These days there is so much talk about inflation. The prices of everything is going up. The cost of living is going up. First we have a pandemic and we're still in it. Then there is the war in Ukraine that made things worse as this affects supplies and costs of things.
Medical Costs have gone up. It doesn't help that we have a family member who has fallen ill and will be under long term critical care. After the roller coaster ride of going through ICU, we learn that we might have to put our love one in a nursing home. To qualify for subsidies, we have to go through a means testing thingy. What it simply means is that they will take the total income of the household divided by the total number of family members in the household. Because of us, our parents cannot qualify for the full amount of medical subsidies. It is expected that we the kids should be able to afford to pay for their medical expenses. However the strain is really there. Firstly my parents CPF accounts have already depleted and they do not have much health insurance coverage. And it also doesn't help to know that my one and only sibling can be so irresponsible with savings. We simply do not enough money to fund our parents medical costs. Then there is the worry about how we are going to fund our own medical costs in future after spending on our parents.
I also want to rant about the housing situation in Singapore. It's so expensive to buy a home. We end up living with our parents because of this. Singles cannot buy BTOs in mature estates and prime estates. We can only buy a BTO 2 room flat which are located in some inaccessible corner of Singapore and there are not many such flats available. Although they have no restrictions on what resale flat we can buy, it so expensive to even buy a resale flat.
In short Singles are badly shortchanged in Singapore. We are being punished for not being able to contribute to growing the Singapore population by giving birth But we are still contributing to the workforce. We also help to cover those on maternity leave. We are not recognized for our contribution to the economy at all. Does this mean they won't care if we leave the country and find jobs elsewhere? Singapore is my home but we don't really have much a place in Singapore.
