About half of fresh graduates polled here are unemployed. If you are a male fresh graduate affected by the recession, you should consider joining the Singapore Armed Forces.

As reported in ST today, a lieutenant-colonel retiring at age 45 (the current retirement age) will get about $700,000 in gratuity. Such lump sum payments make it attractive for SAF joiners to serve till retirement.

If you have a good honours degree, your starting gross salary is $3,630 as an Officer Cadet Trainee in a combat vocation. If you prefer engineering or logistics vocations, you get $3,390. Without honours, you get about 15-20% less. Still not bad.

If you sign on as a 3-year contract officer, you get a "sign-on bounty" of $10,000 and a end-of-service gratuity of about $6,000. There's also an additional "combatant bonus" of $6,000.

SAF joiners can also participate in the SAVER military scheme, which is "designed for a long term commitment."

Though the details of the SAVER scheme are not available, we now know that the financial rewards of this scheme can be very attractive indeed.

For more info, refer to army recruitment website.

http://www.salary.sg/2009/jobless-gr...-consider-saf/