survey found that foreign employees with specialised knowledge in areas such [...]

[Update 30 Oct, 2007: the YA2007 version of the calculator.]
Wouldn’t it be nice if you can “benchmark” your annual income against the general population in Singapore?
Enter your annual income to calculate your “Income Percentile”:

The above calculator is based on the graph below, which shows Annual Income plotted against “Percentiles”. It is based on data released [...]

If you’re still a student and contemplating about your future career, listen up.
Many working adults regret not making the right decision when choosing subjects or courses of study. What’s worse is that in the past, teachers didn’t teach students how to choose a career. They themselves were probably none the wiser. I’m not too sure [...]

Another interesting article in today’s Sunday Times is about a guy who made his million (first million?) from the Internet.
Ewen Chia of www.ewenchia.com claimed he had some Internet businesses that brought him the riches. Apparently, he markets digital products to a huge list of “subscribers”. Some of the products are electronic books (or “ebooks”) that [...]

The Sunday Times today reported that the income of hawkers can be quite out of this world.
Topping the charts is Mr Lee Chee Wee, who is the owner of Beach Road Prawn Noodle House along East Coast Road. He reportedly makes sales of $139,200 a month (max). Just by selling award-winning prawn noodles.
Coming in close [...]

There’s a quite informative and definitely entertaining “edutainment” show on CNBC (Starhub cable channel 15) every Saturday night. It’s called “The Millionaire Inside“.
Tonight, the show hosted 4 guests who had these pointers on “how you can also be a millionaire”:

Pay yourself first. Put away a sum of money, say 10% or more, every single month [...]

A study by Ohio State University found that people with high IQ (measured) do not necessarily have more net worth than people with below average IQ.
Jay Zagorsky who is the researcher behind the study said:
“Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth. And being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty.”
Nonetheless, [...]