Friday, June 09, 2006

My Singapore, my home?

Just read this fictional what-if account. Quite poignant, though probably somewhat exaggerated.

Is this really the way my country is headed? I suppose I've come from a pretty privileged background. I've never really had to worry about working part-time, and I think my family's financial worries involve more of "can we hold on to the house?" and "can we support the car?" rather than "can we keep a roof over our heads?".

So, I guess I've never really truly understood the financial problems of lower middle-income families, that bracket which is struggling to cope but somehow does not qualify for financial aid. I mean, I can comprehend it, but I just don't know if it's as widespread a problem as it is made out to be. Most of my friends don't seem to fall under this category, but then again I suppose my friends aren't exactly representative of the average demographic either.

With rising costs, however, and my intended career path not exactly being loaded with oodles of money, sometimes I fear it might become a very stark reality for me, as well. My friends sometimes joke about how rich I am (I'm not, really, I think we might be living beyond our means actually), but even if so, family wealth doesn't last forever, does it? Sooner or later my nuclear family's going to be supported solely by how much the breadwinners make, unless my dad happened to be Bill Gates or Sim Wong Hoo something.

In fact, just last night I dreamt that my dad scolded me quite fiercely for spending a few hundred dollars on my supp card. To be fair, I used to be quite trigger-happy with my spending on online purchases (charged to his account), but I've stopped all that already, and I think I've only charged a few train tickets to that card this year (because the GNER site doesn't accept Solo). In the dream his business was doing really badly, so those costs were really painful to him.

Outside of dreamland, I wonder what the future brings. I still remember those days in the not-so-distant past, when I'd thought money didn't mean very much, but I guess we all grow up sometime.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yea.. we all reach the point where we realise that money isn't as easy to earn as we used to think it was.

But let's hold on to dreams too.

Anonymous said...

it's better to grow up and experience the temporal pain than to hold onto illusions and get bankrupt (in more then one sense of the word) at the end of it all, I s'pose.