What can be worse than having no money? No money + a big inferiority complex! My husband and I, we really had a very late start in life. You see, in ____, I told you that our parents told us to accept the first job that was offered to us. They were right, of course, it was the recession and who knows if another company would offer us a job? All sorts of well-meaning advice were given to us by our parents, our friends, and the staff of recruitment agencies. We became obsessed with landing a permanent job, because only permanent employees were entitled to all company benefits. Our first job after graduation was with a small local non-bank company. Even though we were both banking graduates, we accepted the first job that was offered to us! As you know, we slogged like mad, still we could barely make ends meet. Our other university mates, for some reason, did not face parental pressure (or if they did, they did not tell us, and in any case, they did not budge) to accept any job that came along. Admittedly, they did wait a longer time than us, but the other university mates eventually did land contract jobs with a prestigious American bank. Contract job?!! “But there is no stability in contract jobs” was everyone’s first reaction! But what could the whole bunch of us do? It was the recession, and the American bank only dished out contract jobs.

When the economy started to recover, guess what happened? The university mates who worked for the prestigious American bank, and thus had relevant experience, quickly got snapped up by the other prestigious banks, but my husband and I struggled to change jobs. It is my belief that brand matters. It is important to work for a big brand company, better yet if it is a multinational corporation (MNC) if you are fresh from university, and you want to have an advantage in the rat race! Having said that, however, a lot depends on what safety net and backup plans you have, as I will talk about in ______. If your family is waiting for your salary to survive, please – for goodness sake – just take any job that comes along! The university mates, because they were working for big banks now, earned more money than us, and they quickly progressed in life: they travel for work, they went on to buy executive condominiums (EC) which was all the rage back then, and they also bought their car and had kids. It was all very unfair! My husband too graduated with high distinction grades from university, that qualified him for entry into the Scholastic Wall of Fame for Study Excellence, we were working so damn hard and we slogged our lives without taking a break. Why did the other university mates progress way faster than us?! I don’t understand it at all, and though my husband made no mention at that time, I know he felt very inferior because we had nothing. Soon after, we drifted apart from that gang of university mates, because they were moving up, and we were still stuck. This is how cruel reality life is.