Posts for 2025

By the second year in my current job, I had gone for years without a year-end bonus due to a combination of factors such as constant job-hopping and working for cheap financially-prudent employers. But I made do. Not only that, I thrived.

Thus it was with some puzzlement when I received an email from HR informing me that I was due for a year-end bonus. An entire month's worth, no strings attached.


Wow. Imagine. My. Shock. Having spent so many years learning to live without a year-end windfall, now I faced an entirely different problem: what in the blue hell was I supposed to do with that chunk of change that had just appeared out of nowhere and didn't fit in my budget?

As a married man, the solution was easy. I just handed it over to my wife.

When the Missus received that fat stack of cash, the first question she asked, with a hint of suspicion, was why I was suddenly giving her money. I put on my most macho-bullshit act and declared, "Woman, I told you when you married me, whatever money I make from here onwards, you will make." Famous last words. Because every subsequent year, right at the tail end, she would inquire about my year-end bonus and now I was expected to give it to her every time.

Moral of the story: Be very careful what you tell your woman. She's going to hold you to it. Believe that!

The real reason

When I told my friends what I'd been doing with my year-end bonus for the past few years, what I got was the mind-numbing chorus of "wow, that's true love" and "what a great husband".

Have people always been this simple, or is this just happening now?

This is about freedom, not love. I was once trapped in a job I hated due to having developed a dependency on their year-end bonus. And whenever I tried to leave, I always found myself waiting to get the bonus before making plans to leave. Plenty of people find themselves in the same predicament now. It's that Singaporean mentality of not wanting to lose out.

Yes, I know that this isn't necessarily some cynical move by the company to hold their employees ransom. A year-end bonus is a pretty common practice and nobody was holding a gun to my head in order to force me to stay at the company. It was purely my reluctance to forfeit that lump sum of cash by leaving at year end, that kept me there. However, even taking full responsibility for it, does not make the dependency on the year-end bonus any less of a trap. It merely turns this into a self-imposed trap.


Now having tailored my cash flow around not having a year-end bonus after so many years of going without, I have effectively weaned myself off this dependency. Why would it be a good idea to voluntarily redevelop the same crippling dependency now? Why would I give up the freedom to leave whenever I damn well feel like it, even if there are no plans to leave at the moment?

Not only do I give my wife my yearly bonus, I've also developed the habit of giving Mom my salary increases. Why? Same reasoning. It's a bit of extra money that I don't care about, it keeps 'em happy, and that's a great ROI. Most importantly, it keeps me lean. And hungry. It was that same hunger that had me going back to school. Learning new tech tools. Picking up skillsets from related disciplines such as DevOps, Data Analytics and Mobile Development. It was that very hunger that had me build this blog and keep honing my craft.

It's the principle of the thing. Financially, I'm in a good place and don't need the money. I have worked long and hard, over the course of the last decade, to have the luxury of being able to easily ignore the lure of immediate money, in favor of things of greater value. And approaching the age of 50, autonomy in my career is arguably more important than ever. Definitely more important than an extra few thousand bucks.

Conclusion

Losing my job isn't high on the list of things to worry about. Come to think of it, it might not even be on the list. No matter what you tell yourself so you can get out of bed in the morning, a job is ultimately just a job. Your ability to land a job is far more important than the job itself.


It's more my edge I'm afraid of losing. Not being some special tech talent that can walk into any company and demand the sky, I only got this far due to enthusiasm and motivation. Not complacency. Due to careful financial management, I already have way more money than I realistically need.

I am in charge of my own career, and will give that up when hell freezes over.