Wednesday, March 10, 2010 ;
8:57 PM
With regards to the low birth rate Singapore has faced for the past decade, and what people always use as the reason - that babies cost too much money, I always did not really believe that.
You can choose to spend a lot of money on them, and you can choose not to.
For me, the single highest cost that I felt when I had a newborn was the diapers. They poop so much because they drank milk all the time, so they use up to 7 diapers a day. If you use a good brand, that's 50cents per diaper. Not so expensive brand, 20 or 30cents.
Other than that, what else? I thought infants were the cheapest to maintain.
It is the older kids who are expensive. They have learnt to ask for things. Their favourite food, ice cream, toy, book... Outings, this and that. And clothes. Shoes... (ok i have boys, so I didn't spend that much on shoes, since they only wear 1 pair usually, everyday, for every occasion).
And then the schools send back form after form. ds1 attends a public govt school, so school fees are almost negligible. But then every so often, the teacher will send back forms asking for money. For subscriptions to Hao Peng You chinese newsletter for the year, Maths magazines, more files, notebooks etc.
I inherited baby cots, high chairs, car seats, baby clothes and all kinds of other knick knacks from others, because it so happens that Dh is the youngest, so our kids have many older cousins. Church friends helped to pass us stuff as well. So I did not need to buy any of these.
Today however, I realised there is another cost that has increased. I received the Singapore Power bill in the post today and from Feb to Mar, our month's electricity charges cost $200+! Why the sudden increase?
With baby, I seldom left the house, and it was also so hot, we had the air con on the whole day. Normally, it would be on for a while at night only. So this was definitely a big increase.
Hopefully with more outings this month, the bill would be considerably lower.
I remind myself that the govt gave us the baby bonus cash outlay and that amount will cover all these, the electricity bills, the diapers, and more.
But we won't be having any more kids though, because besides money, they require a lot of time and time, we only have the same 24 hours a day, won't get any more than that. :-)
rainbows every day, do not worry for the morrow
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