Skip to main content

Why having more kids is tougher nowadays?


Today, I went to a small coffee shop which need to share table with someone else most of the time for breakfast. Actually eating and drinking (I mean coffee/tea not beer) at coffee shop is what I like to do.

I overhead an conversation within an uncle and another auntie with a baby who is her grandchild. This auntie is telling the uncle that children nowadays are very hyperactive resulting it is too tired to handle more kids. Kids in the older generation are less hyperactive and more obedient, it is pretty easy for taking care more kids at the same time. I remembered my parents able to take care 3 of us in the past. Of course 3 of us are quite easy to be taken care of. When I check with my parents if they are able to take care of my 2 young children, they said they are not able to handle 2 at the same time. I confess that my children are more difficult to handle compared to me and my siblings. So, the ratio became 2 super persons can only handle 1 young kid at a time. 

Nonetheless, this is not the most important factor for not planning for more children. This auntie has another 3-years-old grandchild whose parents sign him up for additional lesson in childcare that cost $100 a month and the lesson is only 1 hour a week. The cost to bring up a child is too expensive nowadays. Other classmates are attending the extra lesson and my child wanted to attend too. Therefore as a parent, I must sign him up as well right? This is not the first time I heard this. Before this, I heard of another auntie sharing her son need to bear the cost of expensive childcare, school bus fee to and fro childcare, maid to handle housework. Both the son and daughter-in-law are working to foot for all these high expenses for their 2 children and they are not able to afford more than 2 children.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

High Interest Kids Saving Account

I n Singapore, we have CDA savings account for new born with dollar for dollar matching from the government. In addition, for those with household income <S$4500, you just need to save S$50 and OCBC will contribute one time S$100 and subsequently Singapore government will match another S$150 into the CDA account. As a result, you have S$300 in the account with only S$50 out of pocket and this S$50 can be a portion of baby bonus (let's say $6K). Hmm..., these sound not bad after all! Nonetheless, the drawback is, the interest earned for this account is pretty low which is about 0.8% a year. Therefore, I don't think it's wise to deposit the full lump sum of baby bonus into CDA account at one go, just the sufficient amount to be spent on doctor visit, immunization, etc. Lately, I found out that BankWest (one of the bank in Australia) is paying 5.75% variable interest for Kids Saving Account. This is a monthly savings account whereby you can choose to deposit A$25 to A$250

First Home in Singapore

L ike many other Singaporean, at theage of early twenties, I am planning to purchase my first home. At this stage,I am at a cross junction whereby I will have to choose what type of home I needto go for. Since I am not rich and I do not want any external assistance(borrow money from parent), private property is definitely out. One will not beable to feel sense of achievement by asking for parent or relatives’ help.   Looks like I am going for public housing (HDB) then. Filtering EC and DBSSwhich I can’t afford, I still have to decide on how many flat rooms of HDBflats I am going for: studion / 2 rooms / 3 rooms / 4 rooms / 5 rooms / EM. By the way for thosewho are not familiar with Singapore public housing, 3 rooms flat doesn’t mean flatwith 3 bedrooms and 5 rooms flat doesn’t mean flat with bedrooms. On top ofthat, there are several models for resale flats. For instance there are model A4 rooms flats, model S 4 rooms flat, etc. They are varies in term of size, 4rooms flats are usua

CPF Voluntary Contribution

E nd of 2014, I was considering to make voluntary contribution to Medisave account. Apart from the reason that this is tax deductible which I can save a bit in my following year income tax payment, the 5% interest per annum is another factor contributing to my thought.  Well, mentioning about CPF is one of the sensitive topic for Singaporean to talk about since this often draws a lot of comments from the reader. I often see there are so many comments below the yahoo news of CPF, HDB etc topic related.  When I check on my CPF Statement every year, I found that the interest earned for my Medisave account is quite a significant amount which I think it can be considered as a safe deposit even though hard to withdraw out from the account is the drawback and the keep changing CPF rules making it even harder to plan for the strategy.  Personally, I feel that buying a health insurance is important to prepare for unforeseen circumstances. I was very happy to pay for MediShield years bac