Battle stats

I've been playing this game for quite a while now, but I was away for quite a few years. My work stats are pretty good (since I had a job for that whole time), but my battle stats aren't amazing.
I decided to join the Army, so I can get my defense up, but it's a bit discouraging to go from being paid 2m+ a day to $150...
Should I stay in the Army and slowly increase my defense or should I join a strip club (gent's or ladies, defense or dex works) so I can get a proper wage while I do it?
I also don't intend to use drugs (I know it won't help my stats, I just don't really like the drug gameplay).

Any advice would be very helpful!

depends how low you def is i stayed in the arm for a good year and a bit, which gave me ~7m def from near nothing, then when i trained it i continued to use army def to increase furthr 100 days/1k army points should give you around 1m def + from near nothing ie 30-50k def

Yeah maybe I'll just do that. Take a hit on my finances for about 4 months (I also need to climb to the rank of Sergeant) so I can get my def up

tbf, being an employee in a company isn't going to help your finances a lot anyway.. That'll only happen if you're in a 10* oil rig (for the special in the bank).. So army is deffinetly the best choice like grif said..

$2.5m a day was the majority of my income

go flower running then.. [:tongue:] even without a faction you should easily be capable of running about 6m day, factions with a large amount of cumber will allow you to even run about 10m a day.

I'm a bit worried about joining a faction without having very good battle stats

You shouldn't I don't think, I joined with ~22k total 8 months ago and I'm doing fine. It has multiple benefits that increase your stat gain etc.. [:tongue:]

Confirmed: Army is great advice, just remember to keep all your stats balanced, you might want to consider some other alternatives, you could also join a 10* furniture company and get paid and use the job points for strength boost, enjoy the game.

I've been training strength so far, so a strength boost isn't really what I need. Should I keep all stats at the same level? I was thinking of keeping a baseline of stats and maxing dex or def?

Hank's script to help you train with the ideal ratio should give you an idea of what you want to do if you don't want to level evenly but instead want to put your defense/dexterity higher.

You need either Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey installed for it to work.

Hank's script is for the special gyms though isn't it? I'm aiming for the SSL anyway, so I shouldn't need that

If you want to level everything evenly, then SSL will make it unnecessary, yes.

But if you want to prioritize your stats in a different way, then you will want to keep more than one gym open to maximize your gains, in which case you may find the ratio helpful.