Money Matters

One of the joys of being forty - and having a relatively stable career and good financial habits - is that we can splurge once in a while.

"I'm feeling like a million bucks," Stanley said over a WhatsApp video call the other day, eager to share that he's found a hair salon near his workplace which made him look and feel good.

"And I'm ready for a million fucks," he adds with passion.

"How? You like it?" he asked, beaming, tilting his head leftward, rightward, and angling his phone so I get a 360 panoramic view of his Korean-stylist's artwork.

"This haircut cost me a bomb - but I'll have a blast tonight," Stanley squealed in excitement in the middle of Suntec City.

It's a Saturday afternoon and Stanley is off to a date that night.

And Stanley wants to look perfect for him.

B, who's Stanley's current love interest, belongs to someone else.

Stanley had recently confessed to us to having fallen in love with a man who's attached.

"Years ago when I was studying marketing in NUS," Stanley said, as he catwalked along the shopping mall, "my prof said that Burger King was trying to take a bite of the fast food market."

"One of its most successful marketing campaigns was in admitting that it's second place to MacDonald's - and that because they know they're second place, they're going all out to please customers," Stanley said.

"And I'm Burger King. I need to look fabulous for my B because I'm the third party here," said Stanley, Analogy Queen.

"Okay, I gotta go - I love you and stay alive," were his parting words before Stanley went on his rendezvous.

Coincidentally, in another part of Singapore, Sasha Natasha - or Sasa as we call her - had also just stepped out from what she described as a "luxurious spa session," one of her endless self-love, pampering projects.

Sasa my classmate from university is one busy woman.

On weekdays, she leads a team of staff at work, always dressed up, decked up and made up like she's ready for a photo shoot.

On some weekday nights, Richard her disgustingly rich hubby - also my friend from university - picks her up and has an expensive dinner somewhere.

The power couple are the envy of many, including Stanley the sex bunny who hasn't met them but has heard a lot about them.

Let me know when Sasa's rich and powerful husband is lonely," Stanley would say, adding "these days, I'm an expert at being a third party."

But there'll be no party.

Right now, Sasa is telling me how she fired and hired a careless facial therapist who was daydreaming while working on her face and had accidentally scratched her right cheek.

Sasa, who is an expert in the art of human manipulation, managed to get the therapist's furious manager to threaten to sack that therapist before Sasa strategically stepped in to insist that the manager does not do that.

"It's a diplomatic win-win situation. The therapist gets a scary threat but she gets to keep her job and I get my main point and message across with no blood on my hands. Easy-peasy," Sasa said cheerfully.

Stanley later asked me to remind him never to step on Sasa's powerful, manicured toes.

"That therapist doesn't have her heart in the right place," I conveyed to Stanley Sasa's exact words to me.

"Rich people... very hard to please, you think?" I ask Stanley, who fervently disagrees.

"You'll have to be hard to be pleased, hunny," Stanley said.

Later, as I was spending one hour on the treadmill as part of my Saturday routine, my thought process sparked off very rapidly like firecrackers.

I first started by thinking about the joys of a working life - that it allows us to splurge once in a while on treating ourselves well with facial and spas.

Then it jumped to the distant future - can we sustain that lifestyle?

It dwindled very quickly because my next thought was how much do we need when we're old.

We're at the mid-point of our lives, assuming we die at 80.

So we should be at the peak of our career - and finances.

In Singapore, when you reach 40, you automatically get accepted into the government's national health insurance scheme for the elderly.

And that's another reminder that you'll have to be rich at 40: You are ageing and you might chalk up hospital bills.

These days, my peers are buying loads of heavyweight items.

While it's clothes and shoes and all things fashionable in our teens and early twenties, and nice watches and tailored suits in our late twenties and early thirties, people my age buy bigass items like financial products.

To prove my point, Stanley, who recently found a job after he was retrenched, dumped in more money on stocks and shares so that his money can grow. He's also considering upgrading some of his healthcare insurance policies which would mean he'll pay some $10,000 a year for all his insurance policies added up.

My partner J - just a year older but fuckloads richer - is paying off his second property and planning his third. A commercial unit, he says, so that he can evade additional residential property tax.

Carl our dense friend is throwing money in plastic surgery, protein powder and steroids - investments of a different sort.

Sasa and Richard, needless to say, have them all: From government bonds and structured deposits and timeshares to gold and an overseas property.
  
The reason I'm writing about this so passionately isn't because I worship money.

I mean, we all need them and we'll never have enough even if we are wealthy.

But it stems from the fact that we're gay.

Ageing gay people have very little social security.

Stanley used to say that when we're old, we'll have to help one another change adult diapers because we have no children.

We won't have sons and daughters to drive us to the hospital for check ups, or even try to curry favour us in the hope of getting inheritance.

So having money - and a sound retirement plan is the way to go.

As I ended my very morbid one-hour run, I messaged J, Stanley and Carl to randomly ask them their retirement plans.

Carl the gym rabbit says he's investing his money in beauty so that he can look young, look good and therefore not fall sick.

J my partner says when we're old, we can look for retirement villages elsewhere if none materialises in Singapore by the time we're ancient and frail. One of J's single and ageing friends now lives in one such village in Australia where he functions independently with his own house, while living amongst other elderly neighbours within a community that has nurses and therapists on the standby.

Stanley's ideal retirement plan is to hire a team of money boys who will change his adult diapers.

"But not because it's wet with pee, hunny," he said while taking a toilet break with his date B.



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Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people