Every Source Of Income I’ve Ever Had (As A Fresh Grad Software Engineer)

I’m a fresh graduate (graduated April 2021) in information systems, and am currently working full-time as a software engineer in a bank in Singapore. Other than my full-time salary, I’ve had quite a bunch of other income streams (income is used loosely here and some entries are included just for laughs) and hopefully this might just provide value for some of you.

Note: currency used here is Singapore Dollar (1 SGD ~ 0.73 USD)

1) Ang Pow Money (Ages 0-Now)

In Chinese culture, every Chinese new year, married folks give unmarried folks ang pow money (money in red packets) as a symbol of good fortune. Symbolic meaning aside, it meant free money (a couple of hundred) every Chinese new year.

2) Pocket money (Ages 7–17)

My parents gave me money to buy food when I went to school.

3) Searching for coins under vending machines (Ages 7–9)

For some reason, in Singaporean primary schools, there was a 20% chance that I could find a couple of cents if I searched underneath the vending machines. On lucky days, I could find 40 cents, which was enough to buy 1 drink (at that time est. 2003)

4) Army Allowance (Ages 19–21)

In Singapore, males must serve a mandatory 2 years in the army or risk going to jail and jeopardizing our entire future. I started at age 19 and finished at age 21 before moving on to university. During my 2 years, my monthly pay was around 650 SGD per month. As we were expected to stay within the army during weekdays, we probably worked 12 hours a day I guess? Hence the average pay per hour for me was a crappy $2.70. (But not like I had a choice to not serve!)

5) Primary School Tutor (Ages 20–21)

I freelanced (or moonlighted according to the army) as a primary school tutor for math and science on weekends during my time in the army. This was supposedly prohibited, but I was earning a shitty 2.70 per hour. I was paid $35 per hour as a tutor, which was 13 times the hourly rate as compared to my army allowance. I stopped after a year or so as it was 99% babysitting and I just didn’t want to deal with that.

Note: For those of y’all who are unfamiliar with Singapore’s education system, kids usually attend primary school for 6 years from ages 7 to 12.

6) Piano Tutor (Ages 21–22)

Like all asians, I play the piano (just kidding). After I completed my army, I had 5 months to kill before university started. So I started teaching piano to kids at a music school for $22 per hour. Less than the rate of teaching math/science, but I didn’t have to look for students myself as the music school handled that for me.

After few months, I started looking for my own private students (on top of teaching at the school), and could charge $35 per hour. At age 22, however, I stopped teaching piano completely:

1. I needed more time to focus on my studies
2. this was 90% babysitting and I didn’t want to deal with this too much
3. I wasn’t learning anything useful that could advance my career by teaching piano
4. My weekends were burnt doing this shit

7) Undergraduate Scholarship money (Ages 21–24)

I studied information systems at Singapore Management University (SMU) from 2017–2021. I was lucky enough to get a bond-free scholarship that covered my tuition loans. The benefits:

1. Tuition fees were completely covered (This was $11500 per year)
2. Allowance of $5000 per year (which was pretty ok)
3. One-time $1800 laptop computer allowance
4. $14000 fund for overseas experiences (exchange programmes, study missions and other stuff)

Not too shabby I guess. The biggest takeaway here is that I graduated completely debt-free. As such, if you’re applying to university or college or have already started, I would urge you to apply for a scholarship if you can. You never know if you might just get that financial headstart!

8) Hackathon Prizes (Ages 23–24)

In my 2nd and 3rd year of university, I took part in a number of Hackathons for fun. I lost some and won some

1. 1st hackathon (Jan 2019) — My team of 5 somehow won the 1st prize and won $10000 ($2000 each)
2. 2nd hackathon (Feb 2019) — My team of 4 won the 2nd prize of $500 ($125 each)
3. 3rd hackathon (May 2019) — My team of 4 won 3rd prize of $200 I think (I forgot)
4. 4th hackathon (July 2019) — We didn’t win anything
5. 5th hackathon (Sep 2019) — My team of 4 won 1st prize again, but we each got $50 worth of supermarket vouchers each (meh)
6. 6th hackathon (Feb 2020) — My team of 4 won 1st prize, and won a free trip to Dubai to present our solution to the sponsor, but COVID-19 slapped us in the face and we didn’t get to go.
7. 7th hackathon (March 2020) — We didn’t win anything

I might have missed out some as I’m actually referring to my linkedin profile as I’m writing this. Anyway long story short, I wouldn’t recommend going for hackathons if you just want to make money, as there are better ways to make money.

Some stuff I learnt from Hackathons if you’re interested:

9) Teaching Assistant / Research Assistant Salary (Ages 23–24)

These were programmes offered by my university.

Teaching Assistant (Python)

I assisted a professor in teaching Python. I didn’t give the lecture, but walked around during practice sessions asking if any students needed help, and also handled some admin shit. I was paid $500 per semester, which is approximately $10 per hour.

Research Assistant (Natural Language Processing)

I served as a research assistant in text analytics and natural language processing (teaching computers to understand human language — in my case, English). I was paid $10 per hour also.

$10 per hour is kinda meh, but I tried for these roles to see if I could learn and improve my skills. The verdict — there are better ways to make money, and there are better ways to learn and improve my skills. I went through each role once and only once, and decided that this was probably not for me given the time that I needed to put in.

10) Reselling Chick-Fil-A Burgers At Carnegie Mellon University (Age 24)

I went on an exchange programme in early 2020 to Carnegie Mellon University in USA (I was called back 2 months in because of COVID-19 tho). Over there, I attended an entrepreneurship class where our task was to make money somehow. My team and I decided to order a bunch of Chick-Fil-A burgers and resell them near campus at double the price.

Funny thing is that we sold out, probably only worked because the nearest Chick-Fil-A many kilometers away. (This shit will probably never ever work in Singapore, but you can prove me wrong if you want to). We turned $100 USD to $200 USD, but at the cost of standing in the snow for 4 hours. Probably not worth it to me at least.

11) Stock Investments (Age 22-Now)

Income here stems from 1) capital gains and 2) dividends. When I just started, I was probably overconfident and dumb, and tried to pick stocks myself without knowing what the heck I was doing. So I lost money for the first year. Afterwards, I decided that I wanted to be a passive investor, and adopt a “leave your money there and forget it” kind of mentality. I bought some ETFs and dividend stocks and managed to recoup my losses after a while.

My stock portfolio now

I currently work in a bank, so it has become a massive massive massive pain in the ass to invest in stocks or securities due to all that compliance stuff, insider trading laws and whatnot. I’ve therefore not touched my portfolio at all and am just leaving it to compound for now.

12) My Full-time Salary (Age 25-Now)

I work in a certain bank as a software engineer, and help them code and maintain certain applications. They pay me money in exchange for my time.

13) Freelance Programming Tutor (Age 25-Now)

In my last semester of university, I decided to try giving programming tuition, cus why the heck not? I put an advertisement on a couple of sites, and managed to get a couple of students. I taught mainly Python and some web development through Zoom, and charged $50 per hour.

I was earning more in 1 week than what I earned in 3 months when I was still an undergraduate teaching assistant! To current students — I would encourage giving this a go if you have the time and energy, as 1) the money is decent 2) you learn surprisingly a lot when you teach and 3) this will probably improve your speaking skills

14) Freelance Programming Services (Age 25-Now)

This is concurrent with my freelance programming tuition services. Instead of asking me to teach, some clients wanted me to code something for them, be it a website, a script or part of an assignment. Similarly, I charged by the hour at $50 per hour.

15) Cryptocurrency Investments (Age 25-Now)

As I work in a bank, it is an incredibly huge pain in the ass to invest in stocks. So I invest in cryptocurrencies instead! Here are some different ways my cryptocurrency investments has worked for me:

1. Capital gains (and Capital losses)— Buy low and sell high (And sometimes buy high and sell low, unfortunately)
2. Bitcoin Mining — I had a desktop with a GPU that wasn’t doing anything for me, so I downloaded Nicehash and started mining some Bitcoin easily.
3. Lending — I put some crypto coins/tokens in cryptocurrency lending platforms like Hodlnaut and earn some interest
4. Staking — I stake my coins/tokens and earn even more coins/tokens (staking rewards)
5. Liquidity Mining — different from staking, but similar concept: put your coins/tokens there and it earns even more coins/tokens (liquidity mining rewards)

Note: NOT financial advice, just some stuff I’ve tried. Do your own research. Don’t blindly listen to some random dude on the internet.

16) Medium Partner Programme (Age 25-Now)

I started writing on Medium earlier this year, and earned $0.03 in my very first month. I now earn a couple of dollars per month (a couple of tens of dollars if I’m lucky). I’m writing mostly for fun and to share what I know online in hopes of speeding up our collective learning curve in these topics.

Some Final Words

I’m by no means rich or wealthy (not yet, I hope), but I hope that this article is helpful in some way to you one way or another. If it wasn’t, I hope it at least provided some sort of entertainment value. But unlikely that you’ll have read til this section if it was neither helpful nor entertaining (I guess), so if you’re reading this, you’re awesome!

Conclusion

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