Last week, I received a notification from the PUB telling me that they'd recently came to check on my electricity meter and saw a sharp increase of electrical usage. The bill turned out to be S$300. My usual bill was near to $200.
My newborn arrived in mid June 2009. And my new maid came 2 months prior to that. When I didn't have the maid, we used to eat out a lot and didn't cook that much. The main electrical consumption will most likely be the aircon that we use every night.
The 3 of us, my wife, my 5 year old daughter and me would sleep in the same room, enjoying the cool air from the same aircon. That averages to be about $200 plus.
With our new baby, I have to sleep in another room so as to make way for the baby cot and turn on the aircon there. That luxury of turning on an additional aircon happens to be S$100 per month. To help to cope with the 2nd kid, we hired a maid, whom we pay her a salary of S$320 per month. Not to mention a levy of S$170 to the government for hiring a foreign maid.
Though we have a maid to help out with the housework, we don't leave our children fully under her care. Sadly both our parents are unable to take care of our kids for us because they have their own careers and lives, so we send them to a nanny during the day. Our nanny costs us about another S$550 per month. Because we have to send the kids over the their nanny, constantly taking taxi isn't a good idea, so we bought a car. For the car, the expenses of owning and operating it costs us close to S$1200 per month.
For our own sake, we forked out a little on entertainment to take our mind off the bills, these entertainment comes in the form of cable tv and broadband, that adds another S$110 to the total monthly bill.
Beyond that I am also committed to paying my own insurance premiums which add up to S$300 per month and for my daughter's insurance which adds up to $250 per month. A total of S$550 for insurance premiums.
Lets add up, shall we?
Utilities Bill : $300
Maid salary : $490 [ salary + levy ]
Nanny fees : $550
Car expenses : $1200
Broadband/cable : $110
Insurance premiums : $550 [ not including wife's insurance premiums ]
For monthly recurring bills, we are paying up to S$3200 as a upkeep to our way of life. And this doesn't include miscellanous such as monthly allowances to parents, money spent on food, etc.
FYI, my elder child's education expenses hasn't been included also..
Mr Lee, if you can help address the average Singaporean Family Dilemma such as the example above, I think your incumbent party and government are worthy to rule Singapore. Giving residents the chance to own their own housing just doesn't sound that attractive anymore given the prices nowadays.
And if the average Singapore Family Dilemma cannot be solved, I can assure birthrate of the population will continue to dwindle.
Today is 7th August 2009
Time now is 01:49 hrs
Happy Birthday Singapore.
I sometimes wonder if it'd be easier if we were elsewhere than in Singapore.
